Tag Archives: Dan Marino

Chicago Tribune, Football, Professional

Marino, Dolphins Just Babes Against Bullies

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Dateline: PALO ALTO, CALIF.

Uh, about that wing being built at the Pro Football Hall of Fame to celebrate the accomplishments of Dan Marino of Miami.

Put away the hammer and saw for a few more years. Pack up the spotlight and send back all those autographed footballs collected from assorted end zones with Marino’s fingerprints on them.

Rent out the space for something useful, like a used-car lot. Wait until Marino grows up and wins a couple of Super Bowls, like Joe Montana of San Francisco.

Or until Marino learns to throw the ball lying on his back, or only to his own receivers, or until he gets a defense that doesn’t think it is against the rules to get in the way of the other team.

IN ONE MISTY afternoon on the campus of Stanford University, Marino was exposed, not as a boy wonder, but merely as a boy, befuddled by the adults of the 49ers, who allowed him only one touchdown pass and none after the first quarter.

“Marino had only a fair game, but he’ll be back,” said 49ers’ coach Bill Walsh. “He’s a brilliant quarterback.

“He’s a great quarterback, a great young quarterback.”

The longer the game went, the younger Marino got. By the end, you expected Marino to curl up in the huddle with a pacifier in his mouth.

“It was our poorest offensive game of the year,” said Miami coach Don Shula. “Our defense never stopped them. We just didn’t have the answers.”

What was supposed to be the greatest Super Bowl ever ended up being the greatest mismatch.

THIS WAS BABIES against bullies. The 49ers even looked better during calisthenics.

And this wasn’t just a bunch of overweight guys with fish on their hats who wandered into Stanford Stadium on stolen credentials. These were Shula’s Dolphins, the most prolific offensive menagerie on record.

They could score so fast the stadium clock needed to be a stopwatch. You had to take off your shoes to count the touchdowns.

This was the team with the state-of-the-art passing attack, inexhaustible and indefensible.

“All we heard all week,” said Montana, “was about their offense. We knew we had an offense, too.”

WHAT SAN FRANCISCO had was more weapons than Miami. Not only was there Montana, the game’s most valuable player, but Roger Craig, who scored three times for a Super Bowl record, and Wendell Tyler, who did not fumble, and Dwight Clark and even a third-string running back, Carl Monroe, who caught the first of Montana’s three touchdown passes.

Montana was as nimble as Marino was inert, dashing away from a timid Dolphin pass rush, running once for a touchdown and, at one point, posing the question of whether he could rush for as many yards as Marino could pass for. Anyone without a microscope would have thought the Miami defense had missed the team bus.

“Montana had a lot to do with that,” Shula said. “He was outstanding in every way. When you get beat the way we got beat, you just take your hat off to the victor.”

If this had been a prize fight, the 49ers would have been given the decision on a TKO, just as soon as Montana found Craig for a 16-yard touchdown late in the third quarter.

THE 49ERS COULD pass and run, often at the same time. Miami couldn’t even walk. So insecure was Miami’s running game that the Dolphins tried it only nine times, with little effect.

Miami had one bullet, Marino, and on this day it was only good for shooting itself in the foot.

Marino threw the ball 50 times, a Super Bowl record, and completed 29 to friends and two to San Francisco, one each to Eric Wright and Carlton Williamson, who weren’t supposed to have the speed or the savvy to stay with the Marks Brothers of Miami, Duper and Clayton.

Duper caught only one pass, and while Clayton caught six, none was ultimately of consequence.

Marino’s most effective pass was a dump-off to running back Tony Nathan.

“We knew we were the key to beating these guys,” said Wright. “It would all come down to what kind of day we had.”

THE SECONDARY and the pass rush, led mostly by Fred Dean, Gary Johnson and Dwaine Board, tested Marino’s noted quick release as it had never been tested in his young career.

To get the ball off in time, Marino would have had to throw it back between his center’s legs.

There can be no doubt now that San Francisco is the best team in football, complete in all phases, while the Dolphins are only as good as Marino can make them.

“This team is one of the best of all times,” said Walsh.

Instant history is dangerous. Just a day before, we would have believed that about Marino. PHOTO: UPI Telephoto. San Francisco running back Roger Craig is upended by Miami cornerback William Judson after a short gain. Craig scored three touchdowns to set a Super Bowl record.

Biography, Chicago Tribune, Football, Professional, Quotes

Marino’s Success Speaks for Itself

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Dateline: SAN FRANCISCO

Two things you don’t expect to learn about Dan Marino are: one, he is painfully young; and two, he is fat.

Not that he’s a real porker, not like a pulling guard or a nose tackle, but he has a belly that belongs on a baker, or a bartender, not on the greatest quarterback to ever become a legend over a weekend, which is about how long it has taken Marino to make the world forget Dan Fouts.

Quarterbacks, especially record-setting 23-year-old quarterbacks, ought not to look better with their shirttails out. Marino has a body made for suspenders.

Bless his paunch, a mortal flaw. You cannot imagine what a relief it is to have made this discovery. For if he had one of those speedbump stomachs, he would be just too perfect to stand.

He already has hair that curls around his face with careless insolence, eyes as blue as a Florida dawn, a smile that could melt the heart of a hermit, and he can throw a football with the inspiration of a minor Roman deity, which he is rumored to be in assorted Italian neighborhoods and the offensive huddle of the Dolphins.

IF YOU STARTED out to build a quarterback, Marino would already have all the best parts, though yours would probably be able to touch his toes without sitting.

And you might give him something interesting to say, just for variety. Marino treats conversation like a spaniel treats a rose bush.

“How did you come by your fast release?” Marino is asked.

“Who can say?” he shrugs.

“What do you say to people who already call you the greatest quarterback who ever lived?” he is asked.

“Who’s to say who is the greatest?” he says.

“Are you surprised to be in the Super Bowl so soon in your career?” he is asked.

“No,” he says.

“Do you think you are a dull person?” he is asked.

“Who’s to say who is dull? Maybe I think you are dull,” he says.

AND SO IT GOES. Marino came to this Super Bowl with a world ready to anoint him for his achievements, past and future, and he has managed to treat it as if it were trying to steal his wallet.

He has been patient with almost all inquiries, but he would clearly rather be someplace else. Three minutes into any interview and he starts shuffling his feet as if his toes were on fire.

An easy conclusion to draw is that Marino is essentially a jerk, a judgment that is as premature as is any on his place in the history of paid quarterbacking.

Marino is not very smart, not in an extra-football sense. If he has ever had a thought that did not include football or fun or family, he chased it out of his head before it left a scar.

In order to get out on the town with his teammates this week, to avoid the fans who gather to gawk and tug at him, Marino has had to leave his Oakland hotel in disguise. What the disguise is has not been revealed, but rumor has it he has been undetected as a scholar.

“I don’t think about things,” Marino said. “Have I ever sat down and thought at this moment in my life if I am destined to be a champion? No, I don’t do things like that.”

A DEEP THINKER, HE ISN’T. Marino’s explanation of how he does what he does with the football is no more complicated than this: “I just turn it loose and have fun.”

One suspects if he were to ever really understand his gift, in the way that a mechanic understands an engine, the fun would be gone. For him and for us.

For now, Marino’s innocence, or his arrogance, whichever it is, produces simply marvelous results.

Marino lives by instinct, on the field as well as off it, an approach to life that has served him fairly well so far. Fame has always come to Marino on his terms, or not at all.

Marino has a specialness that visits a few humans without any basis in reason. Just as Edison was destined to be more than a tinkerer, Baryshnikov more than a dancer, Charles Manson more than a nuisance, so was Marino destined to be more than just another quarterback.

EVEN DON SHULA is not quite sure what makes Marino so special. “I’d rather just pat him on the back and say, ‘Atta boy, Dan’,” Shula has said.

And Marino is a baby still, reacting with a child’s suspicion to adults who have wronged him.

A magazine story during Marino’s junior year at Pitt quoted him as saying he could throw the ball better than anybody in college and could throw with anybody in the pros. Marino did not say it exactly that way, even if he believed it, and he has been careful since to avoid saying anything the least bit colorful.

“I’m just being myself,” he said. “I am not being purposely dull.”

No argument here. No one could be that dull on purpose.