Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Sounding off, softly
Hall of Fame quarterback Marino advises coach Gase, but only when asked
Some days, Dan Marino emerges from behind the curtain for a few seconds inside Miami Dolphins camp in sweatsuit and reading glasses. He’ll saunter through the locker room and maybe nod a greeting, in a cameo that makes visitors do a double-take. A few weeks ago, when quarterback T.J. Yates signed with the Dolphins, he was surprised to see Marino in the hallway, then even more when the Hall of Famer sat in during the quarterbacks meeting.
Like most newcomers, Yates had no idea Marino worked inside the team. Like most outsiders, he felt momentarily starstruck.
“It’s Dan Marino sitting there,” Yates said.
What does Marino do there? He’s a football grunt, just as he enjoys. He watches video. He studies schemes. He sits in meetings and offers ideas, though Dolphins coach Adam Gase said, “You have to, to ask him, what he would think or how he would see it, because he won’t just … he’s not overbearing in that way.
“He’s almost reserved, and he wants for you to come to him.” An example of Marino’s thoughts? Gase chuckled. “Well, I know if that seam route is even close to being open, he’ll just say, ‘Bang that in there.’
Gase holds his hands out, palms up.
“As coach, you’re always like, ah, Dan, could do that.”
Marino has no title for his football side, nor does he apparently want one. He has no office inside the Dolphins facility, nor does he apparently need one (“They’d know when I’m not working,” he has joked with friends.)
He isn’t a centerpiece of coaching strategy or public attention, nor does he ever want to be. He agreed to, then declined, an interview about his role, saying, “There’s really no need to talk about it.”
“Special advisor to the president and CEO” is the official title Marino has had with the Dolphins the past three seasons. That’s for his business-side duties, though, where he glad-hands teams sponsors and appears with owner Steve Ross and other team executives at games.
This is the first season Marino has worked on the football side. Previous coach Joe Philbin discouraged former greats — Marino, Jason Taylor, anyone — from having much of a voice with players. Gase values it.
“He’s a good sounding board, especially for the quarterbacks,” Gase said. “I’ve always enjoyed talking to him, because he has a great perspective of anything we’ve ever discussed.
“I’ve always liked watching film with him and getting his two cents on things. … He’s seen so much football over his time, and he always gives the quarterbacks a piece of advice that seems so small at the time. It’s a big deal because it’s the way he saw it, and the way he saw things was special.”
Everyone agrees, he’s a background voice. He’ll offer strategic thoughts or, occasionally, toss out a pet phrase from his passing style like, “Pick a guy and let it fly.”
Once, during training camp, he put on a blackand-white video from his younger days, “where he had a big Afro and was doing some drill throwing balls against a wall,” rookie reserve quarterback Brandon Doughty said. “Everyone got a laugh out of it.”
Doughty was a senior at North Broward Prep when he first met Marino. The team’s coach, Jeff Dellenbach, was Marino’s teammate with the Dolphins and asked him to help Doughty.
For a couple of days, Marino showed footwork drills, honed techniques and suggested Doughty do something to improve in-the-pocket foot speed that he once did in his youth: jump rope.
Still, Doughty says it’s, “kind of surreal,” to have Marino sitting there in meetings.
He’s a presence, if an understated one, around the larger team, too. Players talk with him, joke with him. Receiver Jarvis Landry says a running joke with Marino is “how different things are now than when he played. Like he looks at our lockers with all these cleats and says he only had one pair of cleats in his locker.”
Guard Jermon Bushrod says Marino sits down with everyone and “talks just like everyone else does about what’s going on. It’s pretty cool, him being a Hall of Famer, just having him around and knowing what he’s done.”
Marino has no designs or desire to eventually lead the Dolphins as does his one-time rival and friend, John Elway, in Denver. He likes this contained role, those who know him best say. He’s happy being on the inside talking football and speaking the language of quarterbacks.
If his voice is a reserved one inside the team, his name isn’t. When Yates joined the team, he went to get a jersey from the equipment staff.
“What’s your number?” he was asked.
“That’s not going to work,” he said. Yates took No. 16. His desired No. 13? That’s retired with the Dolphins.