Up in Arms: Two to Tangle

By Tom Callahan

Just the cadence of their names--Dan Ma-ri-no, Joe Mon-ta-na--the similarity of their bearing and stock--Pennsylvania grimy--the disparity of their builds and sun coasts--Miami and San Francisco--the level of their confidence, the quality of their arrogance, even the way they can make hair curl up under helmets and stand up on necks suggested a confrontation was coming one day. If all of the National Football League quarterbacks were ringed in a battle royal, wouldn't these two be the ones left standing at the end? That roughly describes the process of the past four long and occasionally languorous months, during which Marino's Dolphins lost only two games and Montana's 49ers merely one.

If 19 years of written history have demonstrated anything, it is that nobody can explain a Super Bowl in fewer than 38 million words, but a good description of the coming one is that Miami's fabled coach, Don Shula, and San Francisco's brainy Bill Walsh will be secondary figures Sunday at a new stop, old Stanford Stadium. This is the sophomore Marino's Super Bowl essentially, since Six-Year-Man Montana had one three years ago all his own, a special season that Defensive Coach Chuck Studley has particular cause to review. "In my opinion," says Studley, formerly of the 49ers, currently of the Dolphins, "Montana is the master of the big play. Every time we needed it, 20 eyeballs would turn and look at Joe, and he'd get 10 ft. tall. He was always that way, even at Notre Dame. Before Marino, I'd have said Montana was the quarterback. Now I don't know."

Recording 22 touchdown passes last season, although Incumbent David Woodley was not quite dislodged until the sixth game, Marino became the only rookie quarterback ever elected to start the Pro Bowl. Throwing 55 in 18 games this year, he displaced longtime Record Holders George Blanda and Y.A. Tittle, who took it manfully: "You can't criticize a trapper who's got the skins on the wall." Marino puts Roger Staubach in mind of Hockey Prodigy Wayne Gretzky. By the CBS-New York Times calculations, Marino is already the country's favorite N.F.L. player (Chicago's Walter Payton second, Montana third), and in the cautious view of the Miami Herald, "the best quarterback alive." Even Shula seems to cast Sunday's game mainly in the context of the wondrous season of this youngest quarterback ever to start a Super Bowl, just 23. "Everything Dan has done has been some kind of record," he says. "The records will be so much more meaningful if we manage to win it all."

After the Dolphins won the American Conference championship game, strafing Pittsburgh 45-28, Marino's final interview was with former Steeler Quarterback Terry Bradshaw near midfield of the Orange Bowl at dusk. Passing quarterbacks passing in the twilight: a fairly irresistible image. Even when Marino's gums are not packed with tobacco, there is a flash of boy Bradshaw. "Just as nicely unpolished," says Rocky Bleier, another retiree, "the same weight problem, the same quick release, the same compulsion to throw into the coverages." Police dogs were escorting Marino to his white Corvette in the parking lot. "What a ride he's on," murmured Bradshaw, whose Super Bowl ring features four gems. "I'm going to get me one of these," Marino said. "Yes," Bradshaw agreed, "and soon."

Not exactly offensive or entirely appealing, Marino has several grace notes to offset a sometimes snarly street-corner manner. A ready laugh, for one. "Just taking it easy, having fun," he likes to say. His common speech owes something to Huntz Hall and Leo Gorcey, though he can shift from "dese" and "dose" to a surprising eloquence. He sways behind the center like a royal palm, but it is a greater wonder how he can swagger sitting down and strut standing still. A compact passing release is characteristic of his general economy of movement and thought. "Most quarterbacks have that high- arm action," Shula demonstrates, "but everything he does is down in here," motioning about shoulder level, "a terrific torque, that tremendous explosion. Bam!"

At the urging of feature writers running out of angles, scientists have been put on the case to find out if Marino represents some genetic or neurological improvement in people. Around Miami, the mystery of his arm has been a welcome new intrigue, not to mention a cheerful national counterimage to Miami Vice. Theories have run from abundant fast-twitch muscle fibers to advanced eye- search patterns to the suspicious breadth of his thumb. What does the monster think? Marino takes a stiff Frankenstein step and laughs. "I dunno. You got me."

Having already explained that he learned solid passing fundamentals as a child, mainly from his father, he is inclined to let it go, like the football. " 'Throw from your ear,' he told me, 'don't wind up. Do it that way now, even though it's harder, and when you're bigger and stronger, you'll be glad.' " Asked if his dad, who drives a newspaper truck in Pittsburgh, happened to have a particular love of sports, Marino replies perfectly, "He happened to have a particular love of his children." For a happy period, their work and school shifts coincided. "He would hit me grounders, or we'd throw the football. 'Don't think you have to go out for any teams for me,' he'd say. Even now, when we talk on the phone, he'll tell me, 'Hey, I'm going to enjoy watching you play Sunday,' no big deal. When I was younger, we talked a lot about things like always putting the team ahead of yourself. He taught me that. But it's tough to do sometimes."

While Shula is reasonably analytical, he finds Marino largely self-evident. "He's an amazing young man, but he's not amazed with himself. Everything Dan does just seems to fit him. Frankly, we haven't been questioning too many things about him. Last year, when he was 22, the coaches didn't sit around worrying how he was managing to command the huddle or the offense. Nothing he has done has seemed out of character or against his nature. 'You're not ready for this, Dan.' 'You can't do that, Dan, it's only your second year.' We haven't used phrases like that too much."

There was one question in the beginning, not just puzzling but murky. How could almost every other team have been so wrong about Marino? "You can't predict that anyone is going to be better than anyone has ever been," Shula / says, a stunning sentence. "Before the college draft, everybody in the league calls up everybody else and lies to each other about which players we all like." As for the 1983 class, Miami agreed with the rest that the clear prize among five or six significant quarterback prospects was Stanford's John Elway, who broke in harshly last season at Denver but enjoyed a mortal's measure of success this year. Elway aside, Shula sensed he was legitimately alone in his admiration for the famed junior star at Pitt who had fallen on more than mean times as a senior. "Dan was the MVP of each all-star game I saw. We kept saying to ourselves, 'What's wrong with this guy?' "

The rumor was the usual one, drugs, and it was so prevalent that in the presence of Pitt Coach "Foge" Fazio, Marino was tested and passed. Still unconvinced that three losses in twelve games constitutes disgrace, Marino looks back at his 42-6 college career with no expression of regret. "Go to high school and college in my own district. Be the starting quarterback. Have a chance at a national championship. I thought it would be a lot of fun to do that--and it was. You're not always going to be successful, but everything's worked out great." Quarterbacks Elway, Todd Blackledge (Kansas City), Jim Kelly (Buffalo), Tony Eason (New England) and Ken O'Brien (New York Jets) all preceded Marino in the opening round, when San Diego passed him three times. Dolphin Personnel Man Charley Winner remembers that come the 27th pick, "Don didn't even turn to the staff and say, 'What do you think?' Bam!"

The other Miami players, especially the most grizzled veterans, refer to Marino in fond terms. Twelve-year Guard Ed Newman talks of protecting "the mother lode 4 yds. behind me." For bench-pressing 510 lbs. and conquering thyroid cancer, Newman is acknowledged as the strongest person on the team, possibly the most poetic. "We never questioned Marino's youth," he says, "because he has a timeless poise. It's a magical blend of humility and self-confidence. For a while I honestly wondered if he was a fluke or a dream. Now I think we all feel like we're part of a glorious machine. Those are magicians on the other end of the ball too."

A symmetrical set of them, in fact, 5 ft. 9 in., though Mark Duper judges Mark Clayton to be somewhat taller, "except that he's bowlegged." They are referred to as Mark II, Mark twain and the Marks brothers in a city that can say Miamarino without blushing. Disavowing his family name, Dupas, for one that rhymes with super, Duper started out as Marino's bright particular sidekick both last year and early this season. Then the untaciturn Hoosier Clayton came babbling along. As the defenders flowed to Duper, Marino turned to Clayton. A more mature Smurf, Nat Moore, took a pensive look at the pair and made a note to retire after this season, his eleventh.

"When I was young," Moore muses, as if 33 were ancient, "I wondered why I had single coverages against me, as great as I was. Maybe it had something to do with those three guys over on the other side of the field covering Paul Warfield." Left out of the end zone for six straight games, Duper gave thought to moping until Moore assured him, "When the guy on the other side is open, it's because you are dictating the coverages. When he starts dictating them, it'll come back to you." All three gathered touchdown passes against the Steelers.

Marino also caught a pass, from Running Back Tony Nathan, though the play was canceled by a penalty. "We just wanted to show that to them (the 49ers), get them thinking," according to Shula. So the battle is drawn, potentially the least inhibited in all Roman-numeral history. For meanwhile, shutting out Chicago 23-0 in the National Conference title game, Walsh had Montana exchange places with Wide Receiver Freddie Solomon once, and twice a third guard was slipped into the backfield. "There's some excitement and adventure to those kinds of things," Walsh says, "and some risk of embarrassment too. It can border on the absurd."

During the brief, odd season of the 1982 strike, when the defending world champion 49ers won just three of nine games, they crossed over the border. Injuries were rampant, but some damage reports came in late from the Super Bowl, not all physical. "It's such a hype, such a dramatic and traumatic experience," Walsh says, "you can be consumed by it. When the glory first starts to erode and then quickly passes completely, some players seek that state of mind elsewhere and can't find it. We've had our victims." Then last year San Francisco returned to form and only narrowly missed going back to the Super Bowl. This season the 49ers stand just a Pittsburgh field goal from being undefeated. "Oh, I'm glad we're not," Walsh sighs. "That would have been brutal. We'd have surely cracked somewhere."

Throughout, Montana has been consistently fine, and personally considers the short year his best. Completing 63.8% of his passes, he threw for 32 ( touchdowns this season. By the complicated logarithms of the N.F.L.'s slide rule, he is the top-rated quarterback in all 65 years of the league. "With the running we have now (Wendell Tyler and Roger Craig)," Walsh says, "there's less pressure on Joe to do it all, and yet we expect even bigger plays from him down the field. We're not a ball-control passing team any more. Joe can get himself on balance and throw as quickly as anybody ever could. Marino is certainly the greatest passer the game has seen in a long time, but Joe has those nimble feet."

Montana laughs and says, "Handing the ball off is easy, and it's fun to watch sometimes, great when the holes really open. But you don't feel a part of it as much. I like control." That's Marino's impression: "Montana looks like he has everything under control and knows exactly what he wants to do. What's more, he seems to know in his mind that whatever happens, he's going to help his team win." At 28, Montana is about to take a third bride, this time the Schick sheriff from his TV shaving commercial. Meanwhile, Marino is engaged to marry the girl from back home, which was Montana's first move. Joe is a slender wraith, Dan a plump bull with creaky knees. "We seem to be different in almost every way, and our offenses are completely different," says Montana, who figures to be more the field general in the game, Marino more the bombardier. "But maybe there is something to coming from where we do (Monongahela and Pittsburgh). People compete for everything back there."

Another direct competition matches 49ers' Place Kicker Ray Wersching, a central character in Super Bowl XVI, and the Dolphins' Uwe von Schamann, who is without even a 40-yd. field goal this season. Of the defenses, San Francisco's is better but may have to be. Miami defenders heretofore have seemed vulnerable, especially to the run. The rookie 49er secondary men of 1981, Ronnie Lott, Eric Wright and Carlton Williamson, have added sophistication to toughness, and Pass Rushers Fred Dean and Dwaine Board are ready and wanton. Through a coincidence of surnames, the Dolphin defenders are called the Killer B's--Betters, Baumhower, Bokamper, Brudzinski, Brophy, Brown, Bowser and Blackwood (Brothers Glenn and Lyle), but they have had to work at being emotional. "Maybe in the back of our minds," Tackle Bob Baumhower says, "we were relying too much on the offense and Marino."

Everything always seems to turn back to Marino. "He hasn't been stopped yet, - and probably won't be in the Super Bowl," says Walsh, "just misdirected, hopefully." Montana figures, "If he has a better day than I have, but we still win, and everyone afterward wants to say he's better than I am, that's fine with me. Just so we win the damn game." Effectively it is a 49er "home" game. Among the planned trappings are elegant beer cans rising up over a Palo Alto shopping center in the understated embrace of a 40-ft. inflatable ape. The commercial TV time has reached $1 million a minute. A thrill a minute would be nice too.