Marino, Young to enter Hall

CANTON, Ohio -- Dan Marino took the long, straight road to the Hall of Fame. Steve Young traversed a long and winding route.

Both got to the football shrine this weekend thanks to often dominant performances that few NFL quarterbacks could match and few defenses could handle. Marino was the most prolific passer in league history, and Young brought an exciting brand of uninhibited play to the game.

They will join yet another quarterback, Benny Friedman, and Fritz Pollard as the Class of 2005. Friedman and Pollard were NFL pioneers.

"I don't know that there's much difference in playing the quarterback position, other than Steve was more mobile and ran more and probably didn't go downfield that much," Marino says. "The idea is the same: You got to get the ball to the receivers and not throw interceptions.

"I am happy for Steve, it's an incredible honor for anyone who gets inducted. Look at Steve's career and I am proud to be able to go in the Class of '05 with him. He is a guy who won a Super Bowl, and you look at Steve and he had a little adversity early in his career and was able to come back and worked the way he has and to win so many games."

For Young, naturally, the feeling is mutual.

"It's kind of fun, because we're bookends, right?" he said. "Dan is the epitome of one side and I'm the epitome of one side, our style. I think that there was a style that Dan had that was very much more traditional at the time. And I think that my style, while it wasn't traditional when I started playing, I look around the league today, and absolutely, the quarterback can move around."

Marino and Young both benefited from playing under Hall of Fame coaches. Indeed, while Marino probably would have succeeded in any situation, his working relationship with Don Shula catapulted him to his arm's length worth of records.

"It was amazing how everybody tried to defense Dan," Shula recalls. "As a young quarterback, they tried to give him all kinds of looks and blitzes. But he had such a quick release, so they discovered blitzing was not the thing to do.

"What Dan had, everybody talks about the quick release and it certainly was quicker than anybody who ever played the game ... but the thing that made Dan so special was his vision downfield."

It helped make Marino the most prolific passer the NFL has seen. When Marino left the Dolphins after the 1999 season, he had NFL bests of 4,967 completions, 8,358 passes, 61,361 yards and 420 touchdowns. His record of 48 TD passes in the 1984 season was broken by Peyton Manning last year.

Young began his pro career in decidedly non-Hall of Fame style. He played for the Los Angeles Express of the USFL, then the Tampa Bay Buccaneers before Bill Walsh engineered a trade to get him to the 49ers.

Young sat behind Joe Montana from 1987 to 90, but replaced the future Canton inductee when Montana was injured in 1991. He kept the job for most of the rest of the decade, leading the Niners to the 1994 NFL championship -- their last title.

The first modern-era left-handed quarterback elected to the Hall of Fame, Young was the league's most valuable player in 1992 and 1994. Young made seven Pro Bowls and was a three-time All-Pro.