Pro Football / Bob Oates : Dolphins Found Way to Beat the Bears: It’s Spelled M-A-R-I-N-O

The nation’s best passer beat the best defense in football Monday night when Dan Marino led the Miami Dolphins past the Chicago Bears, 38-24.

But it isn’t likely that his performance will be instructive to the rest of the league. It takes a Marino to do what he did to the blitzing Chicago team, and there are few Marinos.

The quick-passing Miami quarterback, whose intentional throwaways were his best plays, was born to handle the defense that has been terrorizing the rest of the NFL.

His was a two-part approach:

--First, Marino knocked the Bears out of their defensive game plan.

Against their heavy blitz, he threw the ball in a hurry to wide receivers running short crossing patterns just across the line of scrimmage.

This area was open because Chicago’s linebackers vacated it to blitz Marino and because Chicago’s strong safety moved up to the line of scrimmage, as usual, in the Bears’ preferred defense.

The crossing wide receivers, Mark Duper and Nat Moore, were open because they were faster than the Bear cornerbacks who were chasing them.

The key to the success of this attack was Miami’s use of three wide receivers, including Mark Clayton, whose role was to stretch the defense downfield.

--Second, after Marino had driven the Bears out of their blitzing defenses, he picked them off with the weapon he likes the most, the long pass to Clayton and others, which he threw occasionally from a rolling pocket.

The Chicago defense can only be beaten with big plays--it is doubtful if any 1985 offense can sustain long drives against this team--and Marino is one of the finest big-play passers of all time.

The Bears’ Mike Ditka keeps proving that he’s the NFL’s most aggressive coach.

Among other things, Ditka made two startling calls Monday night, an onside-type line-drive kickoff at an unexpected moment, and a pass on fourth down and 34 yards to go.

Had either play succeeded, the Bears could have won.

Ditka’s daring calls for one team and Marino’s execution for the other helped ABC hold what probably was the largest audience in Monday night football history. The overnight Nielsen rating was the highest ever.

Ditka’s only serious mistake contributed to the defeat. He might have pulled the game out with Jim McMahon starting the second half at quarterback. The nicest Bear, Steve Fuller, is no Marino, and no McMahon, either.

The NFL’s leaders seem to be making a serious mistake with the dallying tactics that are holding up the use of radio-wired helmets.

Several manufacturers are ready to put a little microphone in each quarterback’s face mask and radio receivers in the helmets of his teammates.

There is probably no other satisfactory way for a football team to eliminate the noise made by partisan hometown crowds.

Football fans apparently believe, with some justification, that the cost of an NFL ticket--$20, $25 and up--gives them the right to take charge and drown out the voice of the visiting quarterback, as they often did, again, at Miami Monday night.

These fans perhaps cost Chicago the game in the fourth quarter when some of McMahon’s blockers couldn’t hear him and jumped offside on first down at the Miami 17.

Conceivably, McMahon should have stood there and waited awhile--as the patient Fuller had waited earlier--but McMahon is a typical wild-eyed Ditka ballplayer. Would Ditka have waited? Nah.

The Denver Broncos are playing a different kind of defense these days with a rover named Karl Mecklenburg, who sacked Pittsburgh’s quarterbacks four times Sunday--sometimes as a linebacker, occasionally as a defensive lineman.

Suddenly aggressive, the Broncos, formerly a rubber-band defensive team, had six sacks altogether. In 12 previous starts this season, Pittsburgh passers had been downed only 18 times.

Mecklenburg, a 6-foot-3, 250-pound 12th-round draft choice in 1983, played seven positions against Pittsburgh.

Said Denver linebacker coach Myrel Moore: “Whoever picks the team to go to Hawaii (for the Pro Bowl), it better have Karl on it. The Broncos got themselves a defensive end, a nose tackle and a linebacker when they drafted him.”

The Minnesota Vikings made good use of three former USFL players in the NFL’s comeback of the year Sunday when, in the fourth quarter, they came back from a 23-0 deficit and scored a 28-23 victory over Philadelphia.

Linebacker David Howard, formerly of the Express, tackled Eagle tight end John Spagnola, forcing the fumble that set up a touchdown.

“Hey, man, I’m a player,” Howard said.

Defensive lineman Keith Millard, formerly of Jacksonville, hit quarterback Ron Jaworski on the fumble play that became a 65-yard Minnesota touchdown.

“(Linebacker) Chris Martin straightened him up and, boom, I just tackled him,” Millard said. “That counts as a sack, right? I needed that one.”

Anthony Carter, a former USFL Player of the Year who caught only 14 passes in 10 Minnesota games before going on his present tear--13 in three weeks--scored twice.

“I hope I’m out of my shell,” he said.