A Bright Beginning and a Dark Ending

Into the visiting team’s locker room they ran, leading the San Diego Chargers at halftime, 21-6, and well on their way to becoming the first football players in history to play in a Super Bowl on their own field.

Once they got to the dressing room, however, the Miami Dolphins found nothing but darkness. None of the lights were on. None of them would work. “Good little trick,” Miami receiver Irving Fryar said. “We had to hold our meetings down the hall.”

They never should have come out. The Dolphins never scored another point. And they lost Sunday’s AFC playoff game here, 22-21, trudging off the field in sorrow rather than running off triumphantly, after Pete Stoyanovich’s failed field goal. So, go ahead, turn out the lights. Miami’s Super Bowl XXIX party is over.

A preacher at a Baptist church when he isn’t playing football, Fryar had told his congregation back home not to expect him on Super Bowl Sunday, because he works on Sundays. But he had placed too much faith in the right foot of Stoyanovich.

“Pete makes those kicks, shoot, with his eyes shut,” Fryar said.

The Dolphins could scarcely believe their eyes. Everything had been going their way. Quarterback Dan Marino was going to take them coast to coast--first here to San Diego for a quick victory, next to his hometown of Pittsburgh for the AFC championship game, then to his current home of Miami for the big Super Bowl By the Beach.

There they were, up by 15 at the half.

“Yeah,” Marino said, “but you’ve got to come out and do something in the second half.”

His season--his great comeback season from 1993’s terrible injury--had been turned upside down. Marino was partly responsible for San Diego scoring a safety. His very deep handoff to Bernie Parmalee got stuffed behind the line of scrimmage. It cost Miami momentum after a fine goal-line stand.

“What about the safety?” Marino was asked.

“What do you want to know?” he asked back.

“What happened?”

“The guy didn’t get back to the line of scrimmage, that’s what happened,” Marino said, tersely.

He was upset and had a right to be. Miami had gotten so many breaks. A crazy pitch forward by Keith Jackson had cost the Dolphins nothing but a loss of down. A long touchdown pass to San Diego’s Shawn Jefferson was ruled incomplete, even though replays showed Jefferson coming down with both feet in bounds. Then an interference call went Miami’s way with 24 seconds to play, putting the ball at the Charger 30.

“I should have done more,” Marino said. “I should have gotten us closer for Pete.”

Instead, the Dolphins went nowhere. Marino aimed two passes at Michael Williams, both incomplete. He left Stoyanovich a full 48 yards from the crossbar.

The snap was high, the kick was wide, the Dolphins were dead meat.

Viewing from his Shulamobile, the golf cart to which he has been confined while nursing a leg injury, Miami Coach Don Shula said, “That’s about as tough a loss as I’ve ever been around.” And this man has been around.

Dolphin linebacker Bryan Cox said, “I just hope people don’t put all the focus on Pete. San Diego beat us--all of us. That train got rolling and we couldn’t jump off the tracks.”

Most of the breaks that had gone Miami’s way before halftime began to go the other way. In one half, Natrone Means of the Chargers made a dive toward the end-zone marker on fourth down and missed by inches. Later on, Means clearly stepped out of bounds a few yards shy of the goal, but was awarded a touchdown by an official who was knocked backward and couldn’t see.

The one break the Dolphins did get was when Keith Jackson, their tight end, inexplicably pitched the ball forward after catching it. San Diego recovered, but the play was interpreted as an illegal forward pass, rather than a fumble, by referee Johnny Grier, who said afterward, “They (the Chargers) thought it was a fumble. But (the officials) felt that he just threw the ball forward, and not fumbled it forward. It’s a call you very seldom see because you normally only get it on the quarterback.”

Jackson, as devoutly a religious man as Fryar is, also had looked forward to Sunday being a wonderful day. He caught two touchdown passes and knelt in the end zone to pray after each, once simultaneously crossing himself with one hand and slapping Marino’s palm with the other.

But Miami’s luck ran out late in the game, when San Diego caught the defense blitzing and called a surprise pass by Stan Humphries to an all-alone Mark Seay.

Charger offensive coordinator Ralph Friedgen said, “The funny thing is, Stan hates that play. He hates it. But all of a sudden we looked up and it opened up like the Red Sea.”

Miami couldn’t do much after that but pray for a miracle. Didn’t get one.