40 years later, Dan Marino on crazy ’83 draft, Dolphins career, legacy ... and what’s missing | Opinion

Forty years ago, on April 26, 1983, everything about Miami sports changed. Really, everything about NFL football did, too.

That was the day an odd contortion of fate had the Dolphins drafting Daniel Constantine Marino Jr.

“I don’t feel like it’s been 40 years,” Marino, now 61, said Tuesday, with a small smile. “Seems like yesterday...”

The anniversary is bittersweet. The legacy is complicated. As with most marriages or friendships marking 40 years, there is love out front but a wistfulness in the looking back. A reminder of the flight of time, of mortality and, if we would admit it, some regret as well?

The legacy is gilded in gold but for the one thing forever missing.

I asked Dan to reflect on his career and say what was its highlight or the happiest moment for him professionally.

There was a long pause, not because the career wasn’t all-time great, but for what it lacked — the obvious answer unavailable.

At last he mentioned going to the Hall of Fame as his apex moment; “You play to get there.”

I mentioned what he had been quoted as saying after losing to San Francisco in what would be his only Super Bowl appearance: “I would trade every record we broke to be Super Bowl champs.” Does he still feel that way?

“That’s the only thing I never felt as a football player,” he answered. “From the time I was a little kid, I won everything, but that was the one feeling I never had. I do remember [saying] that. That was the one thing...”

He was 24 then. Figured he would have a lot more chances at that ring. He never did.

I asked Don Shula very late in his life what was his biggest regret?

“Probably that we didn’t win one of two more games for Dan,” he said. Super Bowls, he meant.

Marino today remains with the club as special advisor to the owner and top executives. He sometimes is on the sideline at practices or in the quarterbacks meeting room, helping guide Tua Tagovailoa. Marino had a long post-playing career in broadcasting with CBS Sports on its “NFL Today show.” His Dan Marino Foundation and its work to help those with autism has been a South Florida beacon.

His name is indelible in the memory. It conjures what is missing. But it also conjures youth, electricity, possibility...

Marino, the kid from Pitt, a bloom of brown curly hair under his helmet, did not start until the sixth game of his rookie season. He passed for 322 yards and three touchdowns against the rival Buffalo Bills at the Orange Bowl. Even in what would be a 38-35 loss, the electricity in the place was palpable.

After the game, a reporter asked Shula what he was thinking as he watched Marino in his first start?

“Why’d I wait so long!” replied the coach with a deadpan smile.

Only 10 years earlier the Dolphins were on top of the sport as back-to-back Super Bowl champions including the Perfect Season. But what Marino ushered in — no, created, embodied — was the most high-scoring, exciting brand the Dolphins had ever had, before or since.

He embodied new glory days. Shula, imagining more Super Bowl rings, had won before with a bullish running game but now was eagerly prepared to let loose and let it fly.

The Hurricanes had just won their first national championship and now Sports Illustrated’s 1984 football preview showed UM’s Bernie Kosar and Marino on the cover — Marino a shoulder out front. The headline: A PAIR OF ACES

Marino would shatter all-time records that ‘84 season with 48 touchdown passes and 5,084 passing yards. The NFL’s dawning new era of high-flying, pass-first football might as well have been named in his honor.

With an arm as powerful as his release was quick, lightning bolts flew from Marino’s right hand.

The NFL had just endured an acrimonious player strike and now faced the challenge of the upstart USFL, which had lured away Jim Kelly to play for the Houston Gamblers. John Elway was strong-arming the NFL to not play for Baltimore, the team that had drafted him. Marino had turned down the USFL’s Los Angeles Express for Miami.

It would be hyperbole to say Marino in 1983-84 saved the NFL. But you could make a case.

He was raised blue-collar in an Italian family in the South Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. His father drove a truck delivering the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the midnight shift. Danny was handsome, charismatic and with confidence and cockiness walking a fine line. The “Miamarino” era was blossoming, and anything was possible.

“You were basically at Dan’s mercy out there,” 49ers defensive back Ronnie Lott once said.

At the height of his powers it felt like this to be Marino: “There were times on the field I felt like I couldn’t miss. The ball was always on time. It was always catchable. I was making all the right decisions.”

It never should have happened, though.

At least not in Miami.

But there was Marino in the ‘83 draft, in an unexpected free-fall that was the talk of the league.

He had a disappointing senior season at Pitt with 17 TD passes and 23 interceptions after 37 scoring passes as a junior. Still, most figured Elway or Marino would be the overall No. 1 pick.

Elway was.

And Marino kept falling, and falling, the bad senior year suddenly augmented by metastasizing rumors (never substantiated) about recreational drug use. Five other quarterbacks went ahead of him. Elway you could see. Maybe even Kelly, too. But Todd Blackledge, Tony Eason and Ken O’Brien?

“There was no reason for it,” he said, in 2013, of the drug rumors. “It started to upset me.”

Draft day in the Marino house was just family and a few close friends. One was BiIll Hillgrove, a Pittsburgh broadcasting legend. He would interview Dan after he was selected.

“He ended up sitting there a lot longer than the figured,” Marino says now. “I felt the same way.”

O’Brien became the fifth QB taken before Marino. What was Dan thinking?

“Who is Ken O’Brien?” He said in the 2013 ESPN 30 For 30 documentary about that draft, titled “Elway To Marino.”

Marino was never on the Dolphins’ radar “because we never thought we’d have a shot at him,” Shula said.

That changed as the free-fall continued.

Suddenly, Miami’s steadfast plan to draft defensive tackle Mike Charles out of Syracuse with the 27th overall pick was gaining resistance within the Fins’ draft war room.

When Marino wasn’t taken by his hometown team Pittsburgh six spots earlier, despite Terry Bradshaw being on his last legs and coming off elbow surgery, Shula knew Marino would be his for the taking. He angered Bill Arnsparger, in his last season as defensive coordinator, by drafting Marino over Charles.

After the pick the phone rang in the Dolphins’ draft war room, Steelers coach Chuck Noll calling Shula.

“You probably just got the best guy in the draft,” Noll told him.

Shula was convinced that Marino being passed over by so many teams had “motivated him to show everybody else what a mistake that they had made.”

Marino, today, admits that was true.

“I didn’t say it to anybody but in my mind that was definitely fuel,” he said.

In the 30 For 30 doc, Marino said, “I was gonna get in the best shape of my life and go down there and prove something.”

They called it “the quarterback class of 83,” six passers going first round for the first time.

Marino and Elway were two of the 10 QBs named in 2019 to the NFL’s 100-man 100th anniversary team. Those two and Kelly all made the Hall of Fame. O’Brien was OK, made a couple of Pro Bowls. Eason was so-so but stuck around awhile. Blackledge never amounted to much.

But the vaunted class of ‘83 QBs, combined, were 2-9 in Super Bowls. It was 0 for 9 until Elway won a pair very late in his career.

Marino retired after the 1999 season as the winningest quarterback in history to never win a Super Bowl. It’s the dubious asterisk that never leaves you, the gift that keeps on grieving.

He has never worn his 1984 AFC championship ring — “A loser’s ring,” he once called it.

He broke NFL passing records. Made the Hall of Fame his first year of eligibility. His number 13 is retired by the Dolphins, and you still see his jersey all over Hard Rock Stadium during games. A bronze statue of him stands outside the stadium, whose address is Dan Marino Boulevard.

Marino has now been retired six years longer than he played, but his name and what it conjures remains vital to a franchise and to a community.

What he did here and its lasting imprint will always be interwoven in Miami sports.

But the one thing missing will always be there, too.

His career would end in a 62-7 playoff loss in Jacksonville. I was there, on the field, as he left a game for the final time. Jaguars fans were not kind that day. They did not comprehend the moment or did not care. Catcalls followed Marino to the tunnel. He walked with a limp from the bulky knee braces he wore. He kept his helmet on.

Not everyone gets their fairy-tale ending.

Forty years later, though, Dan Marino is neither complaining nor dwelling.

“I was down in the dumps on draft day, but it worked out great for me,” he says now. “I went to an established team that had been to a Super Bowl the year before. A veteran like Don Strock to help me. Great coaching staff. Having Mark Duper there and then getting Mark Clayton. Turned out to be a great situation.”

As for the one thing missing?

“I made it to the Hall of Fame. Broke a lot of records, “ he says. “I was a good teammate, a winning quarterback. It’s been a pretty special ride over the years. And still seeing all the fans wearing 13 jerseys...”

Two athletes in South Florida professional team sports history stand apart and above all others: Dan Marino and Heat icon Dwyane Wade. You can argue who might complete the Mount Rushmore, but there is no arguing which two are at the top.

One got there on the wing of three championships.

The other got there despite what was missing.

Forty years ago the Miami Dolphins got an unexpected gift, one for the ages.

So did we all.