Word: marino
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...suggested a confrontation was coming one day. If all of the National Football League quarterbacks were ringed in a battle royal, wouldn't these two be the ones left standing at the end? That roughly describes the process of the past four long and occasionally languorous months, during which Marino's Dolphins lost only two games and Montana's 49ers merely...
...explain a Super Bowl in fewer than 38 million words, but a good description of the coming one is that Miami's fabled coach, Don Shula, and San Francisco's brainy Bill Walsh will be secondary figures Sunday at a new stop, old Stanford Stadium. This is the sophomore Marino's Super Bowl essentially, since Six-Year-Man Montana had one three years ago all his own, a special season that Defensive Coach Chuck Studley has particular cause to review. "In my opinion," says Studley, formerly of the 49ers, currently of the Dolphins, "Montana is the master...
Recording 22 touchdown passes last season, although Incumbent David Woodley was not quite dislodged until the sixth game, Marino became the only rookie quarterback ever elected to start the Pro Bowl. Throwing 55 in 18 games this year, he displaced longtime Record Holders George Blanda and Y.A. Tittle, who took it manfully: "You can't criticize a trapper who's got the skins on the wall." Marino puts Roger Staubach in mind of Hockey Prodigy Wayne Gretzky. By the CBS-New York Times calculations, Marino is already the country's favorite N.F.L. player (Chicago's Walter Payton second, Montana third...
After the Dolphins won the American Conference championship game, strafing Pittsburgh 45-28, Marino's final interview was with former Steeler Quarterback Terry Bradshaw near midfield of the Orange Bowl at dusk. Passing quarterbacks passing in the twilight: a fairly irresistible image. Even when Marino's gums are not packed with tobacco, there is a flash of boy Bradshaw. "Just as nicely unpolished," says Rocky Bleier, another retiree, "the same weight problem, the same quick release, the same compulsion to throw into the coverages." Police dogs were escorting Marino to his white Corvette in the parking lot. "What a ride...
...exactly offensive or entirely appealing, Marino has several grace notes to offset a sometimes snarly street-corner manner. A ready laugh, for one. "Just taking it easy, having fun," he likes to say. His common speech owes something to Huntz Hall and Leo Gorcey, though he can shift from "dese" and "dose" to a surprising eloquence. He sways behind the center like a royal palm, but it is a greater wonder how he can swagger sitting down and strut standing still. A compact passing release is characteristic of his general economy of movement and thought. "Most quarterbacks have that high...