DOLPHINS/BEARS 1985 MONDAY NIGHT GAME.
it was an eerie thing before the game. you could feel the tension and the excitement through the tv as you watched the perfect 72 team players standing on the sideline, coach shulas "this is MY legacy" look on his face. marino stalking the sideline, licking his fingers waiting to show the best who the best really was. the crowd was rocking and yelling like it was the final play in the 4th quarter and you made the play or went home. and this was BEFORE the game started!! never saw anything like it, before or since.
the bears sideline was business as usual. players smiling, jeering at the finz bench. ditka up and down the sideline smacking on his gum. buddy ryan standing stowic and smirky like "this is gonna be shooting fish in a barrell". they were already ordering dinner for the team flight back home. in their minds, it was over and nothing more than a night of practice on their way to perfection.
and then THE GAME: dan marino at his finest hour. what makes it so good is it was the kid gunslinger, the best in the biz up against the evil land barons hired guns who had brutalized and layed waste to all the other gunslingers in the terratory who the good ranchers hired to come up against them. watching the look on the bears faces as they realized just how good the kid gunslinger really was. knowing they may have bit off more than they could chew and there was nothing going to stop it. the ship was sinking. no life rafts. and buddy ryan and ditka flailing at each other on the sidline, red faced, contorted, a mutiny at hand. it was all like being in slow motion, when you see the tragedy unfolding in front of you and its like a ticking clock. it was THAT intense! and danny marino was masterful, surgical. he found guys who were not open and didnt miss a single one who was. watching him glide through the constant onslaught of bears rushers was magical stuff. he was in control, out of control just a machine doing what it was programed to do. dan marino, the marx brothers, don shula. their finest hour. the best beating the best.
WORST GAME: dan marinos final game against the jags with the imortal jay feidler coming off the bench to throw 5 td's on us laying on 70+ flukey points and sending shula and marino off in the most demeaning and undeserved way possible and having the dolphins brass fall for fiedlers magical mass point game and trade for his services and and become the catayst of the 12 years of misery and misdirection the team has suffered. [see matt flynn] hopefully, this kind of thing ends with the philbin regime.
the contrast between these two games is stark. sickening. from the very best, to the very worst. watching two proud generals limping around with dead futures and broken bodies was to much to bare. what odd bookends for such storied careers. this is what makes this game so much more heart breaking than the monday night miracle or any other of the long list of heart breaking games this team has piled up over the last decade.
