Pro Football / Bob Oates : Sunday Will Be Day of Dolphin as Marino Becomes Top-Ranked Passer

Dan Marino of the Dolphins will become the top-ranked passer of all time during the first half, perhaps in the first quarter, of Sunday’s Miami-New York Jet game at the Orange Bowl, Coach Don Shula said Tuesday.

Some football fans thought Marino already had that distinction, but officially, passers need 1,500 throws to qualify. The Dolphin quarterback is still eight short.

Advised this week that he’s about to be crowned, Marino said: “That surprises me. I didn’t know I was that close.”

Marino’s 96.6 rating at the moment is followed by Joe Montana’s 92.8, Roger Staubach’s 83.4 and Sonny Jurgensen’s 82.6. Other active passers in the top 10 besides Marino and San Francisco’s Montana are Dallas’ Danny White and San Diego’s Dan Fouts, both rated in the 80s.

Such celebrated former passers as Joe Namath, Bart Starr, John Unitas and Norm Van Brocklin are all down the track.

The National Football League scoring system is based on four performance values: average gain, percentage of completions, interceptions and touchdowns. And, of course, Marino’s time at the top may be temporary. What goes up may come down.

No Ram coach has lasted more than five years, and of the 17 coaches the club has had in four decades, only three have been around that long: Sid Gillman, George Allen and Chuck Knox.

John Robinson, now starting his fourth year here, is odds-on to break the record. One reason is that he’s a coach you’d best not mess with in the fourth quarter.

If you want to beat him, plan to do it in the first three quarters. The fourth belongs to John.

His team demonstrated its durability again Sunday at Anaheim.

It was all over for the San Francisco 49ers when, in a tie game, the Rams got the ball on the Ram seven-yard line with 6:10 left.

The drive that followed against a wearying, faltering opponent was characteristic of the way Robinson likes to win.

“We want to wear the other guys down,” he said again Tuesday, coming back with the expression he used years ago at USC.

Asked to tell a waiting world how he develops wear-’em-down teams, Robinson said:

“It’s mostly a state of mind. (I) talk about it a lot. Of course, this philosophy isn’t unique with us. Other (coaches) have the same goal. But we’re a running team, and running teams tend to be more physical than most.”

The last time they were at Anaheim, a year ago, the 49ers opened a 28-0 lead in the first half. Eventually, the Rams wore them down, but four touchdowns were more than the Rams could make up. A 28-point half is the way to beat Robinson, but that’s not easy, either.

For the Raiders, the difference between the Denver and Washington games was quarterback Marc Wilson’s accuracy.

He had it once but not twice. And it’s beginning to look as if the thing that disrupts him is injuries--the minor but painful and persisting injuries he usually has.

Wilson played the two great games of his career at Dallas in 1983 and at Denver this month. Each time, he went into action rested and sound.

Between those milestone events, Wilson has generally played injured. He has played courageously, but not often effectively, when injured.

Wilson’s first bomb in Washington Sunday, where the Raiders lost, 10-6, was as accurate as any he had delivered the week before, when the Raiders lost at Denver, 38-36.

On the second play of the game at RFK Stadium, his long pass was dropped by young Rod Barksdale. Had Barksdale caught it, it would have been a 60-yard scoring play, providing what might have been the winning touchdown.

Within seconds, however, unluckily for Wilson, he hurt his passing shoulder in a collision with either an opponent or the ground. Soon his left hand was injured as well. And though he finished the game, Wilson seldom had the range on any teammate thereafter with the long passes the Raiders kept trying.

Over the years, linemen, linebackers and even some quarterbacks have excelled in NFL games while injured, but it’s obviously harder for a quarterback. It may be hardest of all for Wilson, who plays for a club that demands precision throws routinely at 40 and 50 yards.

At his 6 feet 6 inches, there is a lot of Wilson for a blitzer to hit, and a lot of Wilson to hurt. But that long bullet to Barksdale in the first minute at Washington, before the pain came back, is nice to remember.

Talking about NFL football, the Raiders’ Al Davis said:

“One thing keeps it from being a perfect game--the injuries.”

They understand him now in San Francisco, where the loss of a quarterback has changed the equation in the NFC West.

With Joe Montana gone, it should be the Rams’ division.

At Anaheim, Robinson said he doesn’t necessarily agree. But he added: “The 49ers will have to find a different way to win.”

In Robinson’s view, Montana was the difference on both 49er Super Bowl teams. “They got the big play from Joe,” he said. “But don’t forget: The 49ers are still a marvelous defensive team.”

Earlier this year, San Francisco Coach Bill Walsh called his No. 2 quarterback, Jeff Kemp, the best backup in the NFL. “His only negative is his (6-0) height,” Walsh said.

It was clear, though, at Anaheim Sunday that San Francisco’s players haven’t yet rallied around Kemp, whose performance, in terms of completions (19 in 24 attempts) and yards (252), was all that might have been expected of Montana.

The 49ers can be an effective team again when they start to believe in Kemp--but only then.

The instant-replay officials are still running a controversial course through the league.

They have reversed three calls in two weeks--one last Thursday when a third-down pass had been ruled incomplete in the Jet-New England Patriot game, and two last Sunday.

At Detroit, replay officials took a touchdown away from Dallas’ Tony Dorsett, and at Anaheim they took one away from Ram Bobby Duckworth.

The league has pledged to act only on what it calls “‘indisputable visual evidence.” But the evidence on Duckworth’s play was hardly indisputable. And the Jet-Patriot call delayed the game for more than four minutes.

That and other such delays prompted John Robinson to say: “I hate that standing around, waiting for it.”

So do most fans. To make instant-replay decisions viable, the NFL will have to be two things: quicker and more indisputable.