Beefed-Up Dolphins Are Talk Of Nfl World

The morning sky begins thickening, black as midnight. Don Shula looks up sharply. Sky gets message, clears up, and a field full of Dolphins goes back to work. After a while Shula sends them in for the last time until rookies return in July.

Is it my imagination, or are they stepping livelier than ever?

Are these Dolphins finally the truly anointed? If so, is this a one-shot Super Bowl deal? Do they either win this season or forget it practically forever?

Concurrently, do they have the soul to win it all? Every Dolfan has his own answers. These are mine.

Yes, this team is pumped, but unarrogant.

“On paper,” Richmond Webb muses, 312 pounds of offensive left tackle hulking rhinocerously in a big room that suddenly feels small at Nova Southeastern University, “we look ready. But you have to do it …”

He looks ready.

Yes, the world is convinced the Dolphins will take over the AFC, and so am I, for one of the extremely few times since The Perfect Season nearly a quarter-century ago.

Rick Gosselin of the Dallas Morning News shows up “to see the best team in the AFC, and potential Super Bowl champion.”

Sports Illustrated climbs on the bandwagon with an eight-page layout on Irving Fryar.

No, this is not a one-shot deal despite some serious opinion to that effect.

Shula acquired Trace Armstrong to passrush, Terrell Buckley and Louis Oliver for secondary help, Gary Clark and Randal Hill and Eric Green as targets for Dan Marino, young Billy Milner to strengthen right-side blocking. Soul? Check out Bert Weidner.

“If I were a horse,” says Weidner, a right guard without a team or anything resembling a clear-cut future, “I’d be in a drawer in some third-grader’s desk. I’d be glue.”

Weidner is unsigned after five years at right guard. He can’t even work out because of an ankle “that will always look like I stepped on a land mine” after it was torn up with 2 minutes left in Cincinnati last season.

Weidner could have gone on the injured list and gotten paid anyway. He played through because he thought the Dolphins had an honest Super Bowl shot. He is back because he still thinks so.

That offensive line’s right side is an unlovely sight. Third-year man Chris Gray has to produce. The Dolphins drafted Indiana’s Andrew Greene second to bring more pop to right guard, but Greene hasn’t even proved he can report in shape.”Milner right tackle is ahead of Greene,” according to Shula. That says as much about Greene’s lack of early spark as Milner’s abundance of it.

Center Tim Ruddy came in last year but didn’t play. But Monte Clark, returning these many years after fashioning Miami’s Super Bowl title blockers, at least has Webb and the equally talented Keith Sims on the left.

“Of course, our big questions are Keith Byars and Terry Kirby,” Shula says for approximately the 5,000th time.

Byars coming back whole at fullback would jack up the offense a good 15 percent.Downstairs of Shula’s office, players are filing out of the lunchroom, unseeingly passing a TV set. That TV is turned to CNBC, which shows stock-market quotes all day long. A lot of Dolphins are rich enough to talk stocks, but they are talking football.

Defensively, the Dolphins talk about the pass rush they could have with Armstrong, Tim Bowens, Marco Coleman and Jeff Cross.

“We’re close to being a good defense,” defense coach Tom Olivadotti says.

He says it very cautiously. Things have blown up in his face before. He lost five starters in 1993. Olivadotti catches so much heat you forget the universally frazzled state of NFL defense coaches. About half have been fired just since last season. About half.

Don’t think Olivadotti doesn’t notice.

“This isn’t like college where you can sit down before the season and say, ‘Well, here are four games we will win,”’ he says. “The talent is so much closer in the NFL.”

Olivadotti makes no secret of his new plan. Involve middle linebacker Bryan Cox in more pass rush on early downs without blitzing. Play more zone behind him.

The trick is to bring more pressure on passers without messing up a run defense that Bowens and Chuck Klingbeil, especially, have elevated to excellence.

Klingbeil, 288, sits before his locker with that friendly little smile that disappears when the whistle blows. He talks about a new attitude; not his, which has always been terrific, but the whole team’s.

Beside him, Bowens nods. Bowens’ contract calls for four workouts a week, and he sticks to it.

Every minute is a race for the defense. “In the NBA,” Olivadotti says, “they get 10 points ahead and rest the big guys and let the other team catch up and feel confident they can put the big guys back in and take over again. In the NFL, you never get far enough ahead.”

This particular day Olivadotti has been sticking to his own knitting and doesn’t see Eric Green make a falling-down catch of a Marino pass. Even that underscores Coach O’s point - NFL offenses are so devastating, no defense can relax for a second.

Conversely, one unassailable truth must give Olivadotti comfort when he looks at Green, the new tight end, and Clark.

Every play the offense runs means one fewer the defense has to stop.