The impact of Joe Montana on his position is impossible to overstate. His very name sounds like something a Hollywood screenwriter would dream up for a larger-than-life fairytale about the Ultimate Quarterback. He wasn’t the biggest guy, nor did he have the strongest arm. He just saw the field more clearly than anyone else who had yet played the game and delivered passes right where they needed to be with unrealistic accuracy. For evidence, look no further than his game-winning TD pass in the 1981 NFC Championship against the Cowboys. Under intense pressure from Dallas defenders, Montana somehow put the ball where only receiver Dwight Clark — who was wearing a defensive back like a snug jacket at the time — could grab it, a play that immediately and forever after became known simply as “The Catch.”

Such heroics would define Montana’s career, but his retirement has been defined by pain, and lots of it. He’s had three surgeries on his neck, has nerve damage in an eye and a left knee that’s made out of spaghetti, and says that — due to more of that lovely nerve damage — he basically hasn’t been able to feel his left foot since 1986. Of course, he’s also become a successful and savvy investor with his own venture capital firm, so he has plenty of cash to deal with all those medical bills. “Unfortunately,” he says with characteristic understatement, “most of us leave this game with things that linger.”

Fans of pop music in the ’80s may have been confused as to why one of the most awesome bassists of all time, Duran Duran’s John Taylor, was suiting up for the 49ers, but football fans knew John Taylor as the dependable #2 receiver behind Rice. The season before the Niners’ dismantling of the Broncos in the big game, Taylor had caught the winning touchdown in a Super Bowl showdown with the Cincinnati Bengals, cementing his status as a beloved player for the team with which he spent his entire nine-season career. A 115-pound weakling in high school, his first attempt at joining a college team as a walk-on failed; he then caught on at tiny Delaware State, where he set a couple of Mid-Eastern Atlantic Conference records, good enough for a third-round selection by the Niners in the 1986 draft. He quickly established himself as a viable deep threat alongside Rice, and a pretty solid punt return man as well.

He was also known for celebrating scores by performing backflips, something he’s still fond of. In a 2018 podcast conversation with Matt Maiocco, he said, “As long as I can do the backflip, I know I’m OK. When I stop being able to do the backflip, then I got a problem.” Not that he needs that skill very much in his current career: he owns his own big-rig trucking company, and although he’s had as many as five employees, he loves to get behind the wheel himself.

Speaking of men of faith, quarterback Steve Young — a backup on the ’89 team who would go on to win the big one as a starter in ’94 — has never been shy about his Mormon faith, even if he wasn’t too charitable to opponents on the field. He executed plays with surgical precision in relief of Montana for three games during the ’89 run, and easily could have started for any number of teams before finally getting his shot. Strangely, he admitted after his playing days were long over to a lifelong struggle with severe anxiety, even though he appeared to have ice in his veins every time he stepped on the field. “I had to carry this horrific, in my mind, weight of being highly paid and the expectations that come with that,” he told CBS Sports. “It just felt too much.”

Young obviously overcame those struggles, and in addition to carving out a stellar post-retirement broadcasting career, he’s used his platform to attempt to educate people on a number of important issues. He’s been an outspoken proponent of using technology to mitigate the effects of concussions and brain injuries, and has gone against the position of his church by becoming a staunch advocate for LGBT rights — all the more impressive for the fact that he is a direct descendant of Brigham Young, the religion’s founder.

Mike Holmgren is today remembered largely as the rotund, severe-looking guy who led Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers to Super Bowl glory as that squad’s head coach in 1995, but it was in San Francisco that he acquired the offensive coaching skills to pay the bills, so to speak. He served as the Niners’ quarterbacks coach from 1986 to 1988, then moved to offensive coordinator for three seasons before jumping ship to Green Bay in 1992. Said Joe Montana of Holmgren, “There are certain things he demanded you to study. He was a perfectionist at the position. That’s what made a difference in him is he wanted it to be perfect and he wanted you to be perfect,” which explains a lot about Montana’s superhuman level of play.

Holmgren would go on to coach the Seattle Seahawks for a decade, becoming one of very few coaches in NFL history to take two different teams to the big game by leading the Hawks to Super Bowl XL in 2005. (They lost to the Steelers.) He also briefly spent time in the thankless position of Cleveland Browns president and has dabbled in broadcasting. But his offensive-minded legacy lives on: Coaches who have found success after learning from him include Steve Mariucci, Jon Gruden, and Andy Reid.