Historical 49ers: Hicks and his Hot Licks

The 49ers would go on to win the game and Super Bowl XVI, the franchise’s first of five world championships. To do it that season was a remarkable feat in that San Francisco’s four starting defensive backs had less than six years of experience between them, with three rookies in Wright, strong safety Carlton Williamson and cornerback Ronnie Lott, along with third-year free safety Dwight Hicks.

“If Eric doesn’t make that tackle, ‘The Catch’ disappears,” Hicks said via telephone from his home in Atlanta, Georgia. “It’s a good catch, but Dallas goes and wins the game. They wouldn’t be playing ‘The Catch’ over and over and over again.”

Hicks and his Hot Licks, as the 49ers’ legendary secondary became known, will be the guests of honor Thursday night at the Grand Bay Hotel San Francisco in Redwood City at the 20th annual San Mateo County History Makers Dinner.

Sponsored by the San Mateo County Historical Association, the event headlines the four 49er greats chosen because of their contributions to county history, the genesis being the franchise having held its annual training camp at Red Morton Park in Redwood City since the 1950s until moving it to Santa Clara in 1988.

The History Makers Dinner celebrates honorees from different walks of life since the namesake of Foster City, the Foster family, was honored at the first dinner in 2003. The 49ers’ great Hall of Fame quarterback YA Tittle, a former Atherton resident prior to his death in 2017, was the headliner at the 2014 event. Previously, the great Giants center fielder Willie Mays was the event’s first honoree from the world of sports.

Hicks and his Hot Licks will be the third sports-themed honorees, and the first sports figures to be recognized as a group.

“It’s all four of them … because they were the defensive backfield in 1981, one veteran and three rookies, that had a tremendous contribution at their position,” said Mitch Postel, president of the San Mateo County Historical Association.

Hicks was the pivotal veteran of the group on the 1981 Super Bowl champion 49ers team. His third year in the NFL, Hicks was signed by the 49ers as a free agent midway through the 1979 season, himself making his NFL rookie debut for San Francisco.

Two years later, with 20 NFL starts to his credit, the former University of Michigan safety suddenly found himself mentoring three rookies drafted by the 49ers in 1981 — Lott (first round, eighth pick overall, out of USC); Wright (second round, 40th overall, out of Missouri); and Williamson (third round, 65th overall, out of Pitt).

This was the third NFL Draft in the legendary career of head coach Bill Walsh, who also served as the team’s general manager. It turned out to be a genesis for the 49ers’ secondary, just one year after Walsh fortified the first two tiers of his defense by drafting linebackers Keena Turner, Craig Puki and Bobby Leopold, along with first-rounder Jim Stuckey, a defensive end, in 1980.

“They were drafted because they were going to be implemented in our secondary,” Hicks said. “That’s the reason they were drafted 1, 2 and 3. … They drafted them with the intention that they were going to start.”

Hicks saw the franchise come full circle. The 1979 season, his first in red-and-gold, was Montana’s rookie season, though the quarterback served as Steve DeBerg’s backup. The 49ers posted a 2-14 record that year, tied for worst in the NFL. Hicks wasn’t with the team for its first win, being signed the week after a 20-15 victory over the Atlanta Falcons to improve to a 1-7 record.

The 49ers wouldn’t win another game until Week 15, taking down the playoff-bound Tampa Bay Buccaneers 23-7 in the final home game of 1979. It was after this win Hicks and his teammates glimpsed the future during the postgame celebration.

“The fans were so elated, they tore those goalposts down,” HIcks said. ‘It was our second win of the season, and they tore the goalposts downs. That’s how hungry the 49er fans, and faithful about the San Francisco 49ers (they were).”

Two years later, the final home game turned into a similar celebration, this one after the 1981 NFC Championship Game. And those final 51 seconds — the pivotal seconds following “The Catch” — belonged to Hicks and his Hot Licks.

As play-by-play man Vin Scully proclaimed: “It’s a madhouse at Candlestick!” to his CBS television audience amid the celebration of “The Catch,” Hicks made a profound contribution before he even stepped back onto the field. On the sideline, pandemonium raining down, Lott could be seen jumping about in celebration, jubilant smile on his face.

Lott stopped in his tracks upon coming face to face with Hicks’s business-like stoicism.

“I know sports and I had been in the league long enough to know those other guys on the other side of the field are pros too and they’re very competitive too,” Hicks said. “And the game isn’t over until it’s 0:00 on the clock. And because Dallas was a formidable team, I knew they were capable of staging a comeback, I knew they weren’t going to quit. And we still had work to be done. And I most likely was saying that: ‘There’s time on the clock. We have to go in and shut them down.’”

Sure enough, on the next play, Hicks and his rookie protegees were the only thing standing between the Dallas Cowboys and the 49ers’ first chapter toward the fairy-tale dynasty known as the team of the ’80s. And it almost disappeared in an instant when the three-time All-Pro receiver Pearson took a deep post route, hitting a seam between Lott and Williamson for White’s throw right in stride near midfield.

“They called the right play at the right time that split our defense,” Hicks said. “… and Eric Wright reached out as it looked like Pearson could go for a touchdown and reached out and grabbed him with one hand by the back of the shoulder pads, which would be horse-collaring today. It would have been a penalty but because horse-collaring wasn’t in effect (as a penalty until 2005), Eric makes that tackle.”

Hicks, with the 49ers in a prevent defense, was the only red jersey between the fleet-footed Pearson and the end zone. To this day, Hicks doesn’t know if he could have chased down the Cowboys’ great receiver.

“I don’t know,” Hicks said. “I came up, Pearson was hit on time, he was going to be off to the races. I don’t know if I would have caught him.”

But Wright did. And the rest is history. Super Bowl XVI marked the first of San Francisco’s five Lombardi trophies, with the first two, including Super Bowl XIX in 1984, featuring the defensive secondary of Lott, Williamson, Wright and Hicks.

“The fact that we had three rookies in our secondary is not even conscionable,” Hicks said. “It never happened before, and it will never happen again. That was actually really a Cinderella story, not just for those guys, the rookies, but for the franchise itself.”

Editor's note: This article has been updated to indicate the 49ers longtime training camp location was at Red Morton Park in Redwood City.