With his customary good timing, Don Shula’s personal stock index had risen during the wave of unfettered corporate greed that accompanied the installation of Ronald Reagan, the fifth president to take office during his coaching career. Establishment icon that he now was, Shula had no objection as Reagan railed with equal force against both an “Evil Empire” in Russia and domestic blue-collar labor unions (even the players’ union of extant and would-be millionaires couldn’t escape being tarred), though the union movement was the very backbone of the Shula family’s assimilation in working-class Ohio.
But he had his own challenges and complications. As he aged, mortality began to enter his worldview. One front-office man had died in his arms. One of his players had died in his prime. And on February 10, Joe Thomas collapsed in his Coral Gables home and died of a heart attack at 61, leaving a wife and daughter. Robbie eulogized his first hire as “the keenest judge of talent I have ever encountered.” Shula, as distant and wary as he had become with Thomas, said he was “in shock” and “we’ll miss him.”1
There was also another challenge to the NFL for Shula to deal with. At first, the USFL avoided direct competition, commencing in ’83 as a spring-summer circuit with 12 teams in mainly big markets, playing in whatever stadiums they could find. Rebuffed in his attempt to crash the NFL, John Bassett owned a team in Tampa Bay. (A second Florida team would be placed in Jacksonville in ’84, playing in the Gator Bowl.) While the well-heeled dilettantes who bought into the league’s ownership held off raiding top-shelf NFL talent, a big splash was made when Georgia’s Heisman Trophy–winning halfback, junior Herschel Walker, took advantage of the USFL’s policy of allowing underclassmen to be drafted and signed a fat deal with the New Jersey Generals, who played in Giants Stadium. Their owner, Oklahoma oil baron Walter Duncan, had given Chuck Fairbanks a pass back to the pros as coach, GM, and minority partner. The biggest name among ownership was George Allen, part-owner/coach of the Chicago Blitz. Longtime NFL assistant Jim Mora became head coach of the Philadelphia Stars. Significantly, the USFL secured a TV contract with ABC and the year-old cable sports network ESPN, whose president, Chet Simmons, was named its commissioner. While Shula was unconcerned by the threat, he was more than a little intrigued how much money the new league was willing to pay its coaches.
Shula, aware that collegians were in the new league’s crosshairs, confined his picks to those who personally pledged to play for him. Convinced he could no longer continue the Woodstrock era, his focus was a quarterback with a big arm who was a natural leader. Getting that with the No. 27 pick seemed impossible. And it would have been in any other year, but this was the so-called “great quarterback draft.” Not tipping his hand, Shula told reporters, “We’re looking for big, strong defensive linemen . . . offensive linemen and defensive backs,” hoping it might leave a good arm free that some teams might assume would still be there in the second round.
The draft was now a real PR vehicle for the NFL; ESPN began televising it in 1980 from a ballroom in the New York Sheraton Hotel, where it was again held, with draft junkies watching Pete Rozelle announce the continuing picks. On April 26, the first day of the two-day event, the quarterbacks fell like bowling pins. Stanford’s John Elway was, predictably, taken first overall by the Colts, despite Elway’s vow that he wouldn’t play for them. At No. 7 went Penn State’s Todd Blackledge, then Miami’s Jim Kelly (No. 14), and Illinois’s Tony Eason (No. 15). When No. 24 came up, it seemed a given that the Jets would take Pitt’s Dan Marino.
Shula had watched the parade pass, knowing Marino was the best QB left, and maybe the best of the whole field. To many, he was the reincarnation of Joe Namath, born and raised in Pittsburgh, a drop-back guy with a cannon for an arm and a hair-trigger release. He was somewhat of a Shula clone, too: blue-collar, Catholic school–educated, a natural athlete who’d also been drafted by baseball’s Kansas City Royals. While breaking passing records on Jackie Sherrill’s highly-ranked Pitt teams that went 33–3 over his first three seasons, he left pass rushers baffled that he’d whistled one right past them. He was big (at six foot four), not fast but mobile, with a missile launcher of a right arm, boyishly hunky, and gregarious. He was also a bit of a jerk, going at it with writers he thought maligned him.
As a junior, he threw for nearly 3,000 yards with 37 touchdowns, so productive that even with 23 picks—he liked to throw, a lot—his passer rating was a gaudy 143.1. After that season, the USFL’s Los Angeles Express had made him the No. 1 pick in the league’s first college draft and offered $800,000 for four years. He stayed in college, thinking he would reap a lot more. But he hit a pothole. Having been Sherill’s pet, after the coach left for Texas A&M, Marino was rudderless under Foge Fazio. He threw 17 touchdowns, but the same 27 interceptions, his passer rating dropping to 115.2. He fell from fourth to eighth in the Heisman vote, fifth among quarterbacks. Pitt, which had beaten No. 2 Georgia the year before in the Sugar Bowl, went down to Eric Dickerson’s SMU team in the Cotton Bowl, after which Marino got into a tiff with a writer, telling him with a sinister tone, “Don’t worry, I’ll see you somewhere down the road.”2
His play was suspect enough, but as one NFL writer put it in euphemistic terms, “His off-field reputation also hit a slump,” a reference to rumors of partying and pot smoking. Marino denied it—the whole team, he said, had been tested and passed. Still, the rumors persisted, Fazio insisting they came from disgruntled gamblers. “A lot of it was disappointment we didn’t beat the point spread,” he said. “That’s where the viciousness came out.”3
Marino thought none of this would matter. He’d been the MVP of the Senior Bowl and figured he’d go within the top three. It didn’t happen. Even later, Chuck Noll, who had the 21st pick and knew Marino was a perfect candidate to succeed Terry Bradshaw, was scared off by the rumors.4 When the Jets’ turn came, their fans chanted Marino’s name, but Rozelle strode to the podium and announced that they had chosen Ken O’Brien, of Division II Cal-Davis. Shula must have wanted to kiss Jim Kensil for that.
Not that Shula didn’t harbor some reservations of his own. He had seen Marino go through his paces at the NFL scouting combine and came away saying the quarterback was a “stand-up guy” who took the blame for bad throws. But, figuring he’d never get him, he had not spoken with Marino, nor had he fact-checked the rumors. While the clock ticked on the pick, he placed an urgent call to Fazio, who vouched for the kid’s character. He then called Marino. He asked if he wanted to be a Dolphin. “I’m ready to go,” Marino said. “See you in Miami.” The pick was announced to joyous screams from Dolphins fans in the gallery.
The following day, Ed Pope’s page one Herald column was headed DOLPHINS MAKE LUCKY CATCH: DAN MARINO. Pope ventured, “I suspect he could pan out as the [team’s] handiest offensive choice since Larry Csonka in ’68.” Not everyone agreed. Paul Zimmerman was skeptical that, even under Shula, Marino could “overcome the problems he’s had.”5 Shula himself tried to discourage hype, saying he wanted a guy who could “possibly come into this league and do a fine job,” which prompted another scribe to point out, “Note the use of the word possibly.”6
Marino, professing humility, nonetheless took a jab at the last quarterback to go before him, asking, “Who’s Ken O’Brien?” Shula himself couldn’t resist doing the same, biting his lip as he said, “Apparently, the Jets thought O’Brien was better.” Years later, he would swear that Marino’s pride was so hurt at being picked so low that he played every game wanting to prove how wrong all those teams were. A few days after the draft, Art Rooney sent Shula a letter, congratulating him for doing what Chuck Noll wouldn’t.
Shula had reason to be giddy. By going so late, Marino had little leverage. (He certainly had less than Elway, who bluffed the Colts by insisting he would rather play baseball than with them, won a trade to the Denver Broncos, and pocketed a four-year, $600,000-a-year deal and a million-dollar bonus, vaulting him ahead of Buffalo’s Joe Ferguson as the highest-paid NFL quarterback.) Marino had the same agent as Elway, Marvin Demoff, but after two months of dickering with Robbie, the best Demoff could do was a four-year package: $150,000 the first year, $200,000 the second, $300,000 the third, and $350,000 the fourth, with no bonuses. Marino took it, putting him on the lower end of the salary scale for the first-rounders, which was between $150,000 and $200,000. (Jim Kelly made out the best, signing with the USFL’s Houston Gamblers for four years at $500,000 a year, plus bonuses and low-interest loans.)
The USFL’s influence on all this was tangible, albeit the opposite of what the NFL had feared. Despite the coin lavished on Walker and Kelly, the league’s median player salary was just $50,000. Like most NFL executives, Shula had vowed not to make the same mistake he had when the WFL waved its money around, when he gave out long-term contracts, some to men he would otherwise have cut loose. But not only would the salary structure of the game explode before long, Shula himself, in no mood to take a vow of poverty, was about to shatter a symbolic economic ceiling.
Weeks after the draft, Marino came to the Dolphins’ mini-camp and was startled to find himself scrimmaging with the starting unit and learning the offense on the fly, not just poring over films and blackboard schemata. He guessed that Shula “had confidence in me.” But Shula couldn’t risk hurting the feelings of his Super Bowl quarterback, David Woodley, who, like Don Strock, was being courted by the USFL. Shula appeased him, saying that starting Marino would be “far fetched for a rookie” and “I still like David. He’s had only three years with us and is still in the learning process.”7 Quarterback emeritus Bob Griese piped in that Shula “didn’t draft Marino to be its starting quarterback in 1983.”8
When summer camp began, Woodley was signed, but not Strock, and Marino got more snaps, sharing time on the first unit with Woodley. No one doubted Marino needed work. He held the football too long, resulting in sacks and fumbles. He also needed to raise the angle of his release. But when he was behind center, with the iconoclastic number 13 on his uniform and wearing Namath-style alabaster shoes, he gave the stodgy Dolphins a livelier pulse. The drama was palpable. There were other new faces around. Shula had added a couple of defensive studs in the draft, the best being Syracuse’s 300-pound nose tackle Mike Charles. He also took back David Overstreet, who after his years in the Canadian league was willing to play for Shula as a backup runner.
The defense, however, was beset with bad luck. While Betters and Baumhower would be first-team All-Pros, tragedy dealt another devastating blow in July, when linebacker Larry Gordon collapsed while jogging in Texas and died of a heart attack at 28. Shula would start second-year man Charles Bowser at his outside right linebacker slot. Then Don McNeal ripped his Achilles tendon and would miss the season, replaced at left corner by unproven William Judson.
As for Marino, Shula was cautious, even saying he would give Jim Jensen, the utility backfield plug-in listed as the third-string quarterback, a shot. In the preseason games, he kept Marino taking second-half snaps, and when Strock finally re-signed in early September, it seemed Marino would mainly be a spectator. But Marino quickly developed an innate connection with the receivers, whose speed suddenly made every passing play a potential touchdown, epecially for eighth-round pick Mark Clayton, a five-foot, nine-inch gnat drafted as a punt returner.
Shula stuck with Woodley, even after a poor performance in the season opener in Buffalo, a 12–0 Dolphin win. In week two, he threw two touchdowns in beating the Patriots 34–24. Then came a trip to LA to play the Raiders on Monday night, when Al Davis’s team, in its second year since leaving Oakland, seemed never to lose. Woodley couldn’t get a point on the board, and, down 27–0 in the fourth quarter, Shula threw Marino to the hounds. With 2:29 left, he threw a six-yard touchdown pass to Joe Rose; then, with time running out, another to Mark Duper from two yards out. In Miami, despite the loss—Shula’s 11th in 14 games against Davis—that two and half minutes was the future, a cloudburst of 11 completions for 90 yards.
Still, Shula again kept faith with Woodley, starting him against the Chiefs, though the Dolphins had to run 47 times to create any kind of offense in the 14–6 win. The next game, they trailed 7–0 in New Orleans with 2:51 to go in the half. Woodley had gone 4-for-12 with a pick. Bypassing Strock, Shula went with Marino. He wasn’t great—12-for-22, 150 yards, one touchdown, and one pick that was returned for a touchdown—and didn’t get his team on the board until a late 10-yard TD to Duper that made the final score 17–7.
Afterward, Shula was noncommittal about who he’d start the next game, but there was a pall around him, one reporter writing there was a sense the season was “beginning to unravel.” Woodley was the most despondent. “I don’t know where we go from here,” he said. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”9
Shula announced on Tuesday that Marino would get the start in the return game against the Bills, who had lost 17 straight in the Orange Bowl. In a game reminiscent of the madcap Epic against the Chargers, the Bills raced to a 14–0 lead before Marino, firing away, connected with Duper, whom Shula had started in place of Duriel Harris for Marino’s benefit, on a 63-yard touchdown. Then Clayton took it on an apparent reverse, squared up, and flung one to a solitary Duper for a tricky 48-yard TD. The Bills led 28–21 in the fourth quarter, but Marino finished two drives with short touchdown passes to Moore and Clayton, and the Dolphins now led 35–28. With time running short, on fourth-and-goal from the Miami one, Joe Ferguson threw the tying TD to force overtime, which again ended in agony for Shula after von Schamann missed two long field goals and the Bills kicked the winner to make the final score 38–35.
If Shula was desperate for offense, he got it—485 yards of it. Marino was 19-for-29, 322 yards, three touchdowns, two picks. Duper had seven catches for a massive 202 yards. But the Dolphins’ knotty defense seemed to wilt, as if playing fast and loose was the price for the new go-go offense. Shula and Arnsparger wouldn’t tolerate a repeat; another defensive collapse would cost people their jobs. And in the next game, against the Jets, the new Dolphin symbiosis was born. Marino threw three more touchdowns, but this time the defense stole six passes, one taken back by Bokamper for a 24-yard touchdown. The 32–14 rout raised their record to 4–3. They had their future, right now.
And then, just when things were starting to congeal, Shula was thrown off stride by his fleeting brush with Donald Trump.
Back in September, Walter Duncan sold the USFL’s New Jersey Generals to the social-climbing, playboy son of a shady real estate developer for $6 million. Trump was 37 then, in the process of building a house of cards in real estate, hotels, casinos, and golf courses—most all of which, bankrolled by his old man, would wind up in debt and bankruptcy—and his big plans matched his sense of self-promotion and endless bullshit. A fixture in the tabloids, he instantly became the face of the renegade USFL as it became bolder, soon to expand to more cities, beating the NFL to college stars like Reggie White and Steve Young (who received a $40 million deal from the LA Express, the team Marino had passed on). Trump came in spending other people’s money and set his sights on a coach for the next season, 1984, that was worthy of him. That meant the biggest coach of all. His offer to Shula: $1 million a year.
The details of their tango are still murky, subject to the claims of each. In context, it seems preposterous that Shula, who had just gotten his dream quarterback, could have seriously considered jumping to the ersatz league. But then, in ’83 he was working for half that amount, and was without a new contract this late for the first time in his 14-year coaching career. Like anyone else, he had a price—and Trump was willing to meet it, for five years, with a 20 percent ownership stake in the Generals and in some Trump properties. So Shula listened, in a series of phone calls, then followed up by sending his lawyer to New York to meet Trump.
Shula could legally do that, since tampering did not apply to teams outside the NFL. Still, he wanted it kept secret so as not to disrupt the Dolphins’ evolving season. However, it didn’t take long for Trump to shoot off his mouth. In mid-October, Larry Dorman reported on the offer, quoting Trump as calling Shula “a wonderful man and a wonderful coach” who would “fit in with the new league.” Shula, trying to have it both ways, said he’d only spoken with Trump after hours and that it didn’t “distract me from preparations for the next game.” But he had soon cooled on Trump, taken aback when, during halftime of the Dolphins’ October 23 game in Baltimore, Trump went on national TV and said the deal had been “all set and ready to go” until a sticking point arose—Shula’s demand for a rent-free flat in Trump Tower, which had recently opened its gilt-edged doors on Fifth Avenue.
Shula, besieged with questions about it after the game—a tidy 21–7 win—acted highly offended by the story. “It really has developed into a huge distraction,” he said. “When the third question at my press conference after the ball game is about my personal contract and not about our football team. I don’t think it’s fair to the people I’m responsible to.” As a result, he huffed, he was “no longer interested.” With some verbal gymnastics, he tried to walk the whole thing back. “I’ve never felt that I in any way have ever committed myself to that extent,” referring to the alleged contract.10
That was debatable. Jerry Magee, a longtime football writer in San Diego, reported that, up until Trump went on TV, “Persons close to Shula say he was leaning strongly to leaving Miami for the [USFL].”11 For his part, Trump unctuously said, “Don is a good man, an excellent guy really. . . . But I could not have given him an apartment in Trump Tower. Money is one thing. Gold is another.” But how serious had Shula been about living in that glass tower? Could he really have believed Trump would have ever handed over free space there? Indeed, Magee added, “Shula was never interested in a Fifth Avenue apartment. What interested him was the $1 million for five years.” If Shula did make such a demand for property, it might well have been to offend Trump when he needed an escape hatch. If so, it was the smartest thing he ever did.
Joe Robbie never thought Shula was going, saying Trump “engaged more in ballyhoo than in a serious effort to build a franchise completely by sound professional management.”12 But just knowing Shula had an itch to jump started the negotiations. In the interim, the Dolphins had won three of four, Marino rising to the top of the NFL quarterback ratings. In early November, he bested Joe Montana in a tense 30–27 win over the 49ers, with two more touchdowns and zero picks—he had gone 139 throws without an interception. Paul Zimmerman, no longer doubtful, now raved about him, pushing him as a Pro Bowler: “The highest completion percentage for a rookie passer in NFL history is Jim McMahon’s 57.1 last year with the Chicago Bears. Marino is currently at 60.1%.”13
The reason for his instant maturation, Marino said, was that “I’ve got Coach Shula working with me.” From afar, Bobby Beathard agreed: “There are not a lot of great quarterback coaches around. Shula happens to be one of them. He took that kid down there right after the draft and really prepared him. He handled him just right. He didn’t throw him in to sink or swim; he put him in when he thought he was ready.”14
Shula had not named another quarterback coach after Wally English, who got the job in ’81, but left after the ’82 season to be head coach at Tulane. And it is fair to wonder what the lesser quarterbacks drafted ahead of Marino might have amounted to had they played for Shula. As it was, only Kelly was thriving, albeit in the inferior league, and Elway was benched in Denver after five games. And Woodley had gone to a Super Bowl.
At 7–4, the team was, said Zimmerman, “the class of their class.” After they blanked the Colts 37–0, Robbie chose the day of the next game, a Monday night contest against the Bengals, to announce Shula’s new five-year agreement. Matching Trump’s offer, he made Shula the NFL’s first million-dollar-a-year coach. At Shula’s insistence, he also gave the assistant coaches raises. The key to the deal, Shula deadpanned, was “a one-bedroom efficiency on Biscayne Boulevard.”15 In truth, he would sink $575,000 into a new, bigger home, right next door in Miami Lakes at 7345 Gleneagle Drive.
He went on to win that night, 38–14, and closed the season with five straight wins and, at 12–4, another East title, tying the Raiders for best conference record. However, Marino sprained his knee late in the season and Shula gave him the last two games off, going to his “long reliever,” Strock. But Marino was already an All-Pro and a strong candidate for Rookie of the Year (though he would lose out to the Rams’ Eric Dickerson, who led the league with 1,808 rushing yards). He had eye-popping numbers: 2,210 yards in 11 starts, 58.4 completion percentage, 20 touchdowns, 6 interceptions, a 96 passer rating, overshadowing two other QBs who threw for over 4,000 yards: Lynn Dickey, who led the NFL with 32 TD passes, and Bill Kenney, a Pro Bowler. His 7.39 yards per pass attempt, 6.8 touchdown percentage, and 3.27 sack percentage led the league, his 2.0 interception percentage second-best. Duper bloomed as his leading target, becoming the first Dolphin receiver to go over 1,000 yards, hauling in 51 balls and 10 touchdowns, sending him to the Pro Bowl.
In Marino, Shula had something he hadn’t had since Johnny Unitas. As great as Bob Griese was, Marino gave Shula the ability to make short work of any defense, in one killing strike, not 10 grinding ones. His team fed off the buzz that swelled on the downbeat to the snap. But all this was moving just a little too fast.
Marino’s knee seemed healed for the Dolphins’ first playoff game, on New Year’s Eve day against the heavily underdog Seattle Seahawks. Going 9–7 under Chuck Knox, they had made the playoffs for the first time in their seven-year history, beating the Broncos in the wild-card playoff. Their marquee player was rookie Curt Warner, who rushed for over 1,400 yards to lead the AFC and went to the Pro Bowl. But they had the 24th-worst defense.
The pregame hype was all about Marino, who in one story was dubbed, admiringly, a “QB Terrorist.”16 But to Knox, he was a rookie quarterback who hadn’t won a high-pressure game, while the Seahawks had had to beat the Raiders twice over the season to cop a playoff berth, behind quarterback David Krieg, a walk-on in 1980 but a budding All-Pro. And now, he would outplay the hyped rookie.
Marino did get off fast, zipping touchdowns to tight end Dan Johnson and Duper to go ahead 13–7. But, rushed hard, his knee hurting, he was stumped by Knox’s seven-deep prevent defense. As Barry McDermott wrote in Sports Illutrated, he seemed to be “looking through the trees all day,” throwing several tipped balls and two interceptions. Down 14–13 in the third quarter, he seemed lost. The Seahawks had stopped his running game and he threw for only 58 yards in the second half. As Seahawk fullback Dan Doornink would say, “Before the game, we could tell they were a little cocky. [But] I didn’t feel they had the intensity they’ve had in the past.”17
Miami led 20–17 with 4:43 to go, but were out of gas, allowing the Seahawks to come away with a 27–20 win. For Knox, who was carried off on his players’ shoulders, it was an exhilarating moment that, like Coryell after the Epic, would last just a week before his team was mauled by the Raiders in the AFC title match.
For Marino, and Shula, on the other hand, it was “Midnight for Cinderella,” penned McDermott. Still, it seemed this was one Shula could concede, even if he did so with his jaw tight enough to crack a walnut. As poised as Marino was, no rookie quarterback had ever started a Super Bowl. The bigger picture for Shula to consider was that his men again seemed to choke in a big one. He didn’t think it would happen much longer. Looking ahead, he was prepared to turn Marino loose in a big way. This was to be Shula’s gamble, one he would strap himself to for the rest of his time on the sideline.