Miami Is B-Fenseless Against Montana : 49ers Roll to 38-16 Win in Super Bowl

One team played Sunday at Stanford Stadium as if it was about to start a National Football League dynasty, while the other played like some chump from the Central Divison. Either Central Division.

That shouldn’t have come as a shock. Most Super Bowls are like that. Only six of XIX have been decided by fewer than 10 points.

But this one was supposed to make up for all those other Super Bores. This one was supposed to be the best of them all, featuring the 17-1 San Francisco 49ers of the National Conference vs. the 16-2 Miami Dolphins of the American Conference.

They fooled us again.

Perhaps the 49ers were better than most people gave them credit for, or perhaps the Dolphins weren’t as good. Whatever, the 49ers’ 38-16 victory before a crowd of 84,059 was conclusive evidence that there was only one truly great team in the NFL this season.

With the victory, the 49ers became the first NFL team to win 18 games in the same season. Their coach, Bill Walsh, declined to offer an opinion when asked if he considers the 49ers one of the greatest teams of all time.

But he did say that this was the best game the 49ers have played since he joined them in 1979, including their 26-21 Super Bowl XVI victory over Cincinnati in 1982.

As in that game, the Most Valuable Player Sunday was 49ers quarterback Joe Montana. The only other players ever to win two Super Bowl MVP awards were Green Bay’s Bart Starr and Pittsburgh’s Terry Bradshaw.

While Montana may have entered the game as the other quarterback, his experience and running ability gave him a clear advantage over the Dolphins’ Dan Marino.

Montana completed 24 of 35 passes for a Super Bowl record 331 yards and three touchdowns against the Killer B’s defense. He was not intercepted, which is the first time any quarterback has thrown that many passes in a Super Bowl game and not had one stolen.

He also ran five times for 59 yards, another record for quarterbacks in a Super Bowl game, and one touchdown (six yards).

“He clearly is the best quarterback in football today and maybe the best in many years,” Walsh said of Montana, who has played six NFL seasons.

Miami Coach Don Shula wasn’t quite that effusive in his praise for Montana but obviously was impressed by the quarterback’s play Sunday.

“He’s the guy who made it go for them,” Shula said. “He beat everything we put against him.”

The Dolphins sacked Montana only once for a five-yard loss, which is due partly to his quick feet and partly to an offensive line that is sending three players to next Sunday’s Pro Bowl.

As long as tributes are being passed around, 49er running back Roger Craig set a Super Bowl record by scoring three touchdowns, two on pass receptions of 8 and 16 yards and one on a 2-yard run. He ran 15 times for 58 yards and caught 8 passes for 82 yards.

His running mate, former Ram Wendell Tyler, ran 13 times for 65 yards, caught 4 passes for 70 yards and did not fumble once.

Two other 49ers, wide receiver Dwight Clark and tight end Russ Francis, each caught five passes, Clark for 72 yards and Francis for 60. Reserve running back Carl Monroe caught only one pass, but it was for 33 yards and a touchdown.

But while San Francisco’s offense was scoring as many points as any team has in the Super Bowl, equaling the Raiders in their 38-9 victory last year over Washington, the 49ers’ defense was equally superb.

Actually, the defense may have been even better than the offense when you consider the relative strength of the units that lined up against them.

The 49ers’ offense played against a Miami defense that looked as if it could be knocked over by the fog rolling in from the Pacific Ocean, while the 49ers’ defense played against the vaunted Miamarino.

Although he is only in his second NFL season, Marino had rewritten virtually all the passing records before Sunday.

When he hit tight end Dan Johnson in the end zone from two yards out with 2:27 remaining in the first quarter to give the Dolphins a 10-7 lead, their last lead of the day, it was Marino’s 56th touchdown pass of the season. It also was his last.

From that point on, he was ineffective against a 49er defense that pressured him like only the Raiders and the San Diego Chargers were able to do all season. Both of those teams also beat the Dolphins.

Marino finished with 29 completions in 50 attempts, both Super Bowl records, for a respectable 318 yards. But he was sacked four times for 29 yards in losses, threw two interceptions--one in the end zone and one at the San Francisco one-yard line, and seemed almost never to make a big play when the Dolphins needed one.

He no doubt was hurt by the Dolphins’ inability to move the ball on the ground. They ran only nine times and gained 25 yards.

“Offensively, it was our poorest game of the year,” Shula said. “We didn’t make things happen.

“Dan Marino had some problems. Today, he didn’t play the way he did during the regular season, when he averaged three touchdown passes a game.

“We would have liked to get our running game going. But the running plays we tried didn’t work, and then we fell behind.”

The only time the Dolphins resembled the team that set NFL records for yards gained and points scored was in the first quarter.

They gained 25 yards on their first play, a pass from Marino to running back Tony Nathan, and drove to the San Francisco 19 before Uwe von Schamann came on to kick a 37-yard field goal that gave the Dolphins a 3-0 lead.

The 49ers answered on their next possession with a 78-yard, eight-play drive, the game’s first touchdown coming on a 33-yard pass play from Montana to Monroe, who caught the ball at the 15, broke a tackle by safety Lyle Blackwood and scored.

Then the game got wild.

The 49ers began the game with their usual three-man defensive line, then switched to a four-man line, three-linebacker alignment--known as The Elephant--in an attempt to put more pressure on Marino.

In either defense, the 49ers like to substitute often depending on the situation.

To prevent that, the Dolphins went to a no-huddle offense.

The first time they ran a play without a huddle, they gained 18 yards on a Marino pass to wide receiver Mark Clayton. It worked so well, they went without a huddle on the next play and gained 11 yards on a Marino pass to the other wide receiver, Mark Duper.

They huddled before the next play, gaining 13 yards on a Marino pass to Clayton. Then, they again went without a huddle and gained 21 yards on Marino pass to Johnson, who wasn’t expected to play because of appendicitis. He caught the two-yard touchdown pass on the next play.

On the six-play, 70-yard drive, the Dolphins had four first downs and a touchdown. The Lakers’ fast break isn’t that efficient.

At that point, Marino had completed 9 of 10 passes for 103 yards.

With a battered Elephant on his hands, the 49ers’ defensive coordinator, George Seifert, switched to a defense with four linemen, one linebacker and six defensive backs.

After the 49ers’ change in defensive strategy, Marino didn’t complete another pass to a wide receiver until after the two-minute warning in the first half.

One of his Pro Bowl wide receivers, Clayton, finished with 6 catches for 92 yards, but the other, Duper, caught only 1 pass for 11 yards.

Seifert credited not only the cornerbacks, Ronnie Lott and Eric Wright, for that, but also the linemen, such as Dwaine Board, Fred Dean, Gary Johnson and Manu Tuiasosopo, who forced Marino to hurry his throws.

They were able to do that even without the benefit of frequent blitzing, the ploy most teams have used when attempting to rattle Marino.

With their defense keeping Miami in its own end of the field, the 49ers drove 47 yards in 4 plays, 55 yards in 6 plays and 52 yards in 9 plays for touchdowns on three consecutive second-quarter drives and a 28-10 lead.

The game appeared hopelessly out of hand for the Dolphins at that point, even though their two-minute offense resulted in a 31-yard von Schamann field goal with 12 seconds remaining in the first half.

But then a 49er guard, Guy McIntyre, fielded the kickoff, went down on one knee, and then tried to run.

He was hit by a Dolphin, Joe Carter, fumbled, and another Dolphin, Jim Jensen, recovered at the San Francisco 12. With four seconds remaining, the Dolphins kicked another field goal, a 30-yarder by von Schamann, to trail by only 28-16 at the half.

McIntyre’s fumble probably will be the most memorable play from Super Bowl XIX, which says a lot about what happened in the second half. Or what didn’t happen.

McIntyre must have figured that if former Miami placekicker Garo Yepremian could throw an interception in a Super Bowl, he could fumble a kickoff.

Otherwise, the 49ers played almost a perfect game. They fumbled only once more. They weren’t penalized until the third quarter. They finished with two penalties for 10 yards. The Dolphins were penalized only once for five yards.

With a chance to move within a touchdown of the 49ers, the Dolphins received the second-half kickoff. On third down, Marino was sacked for the first time.

The 49ers took over a drove for a field goal, a 27-yarder by Ray Wersching.

The next time the Dolphins had the ball, Marino was sacked twice. He was sacked only 13 times during the entire regular season.

The 49ers then drove 70 yards in five plays.

Using a brilliantly-constructed offensive game plan by Walsh, the 49ers probably could have scored once or twice more if they had wanted. They drove to the Miami two late in the game.

But, at least until next year, they had proved their point.