“How do you do that’: Steve Young reveals his one lasting frustration about Deion Sanders after their unforgettable 49ers Super Bowl run

Steve Young has never needed extra praise to validate his legendary career. The Hall of Fame quarterback won three Super Bowls, led one of the most feared offenses of the 1990s, and delivered a performance in Super Bowl XXIX that still feels untouchable.

Yet even with all that success, Young admits there is one thing he cannot shake when he looks back at his time with Deion Sanders. San Francisco never offered Sanders a new contract after winning its fifth Super Bowl, and that fact still bothers Young. Sanders later said on KNBR that he would have stayed if the 49ers had offered. Instead, he left for Dallas, won another Super Bowl, and the 49ers have not won one since 1994.

Young says Sanders was the one player he could never read, and the 49ers let him walk anyway

During an interview with Coach Prime, Young said, “There’s one human, and this is not because he’s sitting here. There’s one human that I played against that I could not predict. It was like I would throw it, and then he would do something like, damn. How’s that? How do you do that? Like it didn’t make sense to me.”

That is a huge statement from a quarterback who spent his career processing defenses faster than almost anyone.

But Sanders was a different beast altogether, as he did not just cover receivers; he erased them. He baited throws, flipped field position, and made quarterbacks second-guess their instincts.When Sanders joined San Francisco in 1994, Young was already established as the starter and had elite weapons around him, including Jerry Rice and Ricky Watters. What the 49ers needed was a defensive closer, and Sanders became exactly that.

In that single season, he recorded six interceptions and returned three for touchdowns. He also added 14 defended passes and instantly changed how teams attacked the 49ers. San Francisco won Super Bowl XXIX, and Sanders earned Defensive Player of the Year. Young’s respect for Coach Prime is not just history anymore, as he is also taking Deion’s son, Shedeur Sanders, under his wing, helping the next generation carry that same confidence into the NFL spotlight.