My opinion of the Dolphins during that time is that Shula gave Marino too much control and he would constantly check out of plays to passes. It worked enough and he had enough cache that he was able to get away with it. But when it came to games against good opponents like the Bills it did not work. So many games against the Bills ended up with 4th quarter INT's thrown by Marino when trying to catch up. The Dolphins often tried to focus more on the run game but Marino constantly derailed it. I remember an interview when he was asked about it and said something like "running the ball is nice, we can do that once we are up by a couple touchdowns". He was his own worst enemy....this was an era you truly needed to run and stop the run.