In today’s NFL, seeing a former quarterback slide into a high-profile color commentator role isn’t unusual. We’ve watched Troy Aikman, Tom Brady, Tony Romo, and others make that jump, and in many cases, thrive. But Joe Montana’s experience was different. The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback stepped into the booth immediately after retiring. He lasted just one season. And this week, he finally explained the reasoning.

“Coming from the other side as a player, you see so many times, people are making judgments on a player, or on what happened on the field, and they have no idea,” he told CNBC’s Alex Sherman. “It would be hard to judge our receivers, our quarterbacks, that played under Bill [Walsh] because our receivers had so many adjustments they could make on a hook; a hook doesn’t always have to be a hook.

“A hook went to a post, it went to an out, it went to a cross. It just depended on the defense. So, as someone sitting up in the box, you have no idea what all those are, who misread who, and all that. I just didn’t like making those kinds of judgments on players. I was uncomfortable.”

Montana spent 16 NFL seasons under center, winning four Super Bowls, three Super Bowl MVPs, and two league MVPs. Diagnosing defenses and mastering playbooks, however, wasn’t the challenge. But evaluating players publicly, without knowing every adjustment or assignment, didn’t sit right with him.

After his final season with the Kansas City Chiefs in 1994, Montana joined NBC’s pregame show in 1995. On paper, it looked like the start of another long chapter. Yet during his rookie season in broadcasting, criticism followed. Some dismissed him as simply not being good at commentary. Behind the scenes, though, the struggle was more internal than technical.

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Montana couldn’t separate his quarterback mindset from the analyst’s chair. He understood how layered every snap was, how one route adjustment or protection call could change everything. That perspective made it difficult for him to criticize players in a simplified, television-friendly way. And ultimately, even with time left on his NBC contract, he decided he was done after one season.

For broader context, NBC’s final broadcast that year was Super Bowl XXX between the Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers. Montana had already covered nine regular-season games and the playoffs. But by halftime of the Super Bowl, he had made up his mind. Diana Ross was performing that day. Montana was preparing to walk away.

“At halftime, I called my wife from the phone,” he told the New York Post in 2021. “We all had phones next to us and said, ‘I quit. I’m out of here. I can’t do this.”

So yes, it was one-and-done in broadcasting for the quarterback who led the 49ers dynasty. While there’s no denying some believe he stepped away because he wasn’t strong in the booth, Montana has now clarified the real reason: he knew too much.

He believes the pressure was different in his era and suggests that today’s former quarterbacks-turned-commentators operate in a more forgiving environment than he did.

Joe Montana praised Tony Romo and Troy Aikman for the role he himself couldn’t excel at

Back in Joe Montana’s era, color commentary was largely about explaining what had already happened. The job wasn’t centered on forecasting plays or walking viewers through pre-snap reads in real time. Today, though, top former quarterbacks are often celebrated for predicting what’s coming next.

Tony Romo, in particular, has built much of his broadcasting identity around those pre-snap breakdowns. That’s exactly why Montana recently praised Romo and Troy Aikman while explaining why the role never felt natural to him.

“I think a couple of the guys do an extremely good job,” he said. “I haven’t seen much of Tom [Brady], but I know Troy [Aikman] and Tony Romo. I think when you look at how they analyze a game, it is a little bit different. They’ll even get into the ‘Well, I’m not sure…’ When I was there, they just wanted you to be definitive, argumentative, and they didn’t care whether you were right or wrong, and I didn’t feel very good about that.”

From Montana’s perspective, today’s analysts are allowed, even encouraged, to acknowledge uncertainty and unpack the layers of a play. That subtle shift changes the tone of the booth. It creates space for nuance rather than forced certainty. And that’s likely why, more than three decades later, despite his deep football knowledge, Montana has chosen to stay away from returning to it.