Dolphins, Steelers Well-Matched, but One Has Marino

This is the game the Raiders were supposed to be in. They didn’t quite make it. For a while, the Denver Broncos also expected to be here, but they didn’t make it, either.

The Pittsburgh Steelers, who won from both in their last two starts to climax an otherwise embarrassing 9-7 season, also earned the honor of losing to the Miami Dolphins at 9:30 this morning.

That is, most fans think they’ll lose. The prize is the championship of the American Football Conference and a free trip to the Super Bowl Jan. 20 at Stanford. And most fans anticipate a Miami-San Francisco showdown there.

This worries Miami Coach Don Shula.

“Offensively and defensively, the Steelers are a sound, well-disciplined team with talent and style,” Shula said Saturday.

The Steelers, in other words, are very much like the Dolphins. In fact, as a football team, they’re almost identical with the Dolphins.

Their receivers, John Stallworth and Louis Lipps, evoke comparisons with Miami’s Mark Duper and Mark Clayton. Their defensive operations are similar now that Pittsburgh has abandoned the 4-3 front that won four Super Bowls in favor of Shula’s 3-4.

Even their leadership is similar. Their coach, Chuck Noll, has won more Super Bowls than others, although Shula has won more games.

The only major difference between these teams is that Miami lines up a quarterback named Dan Marino, who set new National Football League records for yards and touchdown passes this season and who has been described, by Shula and others, as the second coming of Joe Namath.

If Pittsburgh had Marino instead of Miami, the Steelers would be favored in this game and would probably win the championship.

The Pittsburgh quarterback, Mark Malone, is more experienced than Marino but somewhat less sensational.

Marino is a Pittsburgh boy. He played his college football at Pitt and was scouted repeatedly by the Steelers, who, when the 1982 draft came up, passed him by. On the first round, instead of Marino, they named one Gabriel Rivera, a defensive lineman who later was forced into retirement by a non-football-related accident.

Wherever Noll goes this week he runs into a reporter who asks how he could have picked Rivera and ignored Marino.

“When we drafted that year,” the Pittsburgh coach keeps saying, patiently, “we expected to have Terry Bradshaw for five or six more seasons. We needed help quickly in the defensive line and Rivera could have supplied that (if he hadn’t been hurt).”

The Steelers not only lost Rivera, they also lost Bradshaw, whose sore arm ended his career.

And so it will be Malone for Noll against Marino for Shula today when they move onto the floor of the Orange Bowl to start six televised hours of championship NFL football.

The Dolphins, who have experienced four straight 75,000 sellouts here starting with the Raider game Dec. 2, will end their home season with a fifth one.

The forecasters expect partly cloudy weather in the high 60s with a 20% chance of rain.

It hasn’t been raining here this week and the Dolphins have been practicing in summer-like weather at their nearby camp, where, the other day, visiting reporters noted a familiar sight. After practice, Marino remained on the field throwing footballs to Clayton and Duper.

Twenty-odd years ago in Baltimore, another famous quarterback named John Unitas was also discovered throwing practice passes in his spare time to another famous receiver, Raymond Berry.

This is not an usual use of one’s free time by the nation’s highly paid quarterbacks, who have a lot of commitments, including endorsements, business deals, women and so forth.

The link between Unitas and Marino is the same coach, Shula.

Asked how he persuades adults to work after working hours, Shula said:

“They better. It’s their bread and butter. Timing is everything in throwing and catching passes. The more you practice the better you get. You never get enough practice.”

The Steelers also attack with a well-timed offense and a pretty good passer.

But the Dolphins have taken a quantum jump with theirs.

AFC Notes Sudden-death overtime, restricted to 15 minutes in the regular season, could theoretically last forever on days like this. . . . In the last month, the Dolphins have lost a 45-34 game to the Raiders, who lost a 13-7 game to the Steelers. . . . Miami employs the better punter, Reggie Roby, an athlete who can jump or dive for a bad snap and still kick the ball 50 yards up and 50 deep. . . . The Dolphins credit their improved defense since the Raider game to a coaches-barred team meeting that “pulled us together,” safety Glenn Blackwood said. . . . What did the players agree to at the meeting? Said Blackwood: ‘We agreed this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity because of Marino, Clayton and Duper.” . . . Although the Steelers narrowly made the playoffs with a 9-7 record, they are 7-3 with Mark Malone . . . Most of the Eastern coaches who played both teams, including Buffalo’s Kay Stephenson, are picking Marino to win. Said Stephenson:”We had a blitzer come clean (unblocked) against him and he still got the ball off.” . . . Neither team has a Super Bowl backfield. The Steelers with Walter Abercrombie and Frank Pollard run hard but without much touch . . . The Dolphins with Tony Nathan and Woody Bennett run more adeptly but not far . . . When the Dolphins found a linebacker whose name begins with the letter B (Jay Brophy) they moved him up and benched A.J. Duhe. Nine of the 11 are now killer Bs. . . . The toughest are nose tackle Bob Baumhower and defensive end Doug Betters. . . . Although Mark Clayton set an NFL record with 18 touchdown catches this season, the Raiders’ Marcus Allen tied him for first in the league in total touchdowns. . . . The Steelers faced five 1,000-yard rushers during the regular season and held them to a combined 256 yards. The rundown (player, season total and rushes-total-average vs. Steelers): Eric Dickerson (2,105) 23-49-2.1; Gerald Riggs (1,486) 25-80-3.2; Wendell Tyler (1,262) 11-59-5.4; Allen (1,168) 13-38-2.9 and Freeman McNeil (1,070) 12-30-2.5