JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- No. 8 crouches below center, takes the snap and feels the rush coming from behind. Some nifty footwork helps him glide his way to the left edge of the pocket. There, he stops, cranks his left arm and throws deep downfield.

	Mark Brunell was groomed by 49ers coach Steve Mariucci when both were in Green Bay.

It's a perfect strike to one of the best receivers in the game.

Steve Young has repeated that scene many times over the years. Mark Brunell has done it nearly as well, just not for as long.

The carbon-copy quarterbacks, one a future Hall of Famer, the other trying to reach that level, meet for the first time Sunday when the Jacksonville Jaguars play the San Francisco 49ers.

The game has all the ingredients to be the offensive centerpiece of the NFL's opening weekend. The comparisons between quarterbacks is a big part of that equation.

"No two players are completely the same," Jaguars coach Tom Coughlin said. "But they are similar in that they're roughly the same height. They're athletic, fast and can run the ball. The number is the same and they both throw with their left hand. One guy has done it for a number of years. The other guy continues to build and, I think, get better. He's starting to come into his own."

Although they won't spend a second on the field together, the judgment this week will be made on the final statistics and the final score.

This is the kind of stage Brunell needs to shine and take his game to the championship level.

Young is already there, with more than 32,000 yards passing, one Super Bowl title and a 97.6 career quarterback rating, the best in NFL history.

But he has something to prove this year. When people say the 49ers are old, past their prime, they're including the 37-year-old quarterback, who is one year older than Jerry Rice.

Despite Young's age, the 49ers haven't toned down anything in their offense to accommodate him. That impresses Coughlin as much as anything.

"He gets hit a lot," Coughlin said. "He runs out there wide open on the corner. He's in the pocket, out of the pocket. They run the naked reverses, run the bootlegs. They do everything in their power to take advantage of his skill and he takes the shots."

Neither quarterback likes to make much of the Young vs. Brunell debate, although both concede there are valid reasons for it.

"I haven't watched Mark extensively enough to know what the comparisons are," Young said. "I just know he's efficient, he makes plays, he's accurate. He can throw the deep ball. That's what you need to have in the NFL to be successful."

When Niners coach Steve Mariucci was quarterbacks coach at Green Bay, he worked out Brunell during his senior year at Washington. The Packers weren't in the market for a quarterback, but when Brunell was still available in the fifth round of the 1993 draft, they felt they had to take him.

"He was, by far, the best athlete available," Mariucci said.

Two years later, the Packers traded Brunell to the Jaguars, where he has flourished. He has thrown for 12,512 yards and has an 86.3 quarterback rating, listed as the fifth-best in NFL history.

"We hated to lose him because we knew he was going to be a starting quarterback fast," Mariucci said. "We had a tearful farewell. I told him I'd see him at the Pro Bowl, because I knew he was going to be there. And I knew I'd be playing against him sooner or later."

In the next few years, Young will retire and, assuming his career continues on the same path, the mantel for the next great left-hander will officially be turned over to Brunell.