Dan Marino never won a Super Bowl, but the Miami Dolphins legend and Hall of Fame quarterback did win an AFC title against his childhood team — the Pittsburgh Steelers — who immediately regretted not selected him in the previous year’s NFL Draft.
In fact, many Steelers fans of a certain age (including my father) still haven’t gotten over the fact that Pittsburgh passed on Marino, who in the 1984 AFC Championship threw for 421 yards and four touchdowns while leading the Dolphins to a 45-28 win.
“Tell him not to let it go,” a smiling Marino said in a 2024 interview with CBS Sports when told of the still-upset Steelers fan who has never forgiven his team for passing on Marino.
Marino recently took it a step further, saying that he would have won it all if his childhood team selected him in the 1983 NFL Draft.
“Looking back at their teams, I probably would have won a couple Super Bowls,” Marino recently said on current Steelers defensive tackle Cameron Heyward’s podcast. “I really do, because of the defense they had.”
Pittsburgh’s decision to pass on Marino is by far the biggest mistake in the franchise’s history. It was a mistake that then-Steelers president and future Hall of Famer Dan Rooney tried to stop from happening.
After initially passing on Marino, Rooney (who passed away in 2017) said during a 2014 interview that longtime NFL reporter John Clayton advised him to trade quarterback Cliff Stoudt for a draft pick that would have given the Steelers a second chance to draft Marino. Rooney liked the idea and pitched it to the team’s brain trust.
“I went into the room and I gave them the idea,” Rooney recalled. “They said, ‘Who’d you talk to?’ And I was so dumb, I said, ‘John Clayton.’ Well, that immediately was the end of that. That would have been a great trade.”
Rooney didn’t get Marino, but he made sure that his team didn’t make the same mistake twice when Pittsburgh was in position to draft another top QB prospect two decades later. In 2019, longtime Steelers orthopedic doctor Jim Bradley told Ben Roethlisberger what had Rooney told him inside the Steelers’ draft room in 2004 when Pittsburgh was allegedly leaning towards drafting Philip Rivers.
“Nope, that’s not our guy,” Bradley recalled Rooney telling him, via The Athletic. “I want the kid Roethlisberger from Miami. The kid’s a leader, that kid’s a winner. … You just wait and see, that’s our guy.”
The Steelers did draft Roethlisberger after he fell to them with the 11th overall pick. Pittsburgh, with Roethlisberger as their quarterback, won two Super Bowls, three AFC titles, eight division titles and went to the playoffs 12 times during Roethlisberger’s 18-year career that one will day be immortalized in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Why didn’t the Steelers draft Marino in ’83? The story goes that then-Steelers coach and future Hall of Famer Chuck Noll wanted to rebuild his team with defense, similarly to how the 1970s Steelers’ dynasty was started with the selection of future Hall of Fame defensive tackle Joe Greene in 1969, Noll’s first draft as Steelers coach. Pittsburgh followed suit in 1983 when they selected Texas Tech nose tackle Gabe Rivera. Rivera recorded two sacks in his first six games, but his career game to a quick and tragic ending after he was paralyzed in a car crash.
Marino was ultimately selected by the Dolphins six spots after the Steelers drafted Rivera. He led the Dolphins to a Super Bowl at the end of his second second, but Miami fell to a superior 49ers team that was led by future Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana. It would be the first and last Super Bowl during Marino’s Hall of Fame career.
As Marino alluded to during his interview with Heyward, the Steelers had good defenses for the majority of his 17-year career, which was spent entirely in Miami. Pittsburgh’s defense was especially good in the 1990s, as the unit spearheaded six consecutive playoff appearances that included three AFC title game appearances over a four-year span.
The Steelers appeared in one Super Bowl during that period, too, but fell to the Cowboys largely because of the team’s quarterback play. Pittsburgh out-gained the heavily-favored Cowboys, but two interceptions set up both of Dallas’ second half touchdowns. The Steelers lost, 27-17, despite out-gaining the Cowboys and holding future Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith to just 49 yards rushing.
Would Pittsburgh have won multiple Super Bowls had it drafted Marino? We’ll never know for sure, but it’s safe to assume that the Steelers’ odds of winning a championship during that time period would have been considerably better.
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