Terrell Owens thinks back to a late September night nearly two decades ago in Arizona and wonders if he could have done something to prevent the injury that ended Steve Young’s career.
“Our time was incomplete,” Owens said in a recent sit-down interview that will air Thursday in The 49ers Insider Podcast and on NBC Sports Bay Area. “It was cut short.”
Owens had emerged the previous season as the 49ers quarterback's favorite target. Young threw a career-high 36 touchdown passes in 1998, and Owens was on the receiving end of a team-high 11 of them. Jerry Rice had nine scoring receptions after returning from two severe knee injuries in 1997.
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Even with Rice on the field in a first-round playoff game after the 1998 regular season, Young looked for Owens in the closing seconds against the Green Bay Packers.
Owens, who had multiple dropped passes in the game, came down with a 25-yard touchdown catch amid four Packers defenders to send the 49ers onto the next round with a thrilling 30-27 victory at Candlestick Park. It was Owens' breakout moment in the NFL.
Young and Owens picked up where they left off in 1999, as the pair hooked up for two TD passes in the first two games of the season before Young’s Hall of Fame career came to a sudden and violent end on "Monday Night Football."
Arizona Cardinals safety Aeneas Williams, who was elected into the Hall of Fame in 2014, was untouched on a blitz and delivered a huge hit on Young that knocked him out. Running back Lawrence Phillips missed his assignment to pick up the blitz, but Owens said he agonizes over his role on the play, too.
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“Aeneas Williams is lined up over me,” Owens said. “He disguised a blitz. I go back to that play, and I’m like, 'Man, was there something I could have done? Could I have chipped him? Had I known or saw that he was about to blitz, could I have hit him to knock him off the path?' Because that was literally Steve Young’s last play.”
Owens and Young played together for only the final 45 games of Young’s career. They teamed up for 24 touchdowns, with all but three of their scoring hookups coming after Owens' rookie season of 1996.
“It’s unfortunate I only got to play a few years with Steve,” Owens said. “There’s no telling what my stats would’ve been or how quickly I would have excelled or progressed at that position.”
Owens ranks third all time with 153 receiving touchdowns, and he was elected into the Hall of Fame this year. On Thursday, Owens will be presented with his Hall of Fame ring during an on-field ceremony at Levi’s Stadium at halftime of the 49ers-Raiders game.