The Cream Has Begun to Curdle

Dan Marino’s stall is encased in wood and glass in the Miami Dolphin locker room, with his helmet, shoulder pads and jersey--even his deodorant and shaving cream--preserved like some museum exhibit.

Fitting enough, because the NFL as we knew it is history.

The Dolphins have had two losing seasons in the last 30 years, but this sure looks like the third.

The San Francisco 49ers? They appear headed for consecutive losing seasons for the first time in 20 years.

Look around: Neither the Dallas Cowboys nor Green Bay Packers are division favorites, and the Denver Broncos are coming off a last-place finish in the AFC West.

This is the flip side of parity.

When the bottom rises, the top drops. The old guard is being caught by time and the salary cap.

Denver should be resurgent with Terrell Davis back from knee surgery and Green Bay probably is a middling team.

But the tide is going out in Miami, San Francisco and Dallas.

The Dolphins’ era of stability stretched from Don Shula’s long tenure as coach from 1970-95 through Marino’s 17-year career.

Now they are in such an offensive mire that Jay Fiedler won the job as Marino’s replacement after a single exhibition appearance in which he threw three interceptions but completed 10 of 14 passes.

Damon Huard, handed the baton in training camp when Fiedler underwent minor hip surgery, became the first to drop it.

Then Marino stirred the controversy, saying on HBO’s “Inside the NFL” that Huard had “earned the job.”

The defense is good--No. 5 in the NFL last season--but probably not good enough.

What with the quarterback situation and an unproven running game, Miami has only one consistent offensive threat, kicker Olindo Mare.

The 49ers’ Steve Young left shoes to fill too--though not so prominently displayed as Marino’s.

Jeff Garcia goes first, but probably not last, with three quarterbacks-in-waiting--Rick Mirer, Tim Rattay and Giovanni Carmazzi.

The focus is on the quarterback, but the disaster last season was in the secondary.

The 49ers were last in the NFL in pass defense and set franchise records for passing yards allowed and touchdown passes allowed, though cornerback Ahmed Plummer, a first-round pick from Ohio State, is expected to help.

The question of who comes next in the Joe Montana-to-Young legacy won’t be answered quickly, and San Francisco’s five Super Bowl championships--well, encase them in glass, another exhibit.

Dallas won three Super Bowls in the 1990s, but Troy Aikman turns 34 this season and has had his share of concussions, Michael Irvin is retired and Deion Sanders is a Washington Redskin.

With Aikman and Emmitt Smith still plugging away, the Cowboys are trying to recapture their offense of old under new coach Dave Campo and coordinator Jack Reilly.

But the real concern is defense, and a secondary scrambling so hard to replace Sanders that the top choices at one cornerback spot are fourth-round pick Kareem Larrimore and veteran Phillippi Sparks, brought out of retirement in a desperate last-minute move--and recently seen vomiting on the field as he tried to get into condition.

Dallas might be OK, but it’s a new era, so keep these stats handy, just in case: The last time the Dolphins finished last in their division was 1988. The last time the 49ers did was 1979.

AS LUCKMAN WOULD HAVE IT

Fiedler is an NFL rarity--a Jewish, Ivy League-educated quarterback.

So was Sid Luckman, the late Hall of Fame quarterback from Columbia who starred for the Chicago Bears in the 1940s.

Fiedler, who grew up on Long Island, has an engineering degree from Dartmouth.

“A lot of people wonder how a Jewish guy got started playing football in the first place,” Fiedler told Newsday. “My parents brought me up and let me participate in everything, and my mom wasn’t what you might call the stereotypical Jewish mom who wouldn’t let her son go out and play football because she thought he was going to get hurt. I had an athletic family, and I was able to play everything and compete.”

Fiedler--who has been known to wear a T-shirt with “Jewish Sports Hall of Fame” on it in the locker room--is proud of his heritage and has never found it to be an issue in football.

“A lot of the teams I’ve been on have had a pretty big religious following, and the NFL has a lot of devout Christian athletes,” he said. “But I’ve found that more of those players are more interested in the Jewish religion and talking about it than they are afraid of it or prejudiced against it.

“I’m very proud of the fact . . . that I’m Jewish,” he said. “But I just want to be another athlete, not necessarily another Jewish athlete. I’ve never used my religion as being something special, just because there aren’t too many Jews in the NFL. I don’t look at myself and say, ‘Just because I’m one of only a handful of Jews in the league, that separates me.’ I’m just another athlete.”

QUITE AN EXHIBITION

Two of the biggest preseason developments were the emergence of Daunte Culpepper at quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings and the sacking of Kordell Stewart by the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Stewart performed so poorly that Coach Bill Cowher replaced him with Kent Graham, who will start an opener for a third team in four years. He started for Arizona in 1997 and the New York Giants last season.

Culpepper’s performance transformed him from the biggest question mark for the Vikings--he didn’t throw a pass as a rookie last season--to a reason they should be a playoff team again.

Throwing the ball to Randy Moss and Cris Carter helps, but Coach Dennis Green couldn’t be more solidly in Culpepper’s corner.

“Randy and Cris know that Daunte is the best athlete of the 31 quarterbacks in the NFL,” Green said. “Who has the NCAA completion record? Daunte Culpepper. Who can bring the ball down and run 65 yards for a touchdown? Daunte Culpepper. Who can throw the ball downfield? Daunte Culpepper. Who’s the second- or third-best basketball player on the team? Daunte Culpepper.”

The rest of the NFC Central has taken note.

As Mark Hatley, the Bears’ vice president of player personnel, told the Chicago Tribune, “I’m not sure they aren’t better off than they were with [Jeff] George.”

MUSIC CITY SOUR NOTE

The play was called the Home Run Throwback, but Buffalo Bill Coach Wade Phillips still calls it the Home Run Throw Forward.

“I saw the film and I saw the picture,” Phillips said of the controversial lateral from Frank Wycheck to Kevin Dyson in last season’s AFC wild-card loss to the Titans. “It was a forward lateral. But it’s just like a holding call or a pass interference or anything else. If it’s not called, then there’s nothing you can do about it. There are a lot of those plays in every game.”

Tennessee running back Eddie George said the Titans understand the Bills and their fans are bent on revenge.

“I expect a hostile environment,” George said. “I think we are all expecting that, going up to Buffalo, you know, especially the way it did end--we don’t need to discuss the details of that. But I am pretty sure that they circled this game at the top of their schedule.”

OH, BROTHER

With two sons in the NFL this season, Johnnie and Katsuko Morton of Torrance have a complicated travel schedule.

It’s easy enough this week: The brothers face each other as rookie Chad Morton’s New Orleans Saints play host to Johnnie Morton’s Detroit Lions in the opener.

“We’re all going,” Katsuko Morton said.

Next week is more of a challenge. Johnnie Sr. will go to Detroit for the Lions’ game against Washington, and Katsuko will drive to the Saints’ game at San Diego.

“We’re going to go to seven of Johnnie’s and seven of Chad’s,” she said.

Johnnie, 28, is a seven-year veteran from USC and a starting receiver for the Lions.

Chad, 23, is a fifth-round pick from USC who earned a job as Ricky Williams’ backup and will return kicks after opening eyes with a 77-yard punt return in the opening exhibition game against the New York Jets.

Sunday will mark the first time they’ve faced each other in an organized game.

“When we played street football, I always picked him first because he was the fast little kid nobody could catch,” Johnnie told the Detroit Free Press.

But who’s faster?

“He ran a 4.2 [40-yard dash], of course he is,” Johnnie said. “I’ve never run a 4.2.”

EXTRA POINTS

Miami Coach Dave Wannstedt is 1-11 against Seattle Coach Mike Holmgren, his opponent in the Dolphins’ opener against the Seahawks. Holmgren then was with the Packers and Wannstedt was with the Bears. “Brett Favre. Reggie White. Next question,” Wannstedt said. “They won a Super Bowl, you know.”

The Scott Frost starting at safety for the Jets is the former Nebraska quarterback who helped lead the Cornhuskers to an undefeated season in 1997. . . . Bear offensive coordinator Gary Crowton, who began his coaching career at Brigham Young in 1982 and was born in Provo, Utah, is mentioned as a popular choice to replace retiring BYU Coach LaVell Edwards after this season.

The NFL’s all-time sack leaders will be on the same field for the Carolina-Washington game--and White and Bruce Smith will each be playing his first game for a new team. White, the NFL’s career leader with 192 1/2 sacks, came out of retirement to play for the Panthers, and Smith, second with 171 sacks, signed with the Redskins as a free agent.

Former UCLA receiver Danny Farmer, a fourth-round pick, became the highest draft pick in 15 years to be cut by the Pittsburgh Steelers before his rookie season. Farmer received a $297,000 signing bonus. . . . The NFL will discontinue Labor Day weekend openers after this season. Openers will be scheduled for the weekend after Labor Day beginning next season.