CLEVELAND — Before this week’s NFL combine, The Chronicle ventured to football-rich Northern Ohio, an area that has produced two of the top quarterbacks in the 2017 draft.
If history is any guide, this region, home to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, could play a role in the 49ers’ latest attempt to recapture their glory days.
This, after all, is an area of America closely connected to men who formed the foundation of a five-championship dynasty: Eddie DeBartolo, Joe Montana and Bill Walsh, who developed the revolutionary West Coast offense when he was working in Southern Ohio for eight years as a Cincinnati Bengals assistant.