Steve Young says, “The offense is not ready for the prime time.”

Steve Young spoke on KNBR’s The Razor and Mr. T show Wednesday afternoon.

Here’s an exchange from that show between Young and Mr. T, Tom Tolbert, on the state of the Niners in the wake of their loss to the Ravens.

TOLBERT: What about the offense? I just thought we didn’t learn anything on Thursday, Steve. I think we learned what we thought we knew before.

YOUNG: Eh…

TOLBERT: This is a good football team. I said all arrows were pointing to the Ravens in that game. It was time zone. It was three days rest. It was the Ravens who really needed that football game to stay on pace with the Steelers in that division. I think the Niners wanted to win that football game, but deep down inside somewhere you know you have the division won, and when you’re playing against a team…They were tied going into the fourth quarter, lost by ten, and they got sacked nine times, they couldn’t do anything. I think they are, as Denny Green says, they are we thought they were.

Young: Ah…

TOLERT: They’re a defensive team who has to not turn the ball over, run the ball well to win football games. They didn’t do two of those three things and still managed to stay in there right til the end.

YOUNG: The thing that worries me in the stretch – now that we’re over the idea that the 49ers are rebuilding, and now we’ve won some games, and now like you said a month ago, we can go to the Super Bowl. And so once you start talking about that, “We’re going to the Super Bowl,” you start to ask yourself, “What are the elements of getting there, and who do we have to face, and how do we have to do it?”

So what you learned last week is our defense can go anywhere, anytime, anyplace. We just pack it – I don’t care if it’s on a two day rest, a bye week – this defense is going to be good and down the road they’re going to be great. But the offense is not ready for primetime, generally in a playoff atmosphere. You see how they couldn’t protect. They just couldn’t kind of get going.

And so it depends on who they play. They’re going to have a home game against Detroit, Atlanta…It doesn’t always show early. To me it will show later when they need to score 31 against the Packers, they need to score 35 against the Saints. That’s a tough one there, and that’s where you ask your defenses: “Look. These are the best offenses in the league. Keep them under three scores. You’ve got to do that.

Tom Tolbert: If you need to score 35, good luck with that one. I don’t think, I don’t know if this team can score 35 against a playoff team. Does this team have something special about it?

YOUNG: This is a special defense. There’s no question about it. That’s the special part of this whole story. And this offense will get better. And that’s another part of the great story – they’ll just get better and better. They’ve got a good coach. They’ve got good players. And the quarterback’s going to get better. So, is it good enough early enough to go win a Super Bowl? The Giants did it in 2007 with some similarities. So it’s possible.