Super Bowl a New Experience for Marino

In most of the Super Bowls, players with the least experience in the Super Bowl have tended to bomb out.

They have had to learn to operate in title-game pressure before they could perform effectively.

Hence Sunday’s scenario was a somewhat familiar one.

This was, to begin with, a matchup of different types of quarterbacks--San Francisco’s running passer, Joe Montana, vs. Miami’s dropback passer, Dan Marino.

But more than that, it was a contest between a six-year veteran playing in his second Super Bowl, Montana, and a young quarterback completing his first full season as a starter in his first Super Bowl, Marino.

Not too surprisingly, Montana played his game and Marino didn’t.

Montana played the game of his life, indeed, on a cold afternoon when Marino resembled a major league pitcher who couldn’t get loose.

And so the 49ers won in a 38-16 blowout that was as one-sided as most Super Bowls.

Montana, the game’s second leading ground gainer, won by running the ball down the field himself on the big plays of the afternoon.

This isn’t his usual style. Although he is a famous scrambler--or drifter, as the Raiders call him--Montana normally only scrambles to pass. That is, he doesn’t often run the ball across the scrimmage line.

But this was the last game of the season. Because there’s no tomorrow for six months, this was a time to let it all hang out, and Montana did.

In this respect he resembled a Cleveland quarterback of many years ago, Otto Graham, who in the last game of 1950--the National Football League’s championship game--ran the ball himself to outscore the Rams.

Montana in Super Bowl XIX also delivered a number of brilliant passes. His touchdown throw to reserve halfback Carl Monroe, on a 33-yard play in the first quarter, exhibited the San Francisco quarterback at his finest. Rolling out, he saw Monroe in a pack of three Dolphins and hit him in stride.

Wide receiver, Dwight Clark, running a deeper route, was more open at the time, but in Coach Bill Walsh’s system Montana was supposed to connect with Monroe on that play, if he could, and he could.

Montana is football’s all-time leading passer largely because he is as disciplined as any quarterback who ever played the game and because the disciplinarian is Walsh.

The throw to Monroe came as no surprise to the Dolphins. What surprised them was Montana’s running in the second quarter, when his scrambles either scored or helped set up all of the 49ers’ touchdowns in the 21-point quarter that effectively ended the game.

Miami plainly had Montana’s pass receivers defensed on his second-quarter scrambles. But as has been proved often enough before, NFL teams have no defense for a quarterback who will run.

The other Super Bowl quarterback this year, Marino, is no runner. But all season he has been a passer. The disappointment to Miami’s players at Stanford Stadium was their young leader’s erratic performance.

A pinpoint marksman for the last 18 weeks, Marino underthrew many of his receivers Sunday or let the ball go late, enabling a 49er to get in position before it got there.

Used to the warmth of Florida, he seemed uneasy in the cold and fog of Palo Alto.

His most damaging misfires came in the second quarter when, on three successive possessions, Miami went 1-2-3-punt and Montana rebounded with three short touchdown marches.

Altogether, the Dolphins failed to make a first down in five of six straight possessions in the second and third quarters as the score changed from 10-7 Miami to 38-16 San Francisco.

At the start of this period of the Florida players’ troubles, Marino’s miscalculating was their problem. Eventually they lost confidence in Marino and blocked more and more weakly for him as confidence grew in the 49ers. Eventually this was a defensive gem for the 49ers. But the trigger was Marino’s first bad day in two years as a pro.

When former New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath was about Marino’s age, he won Super Bowl III in an upset. That season, however, Namath didn’t have to carry his team. The 1968 Jets were competitive with the NFL’s best.

The Dolphins this season aren’t. During the last two or three weeks there has never been any doubt that as a football team, the 49ers are much better than the Dolphins.

The question of this game was whether Marino is so gifted that he could carry an inferior bunch to the championship.

The answer--this year--is that he can’t.

Ten years from today, it’s possible that Marino will be recognized as football’s all-time leading quarterback. But as a second-year pro, he couldn’t prove it to Montana.

In the last half Sunday, when Marino and the other Dolphins were still shaking, no doubt, from their first-half experience, and when the feisty 49ers were getting bolder and more confident with every snap, Marino couldn’t cope with Walsh’s special anti-Marino defense.

This was a perpetual third-down defense that San Francisco used on most downs with four linemen, six defensive backs and reliable linebacker Keena Turner.

One result was that Miami receivers Mark Clayton and Mark Duper weren’t in this game. On the one chance Clayton had, San Francisco cornerback Ronnie Lott leaped with him and smothered him in the end zone. This was one of Lott’s big games.

It would have been closer if the officials had allowed the Dolphins to keep the ball when San Francisco wide receiver Freddie Solomon fumbled in the second quarter. And it might have been closer if Miami punter Reggie Roby hadn’t experienced an off day along with Marino. But there wouldn’t have been a different winner.

Montana would simply have won a two-team shootout instead of a rout.

The best player of his type the NFL has known, Montana had the good fortune in his first Super Bowl four years ago to meet another quarterback making the championship game for the first time, Ken Anderson of Cincinnati.

A Super Bowl rookie had to win that game. But in this game, if Marino couldn’t do it, no Super Bowl rookie could have beaten Montana.