The Answer to a Running Problem Is Right Under Their Nose : Football: Mark Higgs has provided the Dolphins with the rushing weapon they sought in their trade for Humphrey.

When people here talk about the Miami Dolphins and their failure to win a Super Bowl during the Dan Marino Era, they invariably point to two things:

Problems on defense. And the lack of a running game. These concerns are as much a part of the place as rain in the late afternoon.

In Sammie Smith, they had a guy who could run but often seemed to forget the football at the most unusual times. So, in an effort to get somebody who could do more than just make Marino’s fakes look good, they traded Smith for Bobby Humphrey, who was having problems of his own in Denver. The old change-of-scenery business.

And the Dolphins indeed have demonstrated that they might now be able to run successfully. But then again, it seems that they had the personnel before Humphrey was even a twinkle in Coach Don Shula’s eye.

Yes, Mark Higgs, a fifth-year pro from Kentucky, also had 201 yards in two games is doing what good running backs are supposed to: Provide a weapon that makes it impossible for defenses to back off and wait for Marino to throw.

He rushed for 111 yards Sunday against the Rams, following Marino’s direction and taking what was given. Much of the ground was gained with two plays called, simply, “14” and “15,” run either right or left into the heart of the defensive line.

“Dan just tells me which way I should go, and I look for the hole,” Higgs said. “It seemed like we were exploding through them. We could have run that all day.”

And if Higgs is helping take some pressure off Marino, the opposite is also true.

“We saw the Rams’ game (last week) against New England, and they were tough against the run,” Higgs said. “But they were using a lot of eight-man fronts, and we knew they couldn’t do that today.”

He didn’t need to add, “because Marino would kill them.”

Higgs is 5 feet 7, 195 pounds, a short, powerfully built back in the Barry Sanders-Emmitt Smith-Marshall Faulk mold that is all the rage now. And he is not exactly arriving out of nowhere. After gaining only 67 yards in 10 carries after his Plan B acquisition by the Dolphins in 1990, he rushed for 905 last season, fifth in the AFC, ninth in the league and the most for a Dolphin since 1978. So he had already shown he could be successful in this league.

But Higgs also has put the ball on the ground at inopportune times (“You hate to see that,” is one of Shula’s standard understatements for this), and then along came Humphrey and a lot of expectations.

“You have to go up against somebody like that every season,” Higgs said. “You just have to keep your confidence and keep going and hopefully everything will work out. I just appreciate Coach Shula giving me the chance.

“You always wonder a little about these things. But I just leave the decisions up to the coaches.”

Higgs used the same kind of “keep plugging” philosophy when describing two critical fumbles in the past two weeks. Roman Phifer took it away from him at the Ram one-yard line Sunday, costing the Dolphins what seemed a certain touchdown based on the way they had moved the ball to that point.

“I was just trying to stretch out and do too much,” Higgs said. “It was my fault for leaving the ball exposed.”

It was worse against Cleveland last Monday night. A Higgs fumble with 6:39 to play was turned into a Brown touchdown, helping trim a Dolphin lead that had been 20-3 to 20-17. Cleveland eventually took a 23-20 lead with 1:18 to play. But there was Higgs, finishing a vintage, last-ditch Marino drive by diving over from the 1 with seven seconds left. He wound up with 90 yards in 25 carries.

“You just have to put that out of your mind right away and just go back out there and keep running hard,” he said.

As for Humphrey, who gained 46 yards Sunday, Higgs said his presence has been a blessing based on the workload, and the room to run, that he has been getting.

“Hey, I was glad to see Bobby over there,” he said. “With all that running, I was getting a little winded.”