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SI Flashback: Last Hurrah? Marino flashed his old brilliance but couldn't save Miami
By Michael Silver Issue date: December 13, 1999
The bus drivers never stopped; neither, in the quarter century that followed, would Marino. With a chilling blend of accuracy and velocity, Marino, the future Hall of Fame quarterback of the Miami Dolphins, went on to redefine the NFL passing game, becoming the only player to throw for more than 60,000 yards. On Sunday at Pro Player Stadium, as he had so many times before, he bulldozed Miami through one crisis after another with a few dozen cocksure flicks of his right arm. Yet in a recurring story line that seems destined to serve as his epitaph, Marino's magic--24 completions in 38 attempts, 313 yards and three touchdowns, a comeback from a 14-point third-quarter deficit--wasn't enough to carry the Dolphins to their desired destination. Jacked up for an AFC East showdown that Marino and his teammates believed they had to win, Miami dropped a 37-34 decision to the Indianapolis Colts on Mike Vanderjagt's 53-yard field goal as time expired. After engineering a stirring rally that tied the game with 36 seconds remaining, Marino watched as Peyton Manning, the Colts' 23-year-old whiz kid, killed the buzz among the home fans by driving his team 33 yards in three plays to the Miami 35. When Vanderjagt's kick cleared the crossbar, Marino looked lost, at first starting off the field alone, then venturing back toward the players who had congregated near midfield and finally, after another abrupt pivot, ducking his head and trotting into the end zone tunnel. Manning came running by, and Marino stopped him and extended congratulations. Then Marino told Manning, "I hope we see you again." Speaking for sentimentalists everywhere, Manning replied, "I hope we see you again, too." It looks more and more as if we're watching the final, desperate days of a legend's futile quest. Beginning with Sunday's road game against the New York Jets, Marino's margin for error will be slimmer than a Friends actress. This may well be the 38-year-old Marino's last chance to avoid going out as the NFL's Ted Williams -- the greatest player never to have won a championship. After watching his friend John Elway punctuate a classic career by winning the past two Super Bowls, Marino felt it was his time to shine in 1999. But age, a scary neck injury and pressure from Miami coach Jimmy Johnson to perform better have plagued him, and on Sunday all of Marino's fight wasn't enough to overcome the prolific Colts, who improved to 10-2 with their eighth consecutive win. The Dolphins (8-4) lost for the third time in four games. If the season were to end now, they would be the AFC's sixth and final playoff seed and would need to pull off road victories over the Seattle Seahawks and Jacksonville Jaguars just to reach the conference title game. One person familiar with Marino's and Johnson's thinking believes that unless Miami makes it at least that far, Marino won't be asked back for an 18th season. (Marino also has the right to become a free agent, but he'd probably retire rather than play for another team.) Marino hasn't been to the Super Bowl since 1984, his second year, but when the Dolphins started the season 7-1 they seemed positioned to make a title run. Now it appears the young Colts have caught and passed them. While Manning (23 completions in 29 attempts for 260 yards and one touchdown on Sunday) and Indianapolis's rookie running back, Edgerrin James (23 carries, 130 yards, two touchdowns), are the NFL's freshest offensive faces, Miami's act looks increasingly tired. For all of Johnson's attempts to reshape the franchise since he replaced Don Shula following the '95 season, the Dolphins, in their biggest games, seem to revert to their old identity--a team with a shaky defense and an unimposing running game that must rely on Marino's hot hand to overcome those shortcomings. After calling Sunday's showdown "the biggest game we've played in three years," Marino rose to the occasion. This was quite a twist given his turkey of a performance on Thanksgiving Day--he tied a career high by throwing five interceptions in a 20-0 loss to the Dallas Cowboys, causing many coaches and players around the league to wonder if he had fully recovered from a pinched cervical nerve root that forced him out of an Oct. 10 game against the New England Patriots and sidelined him for five weeks. During that wait Marino was forced to confront his football mortality. He lost partial feeling in the ring and pinkie fingers of his throwing hand for several weeks, and Marino feared the injury might be career-threatening. Marino had plenty of trying moments during those weeks, and the frustration filtered down to his three sons, Danno, 13, Michael, 11, and Joey, 10, whose daily games in the backyard of the Marinos' plush compound in suburban Weston temporarily lost their luster. Says Dan, "It really sucked when my kids wanted me to go out back with them and play quarterback, and I had to tell them, honestly, 'I can't throw.'" On Sundays, while Marino watched anxiously from the sideline, third-year passer Damon Huard--who used to pretend he was Marino during his childhood pickup games in suburban Seattle -- stood tall at a tense time. He led the Dolphins to five wins in six games, fanning the flames of a quarterback controversy that Johnson helped create. After Marino struggled in an Oct. 4 loss to the Buffalo Bills, Johnson criticized him and suggested that he might bench him if another subpar effort ensued. Marino, as is his custom, responded with a marquee performance the following Sunday against the Colts, throwing for 393 yards and guiding Miami to a 34-31 last-minute victory. Johnson, 56, has treated the season with a sense of urgency following the midlife crisis he experienced in the aftermath of the Dolphins' 38-3 divisional playoff loss at Denver last January. Reeling from that defeat and the death of his mother, Allene, last December, Johnson resigned for a day before being talked into staying by owner Wayne Huizenga. Though his relationship with Johnson has been far from chummy, Marino agreed that the coach, who won two Super Bowls with the Cowboys, gave Miami its best chance to go all the way. Though Johnson stood by Marino following the Thanksgiving Day debacle, the issue of whether Marino should be the starter remained a sensitive one for the normally brassy coach in the days leading up to the Indy game. Last Friday, Johnson sat in his office at the Dolphins' training facility, nervously twirling his glasses while extolling the virtues of Huard, an undrafted star at Washington who three years ago was visiting Rotary clubs throughout the nether regions of his home state as a public relations staffer for the campaign to build the Seahawks an open-air stadium. "When the season's over, I think people will look back and realize what Damon accomplished," Johnson said. "He pulled out some very tough games, and his third-down passer rating is the best in the AFC. I don't think anybody has taken a close look at what he has achieved." Still, benching Marino remained problematic. "It's not something you would do lightly," Johnson said. "It's not just X's and O's. You have to look at everything -- how it affects your team chemistry, the players' attitude and focus." Johnson knows that there's only one faction in the Miami locker room, and it's all in number 13's corner. Even Huard, who last Friday signed a two-year, $2.1 million contract extension through 2001, said it would be "ridiculous" to consider not playing Marino. On Friday veteran defensive end Trace Armstrong sat at his locker and said, "Damon has done a great job, but if you ask anybody in here who gives us the best chance to win, we'd all pick Dan." On Sunday, as if on cue, Marino drove the point home. The man bounces back from adversity like President Clinton, and his teammates saw it coming. When Marino jogged through a line of Dolphins during pregame introductions, he was flashing a defiant, I'll-show-you smile, and several players said they knew a big game was in the offing. Perhaps Marino's reemergence served as a crutch for the rest of the team. The normally stingy Dolphins defense surrendered a season-high 370 yards; James, a former University of Miami star, gained more yards against the Dolphins than had any runner in two years. And the 37 points that the Colts scored were the most surrendered by a Johnson-coached team at Pro Player. James's success was all the more glaring given the choppy performance of Miami's rookie running back, J.J. Johnson, who committed two brutal gaffes. The first came after Indy had taken a 10-3 lead late in the first quarter. On the next play from scrimmage, Johnson swept around left end and fumbled the ball after a six-yard gain. Colts strong safety Chad Cota fell on the ball and, when no Dolphin touched him, got up and ran an uncontested 25 yards into the end zone. Rather than trying to tackle Cota, Johnson remained prone on the grass and gestured (incorrectly) that the play should have been whistled dead because the ground had caused the fumble. Johnson's second mistake occurred after Vanderjagt nailed a 48-yard field goal to give Indy a 34-31 lead with 4:24 to go. Marino, who has launched 35 fourth-quarter comeback victories--second alltime to Elway's 43 -- took over at his own 20 and did his thing. He completed five consecutive passes, for 58 yards, and suddenly, Miami had a first down at the Colts' 20 with 1:54 left. The headlines were all but written for Marino, who had already thrown touchdown passes to wideouts Tony Martin and Oronde Gadsden and to fullback Stanley Pritchett, as he faced a third-and-four at the Indy 14 with 44 seconds left. The Dolphins called Pass 8, a play in which Marino fakes a handoff to Pritchett and hits him on a short flare or, if he's not open, finds slot receiver Yatil Green on a medium-range curl. The line slides to the left, leaving exposed the left defensive end, in this case the Colts' Mark Thomas. Johnson, who followed Pritchett out of the backfield, was supposed to block Thomas. Thomas brushed past Johnson, leaped and deflected Marino's pass, which was intended for Pritchett. Olindo Mare's 32-yard field goal tied the game with 36 seconds left--too much time for Manning, who connected with wideout Marvin Harrison on slant passes of 16 and 18 yards to set up Vanderjagt's winning field goal. After the postgame exchange with Manning, the stress of the past two months overcame Marino. Four questions into his press conference, he was asked how tough it was to watch Vanderjagt's kick sail between the uprights. Marino, who has seldom, if ever, lost his cool under such circumstances, snapped. "These questions are ridiculous," he scoffed. "I'll tell you how tough it is--you work your butt off all week, and then you lose a game like that. But you wouldn't know, would you?" With that he walked out of the room. Nearly an hour later, several Colts officials hustled Manning through a stadium parking lot. "If you're a football fan," Manning said, beaming, "you had to love this game." He was still smiling seconds later as he boarded the team bus, which, with its leader safely aboard, paraded through a sea of crestfallen tailgaters and into the misty Miami darkness. The adolescent Marino would have beaned the bus. But on this pivotal night, he and his golden arm were long gone. Johnson knows there's only one faction in the Dolphins' locker room, and it's all in number 13's corner.
Issue date: December 13, 1999
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