Buried Alive!

By STEVE SPRINGER

Jan. 12, 2000 12 AM PT

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

DAVIE, Fla. — The funeral is all planned. The grief has been expressed, the eulogies have been written, the loss has been assessed.

The problem is, the loved one just won’t cooperate.

There has been a death watch on the career of Miami Dolphin quarterback Dan Marino since he returned from a nerve injury in his neck on Thanksgiving Day, bearing only a feeble replica of the right arm that once terrorized opposing defenses.

Add in that Marino and Coach Jimmy Johnson have widely divergent offensive philosophies, that Johnson doesn’t feel comfortable surrendering a measure of control to Marino, that Marino is 38, that his limited mobility is more limited than ever, and that the Dolphins would get an estimated $6 million under the salary cap to spend on a free-agent quarterback if Marino were gone, and it is understandable why reporters are circling Marino like vultures.

After missing five games because of the neck injury, Marino threw five interceptions to the Cowboys in that Thanksgiving Day game, Dallas going on to shut out Miami, 20-0.

“We probably brought him back a week too soon,” Johnson now concedes. “I do not think he was back to full strength, to what he had been before.”

Nor was he for a while.

Marino, the career leader in all the NFL’s key passing categories, was not only throwing bad passes, but making ill-advised decisions. He threw 17 interceptions, compared to only 12 touchdown passes, in the regular season, the first time in his 17-year career that he had thrown more interceptions than scoring passes. Five of his interceptions were returned for touchdowns.

As Miami stumbled into its playoff opener at Seattle last Sunday, having lost five of its final six regular-season games, it seemed as if every newspaper story and sportscast concerning the Dolphins included the phrase, “In what could be his last game as a Dolphin, Dan Marino . . . “

Surprise! It wasn’t. That old, dead arm still has some life left in it.

Looking surprisingly like the Marino of old, the Dolphin quarterback engineered an 11-play, 85-yard, fourth-quarter comeback, the 37th of his career, enabling the Dolphins to beat the Seahawks, 20-17. That kept them alive for at least one more game, and Marino in a Miami uniform for six more days.

Marino insists he will be around a lot longer, saying all the problems were caused because of his injury and insisting that is no longer a factor.

“After I got hurt, I never thought I would be able to throw the way I did before,” he said. “At first, it was a problem. But of late, I’m back to where I was three years ago.”

There are those, however, who hold that Marino will never be back to where he was three years ago. According to this argument, Marino was effective Sunday because he quit playing as if he were 28 instead of 38 and accepted a more conservative game plan, one that mixed a more prominent running game with a more selective passing game. Marino threw only 30 passes Sunday, completing 17 for 196 yards and a touchdown.

In the old days, that was barely a good first quarter for Marino.

But as he sometimes needs to be reminded, these are not the good old days. The coach is not Don Shula, who watched a young, unstoppable Marino with a howitzer for an arm throw 48 touchdown passes in 1984, shattering the single-season record.

After that, what could Shula do except continue to supply big-play targets such as Mark Clayton and Mark Duper, and hand Marino a game plan that allowed him to fire at will.

That might have worked well then--although even that is questionable, since the Dolphins didn’t go to a Super Bowl after Marino’s second season--but when Johnson became coach four years ago, he tried to change things.

Johnson has never felt comfortable with a wide-open passing game and he reiterated that Tuesday in discussing Miami’s second-round playoff matchup against the Jaguars Saturday in Jacksonville.

“I don’t like to throw the ball 40 or 50 times a game,” Johnson said. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s a great player or somebody on the practice field. I don’t like to throw it that much.”

So has Marino finally bought into Johnson’s philosophy?

“I would throw 60 times if I had to,” the Miami quarterback said when asked about Saturday’s game.

But Johnson insists he has no problem coaching Marino.

“Actually, I think Dan and I have a very good relationship,” Johnson said. “Some people, I think, try to read more into our relationship than really is there.”

But even if that is true, Marino’s future in Miami is not tied solely to his ability to co-exist with Johnson, because there is no assurance that Johnson will return as coach. He almost quit after last season, citing burnout. In fact, for 24 hours, he was gone.

But Miami owner Wayne Huizenga talked Johnson out of retirement, offering to let him skip road games if necessary.

It didn’t come to that. But Johnson did hire longtime associate Dave Wannstedt as assistant coach.

“He has been able to bounce around and do different things,” Johnson said. “He doesn’t have a specific role, but he sits with the offensive coaches, he sits with the defensive coaches and with the special teams. He has been of great assistance to me. It has worked out well.”

But has it worked out so well that Wannstedt will be given the head coach’s job next year, with Johnson either stepping into the front office as general manager or stepping aside altogether?

It is logical to wonder how Johnson, suffering from burnout a year ago, could possibly have been rejuvenated by this season, a season piled high with frustrations that weren’t even on the horizon a year ago.

According to several Dolphin sources, Johnson has said he has already made up his mind what he’ll do next season, but won’t reveal it until Miami has played its final down.

Marino says he is open about his plans, though it seems obvious which way he is leaning.

“At the end of the year, I’ll assess how I am feeling, how my body feels,” he said. “All those things I’ll worry about then. Once you are not playing, it’s tough, because you do not get these opportunities again. Only a player who has been there understands these things.”

Has Jimmy had enough?

Will Dan be told, enough is enough?

Will those eulogies ever be read?

Saturday, the vultures fly to Jacksonville.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Fine and Dandy. . .

Dan Marino is the NFL career leader in several key passing categories:

TOUCHDOWNS

Dan Marino:420

Fran Tarkenton:342

John Elway:300

YARDS