I've also been watching old games recently. The team did have a commitment to the running game. They just didn't have the horses to have an effective running game. They tried with Sammie Smith and Mark Higgs to really establish the run. in the early 90's.
Off the top of my head, I have a list of guys who, a one time or another, were featured ball carriers when Marino was in Miami (I will leave out fullbacks such as Byars and Tony Paige because they almost never ran the ball). David Overstreet, Tony Nathan , Woody Bennett, Anda Franklin, Pete Johnson (primarily short yardage), Lorenzo Hampton, Troy Stradford, Sammie Smith, Mark Higgs, Bobby Humphrey (didn't get used much), Terry Kirby, Bernie Parmalee, Irving Spikes, Karim Abdul-Jabbar, Lawrence Phillips, John Avery, Cecil Collins, and James Johnson. Not exactly a list of franchise guys (and I may have left out a few). I still think the lack of a great defense hurt more than the puny running game. The combination of the two was a death knell for long playoff runs.
Agree with you completely. Diversity on offense certainly can help, especially late in games when it helps to run the ball to churn out short yardage first downs. But as we've seen in this current era, teams are slinging it in those situations more and more. Controlled passing.
The Dolphins offense typically moved and scored the ball well enough to win at an elite level, despite the problems running it. The major problem was always stopping the opposition.
When you go back through SB history, you won't find many champions that yielded more than 20-24 points. I haven't researched, but I'm confident the same is true of conference title games too.
In the 1985 AFC Championship game, the Dolphins defense yielded 28 points.
In the 1985 Super Bowl, the Dolphins defense yielded 38 points.
In the 1986 AFC Championship game, the Dolphins defense yielded 31 points.
In the 1993 AFC Championship game, the Dolphins defense yielded 29 points.
That's
31.5 points per game. In the 4 biggest games the Dolphins played in during the Marino era. It's really no surprise they only won ONE of those four games.
In total, the
Dolphins played in 18 playoff games during the Marino era. The defense yielded an average of 26.17 points per game.
I don't care who the QB or team is, when your defense is surrendering points like that, the odds of winning aren't very good. Even more so back in that era than today.
Now, the offense underperformed in many of those games too. They are not without blame. Only averaged 20.5 points per game in all 18 games. And sometimes put the defense in poor spots with turnovers and field position. However, some of the offenses inability to put up points can be attributed to the opposition controlling the ball against the defense and also the extra pressure put upon the offense because of it. They often had to take more chances to keep the defense off the field cause they couldn't stop anybody.
All in all, while the lack of a running game has been brought up ad nauseam, I firmly believe the Dolphins pass heavy offense and reliance on Marino was enough to get it done if they just had a viable and consistent defense and special teams. But invariably one or both of those units let them down time after time.
Nobody can convince me that the 84-92 era offense combined with the Zach Thomas, Jason Taylor, Sam Madison, Patrick Surtain, Tim Bowens, Daryl Gardener era defense wouldn't have won a SB. It wouldn't have mattered what the running game was like. That team would have been straight fire.
