Don Shula Deserves To Fare Better
If the Chicago Bears were the Miami Dolphins, and maybe they are, the fate of the head coach is a local story. Even if Jimmy Johnson is sitting in the waiting room, it’s just business, and somebody else’s.
But Don Shula belongs to everybody, as George Halas did, and Tom Landry, like the faces on Mount Rushmore and the lady in New York Harbor.
That’s what Shula has earned, not just for remaining employed for 33 years, or taking four distinct teams to six Super Bowls, but because he is the last of the legacy, of Paul Brown, and Halas and Vince Lombardi, of raw days and raw men.
He’s being done in by punks, Shula is, and maybe he has been around too long. A stare used to be enough, or an extra jut in the jaw. Shula commanded. Now he sweats.
And he hears the chant from the stands. “Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy,” meaning the aforementioned Johnson, who hunkers down in the Keys like a weather front, ready to move north any day now.
Sunday’s dramatic finish … 11 seconds to play, Marino looks, looks, finds Fryar at the goal line … against Atlanta may mute the skeptics for a week. The last loud count to fire Shula as coach ran nearly 80 percent for dumping Shula in favor of the lacquered Johnson, the same man who helped put the local university on serious probation.
If Johnson were the coach, of course, Dan Marino would not have to be pulling games out at the end, no one would be talking back on the sidelines, the locker room would be full of bonded warriors and Super Bowl reservations could be made in August. You know, like it used to be under Shula.
Maybe that is how it would be. That’s how it turned out in Dallas, where Johnson joined in the ambush of Landry. Johnson not only knows the drill for displacing legends, he helped write the playbook.
It is not likely Shula will be fired before the end of the season, but if the Dolphins do not reach the Super Bowl, Shula is gone, Shula and his assistants, to whom he has always been as loyal as they to him.
It has come to this. Phone-poll loser. Talk-show wretch. Just like any other sweat-sock coach. Shula is the man they named an expressway after.
Shula’s owner, Wayne Huizenga, the Blockbuster guy, paid out $18 million in bonuses to stock the Dolphins this season, to do with money what Jerry Jones and Eddie DeBartolo have done, buy titles.
What a safe bet that seemed, like giving Spielberg a blank check and all the film he can shoot. But it has not worked. Except for a brief absence of Marino, all the mercenaries have stayed healthy, and cheaper teams with discards, like the Colts, beat the Dolphins, home and away.
Worse, players gripe about playing time, threaten to sit out games if their friends don’t play, argue with their coaches on the sidelines and snitch to the press later.
Placing blame is much easier than making tackles. Irving Fryar was quoted as saying, “When God looks down at a church, he holds the pastor accountable for what’s happening to the flock. A pastor; he’s the one leading us. We’re the sheep.”
Shula is the working museum of the NFL, the man who taped the plays to Tom Matte’s wrist, who had the uprights extended, who made the game modern by losing to Joe Namath and the Jets, who went undefeated, who indulged Marino into his special martyrdom, who hasn’t done enough for anybody lately.
Sentiment outside Miami is that Shula deserves better, but he deserves what he gets, as do all coaches. He does not deserve the review of ciphers like Fryar or the selfishness of the age he occupies. And he does not need sympathy.
May Shula be allowed the dignity to leave on his terms. May he know it is time.
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Bernie Lincicome Chicago Tribune