As part of his induction into the 49ers Hall of Fame this weekend, Terrell Owens traveled the entire Levi’s Stadium circuit.
Saturday night was the grand celebratory dinner. There was the unveiling of his life-sized statue in the 49ers museum and appearances from several fellow franchise greats, including Jerry Rice, the only NFL receiver who had more career receiving yards at the time of Owens’ retirement.
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Sunday afternoon featured an on-field extravaganza, complete with red carpet rolled out to midfield for Owens’ halftime induction speech and a throng of photographers and autograph seekers following the receiver wherever he stepped.
Owens also managed to sneak in a much more subtle moment on the Levi’s Stadium field, one that was related to the 49ers’ 24-20 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers.
It came during pregame warmups, after the 45-year-old Owens joked with 49ers tight end George Kittle near midfield about still being physically ready to suit up for an NFL game. As the 49ers continued their warmups, Owens ambled toward the sideline. He saw a familiar face.
Dante Pettis, of all people.
Owens and Pettis had met in the 49ers’ locker room in 2018, and then they were randomly teammates at a celebrity basketball game hosted by Cincinnati Bengals receiver John Ross in Long Beach this past summer. The former and the current 49ers receivers, 22 years apart in age, both impressed that day in the city college gym. Owens can still dunk, and Pettis even threw down a reverse slam on a breakaway.
So the two greeted each other enthusiastically Sunday. About four hours later, when Pettis hauled in the winning touchdown catch with just 85 seconds left, they’d both become men of the hour.
“We’ve had a chance to talk, but not too much about football just yet,” Pettis said of Owens in the 49ers’ locker room after the game. “But now, I’d definitely like to have a chance to sit down and chop it up with him.”
When that conversation comes, Sunday’s game can serve as the perfect opener. Pettis, who’s struggled to maintain favor with coach Kyle Shanahan over the past two months, certainly earned some in crunch time when he snagged quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo’s bullet in between two Pittsburgh defenders for the winning score.
Dimes to Dante! @JimmyG_10 connects with @dmainy_13 at the goal line! #49ers up 24-20. pic.twitter.com/ifiGjJuQkb
— San Francisco 49ers (@49ers) September 22, 2019
It was an authoritative catch at a time that the 49ers and Pettis needed it most. It came on the heels of a shaky game for Pettis, who couldn’t haul in a first-quarter slant that turned into an interception and another possible touchdown earlier on that final drive.
Owens, of course, is eminently familiar with delivering a big-time catch in traffic to expunge the stench of preceding mistakes — his most famous 49ers moment followed this exact script — so it marked an especially fortuitous coincidence when he predicted the trajectory of the team’s young wideouts on Sunday.
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“They’re growing,” Owens said while the 49ers receivers were warming up. “They’re young, as you’ve seen. Nobody has really stood out. Obviously, you have the tight end in George Kittle, who is their staple guy as far as receiving. But those receivers, those guys, they’re gonna grow. They’re gonna get better and better each game.
“And, they’re gonna win as a unit.”
All that indeed happened on Sunday.
Kittle was the 49ers’ top target, leading the offense with 57 receiving yards. Beyond that, the receiving load was divvied up relatively evenly among the other 49ers targets, with eight of them notching at least a catch. And there definitely was growth throughout the game, from a turnover-laden start to a stretch run during which Pettis, Deebo Samuel and Richie James all proved trustworthy in a volatile contest. Those young targets all logged catches while the outcome was on the line.
“There have been a lot of ups and downs,” Pettis said of early season struggles (he played only two snaps in Week 1 and didn’t catch a pass in Week 2). “But I know that’s part of sports. I’ve been around professional athletes, so I know what happens. You’re not just gonna be good every single day. It’s about being able to fight through that. And now, I know what it’s like to go through that.
“It’s like, ‘OK, I can learn to do this thing.’”
And that illustrated the broader significance of this 49ers win, one that was constantly repeated in the locker room afterward. The team had found a way to overcome several brutal errors and scrounge out an ugly victory, something it was decidedly incapable of doing the past two seasons.
So perhaps it was fitting that this type of win came on the day that the 49ers honored Owens, whose rise to fame was rooted in overcoming adversity.
When the 49ers first announced that Owens would be inducted into their Hall of Fame in March, the receiver said that he immediately remembered the famous moment preceding “The Catch II” 20 years ago, when he implored 49ers quarterback Steve Young to continue believing in him at the end of the January 1999 NFC wild-card game against Green Bay — even after he’d fumbled once and dropped four passes.
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“He’d always call me ‘sir.’ It’d be ‘yes, sir,’ ‘no, sir,’” Young said this past December in recalling Owens and that moment. “At one point, I had to say, ‘Terrell, quit calling me sir. It’s weird.’ And then in that huddle, he said ‘Steve, please believe in me.’
“So I told him, ‘Terrell, you’re 6-3, 230. You run like the wind. You’re gonna get the ball. Don’t worry about it. You can drop 15 more in a row and you’re still gonna get the ball.”
The current 49ers, of course, don’t have a wide receiver that’s nearly as physically dominant as Owens was, nor did Sunday’s win carry anything near the magnitude of that playoff triumph against the Packers. Everything that happened against the Steelers at Levi’s unfolded on a considerably smaller scale, with much less at stake, but that’s part of the point: The 49ers are striving toward those playoff heights in their building process, and overcoming less-than-ideal starts is a critical ingredient in that effort.
Perhaps it’s also fitting, then, that this is the first 49ers team to start 3-0 since that 1998 season.
Owens is officially immortalized in the team’s Hall of Fame now. His statue depicts him carrying a football in his right arm and tossing aside a defender with his left:
First look at the @terrellowens #49ers Hall of Fame statue 🙌 pic.twitter.com/0okWXObs45
— San Francisco 49ers (@49ers) September 22, 2019
“That was a process, trying to find a photo that really represented what I was about when I stepped on the field,” Owens said. “And I think I really found the one that exemplified my play: A lot of power, a lot of passion, a lot of finesse and a lot of excitement. So that was the one I chose.”
There’s exceptional versatility depicted in that new statue, along with big-time success. Those are two positives the 49ers are striving toward, and they managed to take a step closer to them with their win Sunday. It certainly paired well with Owens’ big day back.
— Reported from Santa Clara
(Photo: Lachlan Cunningham / Getty Images)
David Lombardi is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the San Francisco 49ers. David joined The Athletic after three years with ESPN, where he primarily covered college football. Follow David on Twitter @LombardiHimself
