INDIANAPOLIS -- The saddest sight in sports yesterday was watching Don Shula wheeled through the locker room after another loss, in another stadium, during another December where the losses are mounting and the questions are rising and the picks and axes are coming out -- chip, chip, chip -- on that once undentable granite jaw.
No one likes to see a legend without his fastball. Certainly not this legend. But here it was, another bleak Sunday in Dolphinland, and no matter how you put a wrenching 10-6 loss to Indianapolis on the players, it keeps coming back to Shula as well, just as the good times always did.
True, Dolphin players couldn't punch up the winning touchdown on six plays inside the 5-yard line in the closing minutes. But did you note the sideline confusion? Players started in, then turned and went out, in and out, seemingly play-after-play, as coaches decided and re-decided what plays to run at the goal-line in the 15th game of the season.
Shouldn't such bread-and-butter be settled by now?
True, too, a blow came at first half's end, as Irving Fryar was tackled at the Colts 2-yard line and time ran out. Maybe Dan Marino should have thrown into the end zone. Maybe Fryar slipped. Certainly the clock wasn't managed well.
But should Shula have passed up the sure field goal to convert a fourth-and-1 with 18 seconds left or for that final play with 13 seconds left? More obvious, and more importantly, why did the Dolphins waste two needed time-outs early in the half, as has become customary, because plays were late coming in?
For years, Shula was rightfully above doubting. Someone would say he could take his'n and beat your'n. That would be that. But now the curiosity is why he has had the NFL's top quarterback and still can't mold a champion?
One year isn't important. The past decade's tapestry is. It was six years ago when Joe Robbie first mentioned the fear of "wasting the Marino years." The thought hasn't changed.
Last week, the Dolphin offense was great and the defense wasn't. Yesterday, it was the reverse. It's always something. It can't be that way with contending teams.
"I wish I had the answer," Dan Marino was saying, like he has near the end of seasons for so many Sundays.
The supposedly back-breaking argument for Shula is that he's rarely under .500. The proper response is that with Marino, the player most teams would kill for, he shouldn't be.
Marino didn't play his best game. But he had one TD catch dropped by Fryar, and he had the game placed on his shoulders, as usual. He lost yesterday. Still, he'll not only win several each year this way, but a few no one else could.
Take this year. While coaches were calling for time-out against the Jets, Marino was calling out the "Clock" play to cap the Miracle in the Meadowlands. After Keith Jackson entered the huddle in the New England opener with a fourth-and-five, gotta-have-it play, and added the coaches wanted Marino to throw only for a first down, Marino threw instead for the winning touchdown.
That's what his talent can do.
But it can't overcome receiver's drops and coaches' confusions or plays being sent in late so time-outs are wasted. Those latter problems are Shula's department. It is late in the year to be sorting them out. Late, and depressing.
The Dolphins had a chance to clinch the AFC East, as well as control a bye in the first round of the playoffs. Now they stare at Detroit and the possibility of a the tough post-season made tougher.
Marino, on a stool, and Shula, in his wheelchair, sat talking quietly in the deserted locker room after Sunday's loss. Each was down. It wasn't a sight to see, one legend no closer to a Super Bowl ring, unfortunately in good part because the other is seeing another late season elude him.