I wasn't around in 1984. I can't imagine what it was like to be around, and see Dan Marino throw for 5,084 yards and 48 TDs. He wans't the first guy to throw for a bunch of yards - Dan Fouts got to the 4,800 yard mark a couple times. But this was more. He was the first person to top 40 TDs, and he topped it by 8, ending with a cool 48 (three per game). We've gone through 4-5 revolutions in football, even if people don't realize it, and this year still stands out as absurd. The TD total stood for 20 years. The yardage total has been topped a few times since, but it took 27 years for that to be done.
How ludicrous is that? 27 years is how long it took for Drew Brees to best Marino's yardage record (Tom Brady did as well that same season). 27 years is a long, long time in football sense. 27 years before Marino threw for 5,084 yards, was 1957 - when a second year Johnny Unitas led hte NFL is passing with 2,550 yards in 12 games. What Dan Marino did was ridiculous, and is the perfect entry point on his career.
Dan Marino never reached THAT height again because it was near impossible. He did reach great heights, though. Two years later he threw for nearly 4,800 yards, and 44 more TDs. No one period threw for 40 TDs until Kurt Warner did in 1999, and he did it twice. Marino was playing a game no one else did, despite never having the best weapons (good ones, to be sure, but not great), on a team that didn't rise with him but was pulled up by Marino time and time again.
Dan Marino was infamously the fifth QB taken in 1983, but that allowed him to go to Miami, where Don Shula steadied him into a QB machine that had the best start to a career ever. His rookie season himself was the best rookie season for a QB (a 96.0 passer rating, which is like a 105 in today's game). His growth would be astronomic, and while he never got better than 1984, he was so good for so long, for a team that slowly deteriorated around him.
Marino's skills were so apparent, that laser quick release, the ability to hit tiny windows deep down field. One of the more underrated aspects, and one that is another sign of how before his time he was, of Marino's game was his pocket presence and ability to not get sacked. This is one area that he was unquestionably the best ever (maybe until Peyton Manning, but when you adjust for era....). He led the NFL in sack rate 10 times, including the first four years of his career. In 1988, he was sacked 1.0% of his drop-backs. That doesn't even do it justice though. He went 759 snaps without getting sacked. Let me repeat: 759 dropbacks, over a season's worth, without getting sacked. That doesn't make sense. We will almost never see that record even approached.
Dan Marino did not win a Super Bowl. He is the NFL's poster-boy for the 'didn't win the big one.' The NFL's answer to Karl Malone or Charles Barkley. What's nice about Marino is he's never shied away from that label. He has a certain bravado and pride that allows him to wear that supposed dent as a badge of honor. It's not that he's the best QB to not win a Super Bowl, no one else comes close. There are other great QBs who haven't won. They aren't close to Dan Marino.
Marino's stats definitely declined late in his career, as an aging team under the last vestiges of Don Shula and then whatever that Jimmy Johnson Miami period devolved into mediocrity. But even in those years, Marino remained great - with strong numbers, still a super-quick release, and still an ability to just not get sacked. His career is truly the first QB career that reads like a modern QB who played in the pass-happy era (Peyton and onwards). Joe Montana was undoubtedly great, if not greater (and in my rankings, he is), but Montana's career stats page does scream a different NFL when you never approaced 4,000 yards, maybe got to 30 TDs, didn't throw all that deep. Marino's just looks different.
To some degree, Dan Marino's ability to drop back and sling with a great arm, quick release, good vision and pocket presence, is what invented the modern NFL QB. His ability to do this over 500-650 attempts year after year after year has become common-place, but he was the first to really do it and hold that value over a 10+ year career. Dan Marino set the stage for everything to come after him, but the real magic was he did it witha peak ability that no one could touch for 25+ years.
