Montoya Still Game After 199 of Them : Raiders: Fifteen-year veteran will reach a milestone Monday night against Denver.

John Elway was only a freshman at Stanford and Ken Stabler was still quarterbacking the Oakland Raiders when Max Montoya made his NFL debut as an offensive guard for the Cincinnati Bengals.

Fifteen seasons later, Montoya is still around, and Monday night he will play in his 200th NFL game when he and the Raiders take on the Broncos at Denver.

“If you play 10 games in this league, it is considered a milestone,” said Raider Coach Art Shell, who played in 207 during his Hall of Fame career. “It’s a testimony for Max that he’s been around 15 years now. He’s just an old dog still hunting who still has a little bark in him.”

Montoya, a seventh-round pick from UCLA in 1979, played 11 seasons with Cincinnati, appearing in two Super Bowls, before joining the Raiders as a Plan B free agent in 1990.

After a solid 1990 season, when he was selected as a Pro Bowl alternate, Montoya has had to battle injuries.

Over the last two seasons, Montoya missed 12 games because of injuries. This year, however, he has been a boon to the Raiders’ offensive line.

“Football is still fun for me,” he said. “Practices get lethargic at times, but when Sundays come, it is time to turn it on. I thrive on the competition.”

Shell says that Montoya is playing as well as ever.

“He’s a tough guy who still loves to play the game,” Shell said. “It’s a credit to his ability and his wanting to play the game.”

Montoya is seventh on the active list for most NFL games played, with only the Rams’ Jackie Slater and Blair Bush having played more as offensive linemen.

“Max is playing at the same level that he was when I first came in the league,” said Raider linebacker Joe Kelly, who was Montoya’s teammate at Cincinnati for four seasons. “It’s amazing that he’s still playing. He still goes out there with the same enthusiasm and that’s saying something when you consider he’s been playing every game on the offensive line, banging heads every Sunday.”

Montoya, 37, has been named to the Pro Bowl four times. He is the oldest starting offensive guard in the league.

Not bad for someone who did not play football as a senior at La Puente High because he was not considered fit enough.

“He wasn’t able to play as a senior because he had a heart murmur,” said Ken Cassidy, La Puente High’s athletic director. “I was the basketball coach here at that time and I wanted him to play for me, too, but he had to be held out.”

Montoya, who had played football as a high school junior, did not want to give up the sport after high school. So, when he was given the go-ahead to play again, he went out for the football team at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut.

At 6 feet 5 and 230 pounds, Montoya did not start as a freshman at Mt. SAC, but he did show potential. Never one to skip a workout, he emerged as one of the team’s leaders as a sophomore and earned a scholarship at UCLA.

“Max always worked hard even back then,” said Mt. SAC Coach Bill Fisk, who was an assistant when Montoya played there. “He was just a big guy who kept getting better and better.”

At UCLA, Montoya redshirted for a year before becoming a two-year starter for the Bruins. He was an All-Pacific 10 Conference selection as a senior.

With the Bengals, Montoya quickly became a fixture, both in the offensive line and in the Cincinnati area.

Montoya and Anthony Munoz, who also grew up in the Los Angeles area and played at USC, gave the Bengals a rare NFL combination of Latino players in the line.

“Funny how fate goes,” Montoya said of teaming up with Munoz for nine seasons. “Two big Mexicans from Los Angeles end up not only on the same team but on the same line. Who’d have thought it?”

Off the field, Montoya opened two Mexican restaurants in Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati.

It looked as if Montoya would finish his career with the Bengals, but that changed in the summer of 1990, when Cincinnati left him unprotected.

The Raiders stepped in and signed him to a two-year deal worth a reported $1.45 million, at the time the most ever paid a Raider offensive lineman.

One motivation for Montoya to keep playing is to make it to another Super Bowl.

“When you play, you are never satisfied until you do (win a championship),” Montoya said. “You try to play as many years as you can, but then your goals start to change.

“As long as it is still fun, I’ll continue to play.”