With Super Bowl 50 at Santa Clara's Levi's Stadium on Sunday, a look at top moments and performances by Bay Area players on the game's biggest stage.
SANTA CLARA -- The figurative 500-pound gorilla had left the room long ago and taken up residence on Steve Young's back.
How else to describe the pressure of replacing Joe Montana and his four Super Bowl rings and three Super Bowl MVP awards?
Indeed, it had been five long years since the Niners had won a title -- after they won four in nine seasons between 1981 and 1989 -- and the Faithful were getting restless.
So what that it took Young until his third full season as the Niners starting QB in 1994 -- his second with Montana leading the Kansas City Chiefs -- for the former USFL star with the Los Angeles Express and Tampa Bay Buccaneers washout to reach the top.
Maybe that's why, with so much built-up pressure, Young's performance in Super Bowl XXIX tops our list.
His stat line in the Niners' 49-26 smackdown of the San Diego Chargers is just as eye-popping today was it was more than two decades ago.
In Young's lone Super Bowl start, the lefty passed for 325 yards and a record six touchdowns without an interception and ran the ball five times for 49 yards (he did appear in mop-up duty against the Broncos in Super Bowl XXIV, completing two of three passes for 20 yards and rushing four times for 6 yards).
"We had thrown four touchdowns in the first half," Young told NFL Network. "(Offensive coordinator) Mike Shanahan, he wanted four more. He was going to be disappointed without eight. He was actually upset when I came out of the game in the fourth quarter because he wanted two more; we had six."
So who can forget Young, symbolically and literally, pleading, "Someone take the monkey off my back, please," on the sideline as time ticked off the clock?
Linebacker Gary Plummer obliged.
"My feeling of having a championship in my pocket was maybe unique to anyone just because my predecessor Joe Montana had done it four times," Young said.
Oh, and while 1994 was Young's time to grasp the Lombardi Trophy as his own, it was also Montana's final year in the league.
No. 2: Joe Montana coolly dissects the Bengals
No. 3: Marcus Allen, running with the night
No. 4: Jerry Rice's Tour de Force