His elusive style quickly won him fans and acclaim and he was the clear offensive star for the newly competitive Saints. Mayes was also drafted by the CFL by the Saskatchewan Roughriders, but he chose the risk of the bigger pond of the NFL over the hometown hero angle, luckily for Saints fans. Taking the diminished Campbell’s spot at halfback was rookie Rueben Mayes, from North Battleford, Saskatchewan. Mora also weeded out players who were complacent with a very intense training camp, one that made Earl Campbell retire on the spot. They included linebackers Sam Mills and Vaughan Johnson, future all-pros as members of The Dome Patrol. The Saints led all NFL teams with 10 USFL players on their roster, and they weren’t hanging on the end of the bench, either. Though he wasn’t a fanatical true believer in the USFL, actually testifying for the NFL in the anti-trust suit the USFL brought, he did believe in individual players, and in the talent pool of the former USFL as a good source of depth and quick improvement. He had spent the previous three years in the USFL, the renegade spring league, and led his charges to the championship game in all three seasons, winning two of them.
#DOLPHINS VS SAINTS SCORE PROFESSIONAL#
Jim Mora was new to the NFL, but not new to professional football. New coach Jim Mora was doing what big names like Hank Stram and Bum Phillips couldn’t. This was a fanbase that started the decade by donning paper bags over their head in an ostentatious demonstration of shame at their team.
#DOLPHINS VS SAINTS SCORE FULL#
500 for a full season, and only once posted a positive point differential. The Saints had never been in the playoffs before, or been above. Fans were rabid for their 6-7 Saints, only a game and a half out of the second wild card spot. This all represented a disappointment to Dolphins fans, but to Saints fans, playing meaningful football in December represented something nearly unprecedented in franchise history. December saw them stagnate at 6-7, needing to win all their remaining games to still have a chance at the playoffs. Nobody on the Dolphins had more than five sacks, or two interceptions. Though linemen Doug Betters and Bob Baumhauer were once part of a defense fondly nicknamed the Killer B’s, they clearly had no sting left. The defense was a liability that Marino could not always overcome. The defense also gave up four hundred yards to Bernie Kosar in a loss to the Browns, and while usually losing to the 49ers in the 80s would carry no mark of shame, the two 49ers touchdowns were not thrown by Joe Montana, but by his backup, Jeff Kemp. It was the first of two times that month the Dolphins defense would give up fifty points in one game, losing 51-45 to the New York Jets two weeks later, wasting a game where Marino threw six touchdowns. He started the season by becoming both the fastest and youngest quarterback in league history to reach the 100-touchdown plateau in a game the Dolphins lost horribly, 50 to 28 to the San Diego Chargers. When the Dolphins faded from the top of the AFC in 1986, Marino was not to blame in the slightest. No one could stop Marino, even when they knew exactly what was coming. There was no longer much reason to keep defenses honest.
Shula won titles in the 1970s behind a fierce running game, but in the 1980s, he abandoned even the pretense of balance with Marino at the helm. Marino was such an undeniable weapon that he changed the entire way Don Shula approached the game. Marino’s release was almost too fast for cameras, and the accuracy of his passes to Mark Clayton, Mark Duper, and Nat Moore, were frightening. Marino’s 1985 saw him lead the NFL in touchdowns, completions, and yards for the second straight year despite all of those titles coming down from the year before, when he broke the single-season record for touchdowns in a 16 game season while still in the second quarter of the thirteenth game. That the Dolphins were upset in the AFC Championship game by the New England Patriots, preventing a high-stakes rematch, is one of many provocations that history has hidden just for me to discover and become upset about.
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It also ended the Bears’ bid for a perfect season, something that Miami still guards jealously to this day. The 38 points were triple the Bears’ season average. Marino led the Dolphins to a 38-24 victory that was not as close as it looked, throwing for three touchdowns and 270 yards, far above the typical day’s output for a Bears opponent. There, the greatest defense the league had seen to that point was set on fire and fell rapidly to the Dolphins and their third-year quarterback Dan Marino, the best quarterback the league had seen to that point. The one loss in the 1985 Bears’ 15-1 rampage through the NFL season happened on a Monday night in the Orange Bowl.
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