NBC falsely claims Joe Montana won five Super Bowls

According to NBC, Joe Montana has won another Super Bowl. Montana, who played at Notre Dame from 1974-78 before his 1979-94 NFL career with the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs, is in Ireland to promote the Fighting Irish’s game against the Navy Midshipmen (as well as Guinness, which he has an endorsement deal with), and the NBC broadcast of that game Saturday showed him on the sidelines. But, unfortunately, after an extensive segment focused on Montana at the Guinness brewery, the broadcast’s shot of him on the sidelines (in a Guinness shirt, no less) ahead of an interview with Zora Stephenson came with a caption of “five-time Super Bowl champion”:

pic.twitter.com/VHmvPi1x6s

— no context college football (@nocontextcfb) August 26, 2023

Here’s that full clip, from the Guinness brewery shots through the sideline interview:

No, NBC, Joe Montana has not won five Super Bowls. Maybe he wasn't the only one enjoying the Guinness. pic.twitter.com/CCjxXXTAnW

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) August 26, 2023

While the 49ers as an organization have won five Super Bowls, with those all coming in a 13-year timeframe, Montana quite famously was not there for the last one in 1994. While he battled injuries in 1991 and 1992, backup Steve Young emerged as a top NFL starter. And that led to a quarterback controversy, and to the 49ers trading Montana to the Chiefs in April 1993. San Francisco would go on to win Super Bowl XXIX over the San Diego Chargers in 1994, with Young throwing for 325 yards and six touchdowns, while the Chiefs made the AFC Championship Game in the 1993 season and lost in their first playoff game in the 1994 season. Montana finished his career with those four Super Bowl rings, all obtained with the 49ers.

Funnily enough, this is the second high-profile national mistake on 49ers’ history this week. FS1 host Colin “Interesting, not correct” Cowherd added to his recent run of errors with a claim that former San Francisco coach Bill Walsh (who retired after the 1988 season; George Seifert was the head coach for the 49ers’ Super Bowl victories following the 1989 and 1994 seasons) “won Super Bowls with two different QBs.” (Cowherd also claimed that Young played for the USFL’s Tampa Bay Bandits before heading to San Francisco; rather, he played for the USFL’s Los Angeles Express and the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers).

But Cowherd is “not afraid of mistakes,” so those errors are maybe more to be expected from him. You’d think NBC, with their long run of covering the Irish and Montana, might know how many Super Bowls he won. But apparently that wasn’t the case Saturday.

[No Context CFB on Twitter]