Dan Marino is a football god among men and one of the best quarterbacks to ever do it. Not only is he monumental to the football world in general, but more specifically to the Italian-American community. Marino was able to overcome an incredible amount of physical adversity, drawing from an unending well of strength to play through it all.

Dan Marino Deets:

Dan Marino hails from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. He was born to his father of Italian descent and his mother, Veronica, in 1962. Marino is the oldest of three, with two younger sisters, Cindi and Debbie.

The future NFL great attended Catholic schools all through his childhood. Unsurprisingly, Marino was a football and baseball star in high school.

When he graduated, the Kansas City Royals attempted to draft Dan in the 1979 amateur draft. The future pro QB decided football was his path and decided to attend the University of Pittsburgh instead.

Marino was a huge asset to Pittsburg. The team only lost three games in Dan Marino’s first three seasons, and the Panthers took the Sugar Bowl at the tail end of the QB’s junior year. A rough senior year and alleged drug use made him less in demand than anticipated in the 1983 draft.

Dan’s Drug Debacle:

The alleged drug rumors are still speculated to this day. It’s not clear where it originated from, although there have been plenty of ideas. What’s truly tragic about it all is that there was no clear drug use. We aren’t event-talking PEDs here; there were rumors he might have toked up with his buddies or just partied hard on the weekend.

Conveniently, a drug test that confirmed that Marino was clean didn’t surface until a year after the draft.

Joe Montana will tell you that the truth behind a drug rumor doesn’t matter as much as the actual rumor. Much like Montana, some feel Marino’s being targeted was just an attempt to bring down someone who stood out for being great.

Another theory about where the rumor originated is that it came from the NFL. It has been proposed that the Miami Dolphins may have planted the rumor themselves, so Dan Marino would fall further down in the draft so they could pick him.

It’s hard to say, but the rumors were bad enough that Chuck Noll, head coach of the Steelers, did admit he passed on the QB because of them. Drug rumors were unprecedented at the time; in 1982, the idea of speaking about drug addiction publicly, outside of a “hippy issue,” was a brand new concept. It’s not surprising people reacted so strongly to the idea, but it makes the rumor that much more vicious.

Marino was selected 27th overall in the first round. Five other QBs were selected ahead of Dan: Ken O’Brien, Tony Eason, Todd Blackledge, Jim Kelly, and John Elway. In the 30 for 30 series by ESPN, Bill Hillgrove recalled Marino being physically ill when O’Brien was selected before he was. He didn’t know who O’Brien was; many people didn’t.

Despite a tough draft, he decided to turn down another league’s offer. He was selected first overall with the USFL, selecting the Los Angeles Express. Jim Kelly and Herschel Walker went that route, with the NFL player’s strike of 1982-1983 influencing everyone’s decision.

Dan Marino

Herschel Walker signing with the Dallas Cowboys after a few seasons in the USFL – Sports Illustrated

Dolphins coach Dan Shula said that being drafted so late put a chip on Marino’s shoulder. The chip that all greats have.

Dan Marino Is Good and Stuff:

Unlike other generational talents, Dan Marino didn’t really need a learning curve in the league. He was a pro bowler in his first season and made it to the AFC divisional playoffs.

In 1984, Dan Marino broke six season passing records, two of which were broken by Peyton Manning and Drew Brees. A decent peer group to be in.

That same season, he was the NFL’s MVP and made it to his only Super Bowl appearance. A timely reminder that a QB’s skill level is not determined by rings. You can catch an in-depth look at the Super Bowl game in Joe Montana’s Peacock documentary series.

Marino’s career continued on like this until the injuries started in 1993 and plagued him for the duration of his career, which ended in 1999. Dan was one of the few QBs who remained on the field at the same time for his entire career of 17 seasons. Retirement was a tough choice for Marino, but he knew his body couldn’t likely hold up for another one. He had to hang up his different-height shoes once and for all.

Dan has been on a few top 100 NFL player lists.

Dan Marino

Dan Marino enters the HOF in 2005 – DolphinsTalk

His career is not defined but is at least partially explained by the culmination of his accolades. Besides his MVP in 1984, Dan Marino was the NFL Offensive Player of the Year, the NFL passer rating leader, and the Bert Bell Award recipient. He was the NFL Comeback Player of the Year in 1994, the George Halas Award recipient in 1995, and won the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award in 1998.

There were many accomplishments that Dan made several times in his career. He was first-team all-pro from 1984 to 1986, second-team all-pro three separate times, a nine-time pro-bowler, the NFL passing yards leader five times in a row, and the three-time passing touchdowns leader from 1984 to 1986.

Besides that, Marino was enshrined in the College Hall of Fame in 2003, the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005, the Dolphins Hall of Fame as of 2011, and his number has been retired both at the University of Pittsburg and the Miami Dolphins.

About Those Injuries

At least to this author, Marino’s ability to be so great despite an incredible amount of injuries is what makes the QB so inspirational.

The Achilles Tendon

In 1993, Dan Marino tore his Achilles. He had a no-contact injury that made him crumple to the ground, describing it as feeling like he got kicked in the back of the leg. It would end up being a season-ending injury. As it is for most. Especially in the 1990s. His collapse didn’t look unlike Aaron Rodgers’s fall to the ground, as shown in the YouTube video below.

In an interview where he empathized with Aaron Rodgers, Dan Marino describes how the surgery went wrong for him: “The surgery to fix the Achilles didn’t work the way it was supposed to. The tendon atrophied and elongated, so I couldn’t put weight on my toes and push off the front of my foot when I was throwing the ball.”

In 1994, Marino returned to the field with a special shoe on one foot and an atrophied calf muscle where his tendon ruptured. It’s important to notice that his tendon didn’t just tear; it unraveled in a fibrous explosion from his calf to his heel. His gait was never quite the same.

Despite the doubt that many others had, Dan Marino knew he still had the ability to win. And win he did. But in the same interview, he describes having to compensate for his problematic surgery: “Even though I couldn’t move like I did before, I felt like I was going to be able to make people miss and move around a little. Your mind and body take over, and you figure out a way to make it happen.”

The Hip, the Knees, and the Ankle

Once Dan Marino hurt himself in the 1993 season, it was hard to keep track of the myriad of problems that seemed to fall behind it.

The QB always had a bad left knee, though, something that he mostly kept out of the limelight. He had five arthroscopic surgeries on his left knee by the beginning of the 1995 season as a Miami Dolphin and once before that in college. Dan always wore a knee brace on the left knee as a result. His knee was already arthritic in the joint at that time.

In 1994, Marino had bone spurs removed from his ankle. In 1995, he had arthroscopic surgery on his right knee after feeling an odd clicking in the joint, missing only two games post-surgery, which seems alarmingly low. That same game, he had a severely bruised hip, which hurt more than his leg.

Apparently, the hit was so bad that the player got an unnecessary roughness penalty—a difficult achievement in 1990s football. The majority of his weight hit Marino in the hip, creating a large bruise that had to have blood drained out. A drain remained in the hip due to continued pooling after the initial bloodletting. Doctors anticipated that the hip would actually take weeks to heal and months to stop hurting. They didn’t know Marino, though; he just missed the two games and pushed through the pain.

He finished off the injuries we know about with another surgery on his right ankle in 1996.

Dan The Man

In a Sports Illustrated article from 1994, the full extent of Dan Marino’s mobility problems (at the time) was fully examined.

Former Miami Dolphins trainer Ryan Vermillion described in the article how cringe it was to watch Marino walk: “I put my head down when he walks. It’s horrible. When he plays he looks a lot better.” The limping was obvious. He wore a huge knee brace on his left leg, a smaller one on his right knee, a brace on his right ankle, and a right calf muscle that is half an inch smaller in diameter than the left.

Somehow, when the whistle blew and it was go time, Dan went from peg-legged to pro, with no sign of difficulty moving in sight. He knew he wasn’t quite able to do all the same nifty moves in the pocket, but he still turned on the performance when the curtain was raised.

What happened after he bowed one last time at the end of the game? An ice bath of sorts. With enough ice to float a polar bear, Marino would ice both legs after the game before he could get dressed and go home, where he would do it all over again.

What Has Dan Marino Been Up To?

his article would be remiss without covering some of this Italian-American talent’s post-retirement moves. In 2019, Dan Marino replaced both knees. The former QB states that his left knee didn’t have any cartilage left after a 17-season career and six knee surgeries. After Dan was a little more mobile, he lost some weight, something he has been proud to share. Dan the Man is back on track physically.

Mentally, only Marino knows. He both entered the concussion lawsuit claiming that he suffered head trauma during his NFL career and then left it as of 2014. He knows he had a few, but he decided not to pursue things further legally.

Dan Marino has also been a bit of a Dan Juan. In 2014, Marino lost his fancy CBS analyst gig he had for 12 seasons after the news dropped that he had an affair with a fellow CBS employee that resulted in his love child being born in 2005. Somehow, he was able to keep his seventh child under wraps until 2013.

Dan Marino

The Marino family (sans his seventh child) (Photo courtesy of the Dan Marino Foundation).

Marino made a deal with his co-worker that she would relocate, and he would send her millions to take care of her and the child. He did occasionally see his youngest child, but her mother has since moved on, and she has taken on the last name of her stepfather. It’s unclear if Marino is in the child’s life at all at this point.

What we do know is that Dan Marino is still married to his wife of 35 years, Claire. They have four biological children together and two adopted children. He appears to have time to be an active participant in those children’s lives. We all make mistakes, so it doesn’t make sense to be overly harsh, but it was still a nasty thing to do.

After his little faux pas, the Miami Dolphins hired Marino as a special advisor in 2014. He remains in this position today and works closely with players like Tua Tagovailoa.

Dan has spent a little time in the media outside of his analyst career with some acting roles, commercial endorsements, and as a Men’s Life ambassador for AARP. He also dabbled with ownership in NASCAR, but he seemed to leave that behind for a while now.

The Dan Marino Foundation

Probably one of the more redeeming parts of Dan Marino’s post-retirement life has been the creation of the Dan Marino Foundation. The foundation has many different facets to it, but it primarily focuses on serving children with neurodevelopmental disabilities and developmental and psychological problems.

Marino has put his knee replacements to good use with his annual “Walk About Autism,” which helps raise awareness and money for autism. This is a condition near and dear to Dan Marino’s heart, as his son was diagnosed with autism.

Dan Marino The Role Model

 

Dan the Man has been an important role model for a QB we all know and love in 2023 – Mr. Irrelevant. Brock Purdy, who is of Italian and Mexican descent, has looked up to Marino since he was five years old. Representation matters!

Purdy was born on one of Marino’s game days in 1999, and according to his father, he had been watching the HOF QB since the day Brock was born. Brock Purdy wears number 13 in honor of Dan Marino. He watched Marino’s highlights and attempted to emulate the QB’s moves since he could hold a football. Purdy isn’t so irrelevant anymore, and Dan the Man could definitely have a worse QB worship the ground he walks on.

Rock on, Dan Marino; you are a medical marvel and, according to Joe Montana, the best QB ever. We can’t disagree with Joe, another Italian-American legend we will talk about in the future.

Want to read all about Nick Sirianni, a current Italian American in the league who is making us all proud? Look here.