Last Hurrah?

He was William Tell with a hellion's heart, and when he ran out of human targets, 13-year-old Dan Marino would stand outside his family's modest home in Pittsburgh's Oakland district and whip footballs at anything that moved. "Every 20 minutes the bus would come down my block," Marino says, "and I'd pick a spot and nail that sucker every time."

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 mid-field 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 mat 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 mat 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.