Although the words were the same size as the others on the page, they stood out like a defensive lineman standing next to a kicker. “Trade Dan Marino. Keep Scott Mitchell.” That was the lede of Greg Cote’s column in the November 1, 1993 edition of the Miami Herald. It is the only portion that anyone remembers. It now lives in infamy. Cote brainstormed an idea that was then considered unimaginable: The Miami Dolphins should consider trading their most iconic player. And as if that were not enough, he suggested that the team ship off the legendary quarterback in favor of a relatively unknown backup who had only played in two-and-a-half games.
MARINO THE BELOVED
Dan Marino is a South Florida sports hero. One of the greatest passers of his generation, he is the Miami Dolphins’ most famous and beloved player. Before the NBA’s Miami Heat drafted Dwyane Wade in 2003, Marino was the face of South Florida professional sports and, in 1993, he was at the peak of his reign.
After he threw for over 5,000 yards and led the Dolphins to a Super Bowl appearance in just his second season in 1984, Marino burst into NFL superstardom. With him, expectations skyrocketed. Fast-forward to 1993. Despite racking up impressive passing numbers, Marino had yet to take the Dolphins back to the promised land. At 32 years old, his proverbial clock was ticking down, and his chances for capturing the elusive title were dwindling.
Prior to the start of the 1993 season, the Dolphins were predicted by many to win their division and represent the AFC in the Super Bowl in Atlanta. That path seemed steady as the Dolphins won three out of their first four games. But on a cold October day in Cleveland, the road to Atlanta became severely obstructed.
INTRODUCING SCOTT MITCHELL
Dan Marino had rarely been hurt and hadn’t suffered any major injuries as a Dolphin player. Since becoming the Dolphins’ starting quarterback six games into his rookie season in 1983, Marino had only missed two games due to injury, and that was during that rookie season. But on Sunday, October 10, 1993 in Cleveland, in his 145th consecutive game for the Dolphins, Marino’s luck ran out. With Miami up 10–7 over the Browns in the second quarter, Marino ruptured his right Achilles tendon throwing a screen pass, ending his season in a flash.
Marino’s backup, Scott Mitchell, a 6-foot-6, 230-pound 25-year-old southpaw, had been drafted by the Dolphins in the fourth round of the 1990 NFL Draft out of the University of Utah and had served as Marino’s backup the previous three seasons. By 1993, Mitchell’s only substantive professional experience was one NFL regular-season pass in a game against Seattle in 1992 when Marino sat out a play after a hit to the head. Mitchell had also played the previous summer for the Orlando Thunder of the now-defunct World League of American Football. He came into the game in Cleveland having thrown only eight passes in his entire NFL career.
After throwing a disastrous 99-yard interception, returned for a touchdown on his first pass, Mitchell settled down and led the Dolphins on two touchdown drives in the second half. The Dolphins won 24–14. No one had thrown for two touchdowns in a single game for Miami since Don Strock accomplished the feat in 1983.
The Dolphins proceeded to win their next two games with Mitchell at the helm. His best performance was in his second start, a home game against Kansas City on Halloween where he led Miami to a 30–10 blowout win over Joe Montana and the Chiefs. Against the AFC’s fifth-ranked pass defense, Mitchell completed 22-of-33 passes for 344 yards, threw three touchdowns and zero interceptions, and was named AFC Offensive Player of the Week. After two-and-a-half games, he was 44-of-62 for 652 yards and had six touchdowns and one interception, all for an outstanding quarterback rating of 119.2. If he had had enough throws to qualify, such a rating would have been the highest in the league at the time.
“YOU SEE [MITCHELL] DROP BACK AND THINK ‘THAT’S MARINO.’ EXCEPT HE’S LEFTHANDED”
Mitchell’s performances were enough to raise eyebrows. Ahead of Miami’s upcoming game against the New York Jets, an article in the Asbury Park Press contained the headline MITCHELL LOOKING A LOT LIKE MARINO. Jets defensive end Marvin Washington was intrigued by Mitchell as well. “Sometimes you look at it on film,” Washington said, “you see him drop back and think ‘that’s Marino.’ Except he’s lefthanded.” Cote was perhaps the most impressed. The day after the Chiefs game, he wrote his now-infamous article, the one that would follow him throughout his career, which started: “Trade Dan Marino. Keep Scott Mitchell. There. That’s what the unspeakable looks like in print. It may be time to start thinking about it. Much too early to let the idea set in cement, obviously—but not to weigh the increasing possibility.”
In the piece, Cote lamented that Marino would be 33 years old in 1994 and would be coming off a serious injury. Additionally, he noted that Scott Mitchell would be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season. Moreover, a new salary cap was about to be implemented. To be able to pay more money to younger players, teams were unloading veterans with high salaries. With Mitchell playing so well, Cote figured that there was no way that the Dolphins would be able to keep both Mitchell, who would cost an estimated $3 million per year, and Marino, who was due around $5 million a year. So, in Cote’s eyes, why not think about going with a young potential star and unloading Marino while he still had value?
The article immediately gained traction in South Florida, and Cote was quickly maligned. “I instantly knew what I had written was a pretty explosive thing to write in the Miami market,” Cote recalled in 2020. That same day, in the afternoon, Cote was invited to be a guest on Sports Jam, a local sports TV program on Miami-based WPLG Channel 10, in front of a live audience at Don Shula’s All-Star Café in Miami and hosted by former Dolphins wide receiver and longtime Miami sports broadcaster Jimmy Cefalo. The interview with Cote was a remote with Cefalo at the restaurant and Cote standing in front of the Miami Herald building in downtown Miami. As a joke, Cote’s face was pixelated on TV so it could not be seen and his voice was disguised as if he were in the witness protection program. When he was introduced, he was mercilessly booed by the restaurant audience.
Prior to the internet and social media, a local sports column would rarely be seen outside its market. But Cote’s piece spread quickly and triggered a great debate throughout the country. Although most of the reactions to the article were hostile and negative, the idea was not completely shunned. “I think they should trade Marino. He’s been overrated for years,” said one fan on a phone-in hotline to the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. “We have a future with Mitchell as a quarterback, and he is giving other members of the team a chance,” another added.
A few days later, Armando Salguero, another Miami Herald writer, played counterpoint to his colleague Cote’s piece and wrote that Cote’s suggestion to trade Marino was “blasphemy!” and such a consideration was “obscene.” Furthermore, Salguero pointed out, there was an issue about Marino’s trade value. How much could the Dolphins really get for a 32-year-old quarterback coming off a torn Achilles? One NFL GM told Salguero at the time, “I would not give up a first-rounder for him. And the Dolphins probably wouldn’t let him go for anything less than two first-rounders. It would be a tough sell in both directions.”
The buzz from the column seeped into the locker room. “It does make some sense,” Marino said about Cote’s suggestion. But Marino did express a hint of annoyance about the situation. “I’ve only been out two games, and here people have me traded.” The article never made it awkward for Cote to be around Marino, but he doubts Dan was too thrilled with him. “Privately, he probably thought I was an asshole… But he was always kind to me.” Mitchell’s agent, Tony Agnone, made sure to clear up any question that the article was not an actual controversy. “From a logical standpoint, you might make a case for it,” Agnone said at the time. “But from a realistic standpoint, it’s not going to happen. Scott has played two-and-a-half games, and Marino has played 11 years and is going to the Hall of Fame.” But Mitchell wasn’t surprised that there were people broaching the topic. “There was all kinds of discussion, not just in South Florida, but across the NFL and across the nation,” he said in 2020. “The Dolphins had been Dan Marino for so many years, and I don’t think people expected the backup that no one had heard of, to come in and play so well.”
According to former Dolphins wide receiver O. J. McDuffie, who was a rookie in 1993, trading Dan Marino was not on anyone’s radar in the Dolphins locker room. “No, no, no… not in a million years… We were just buying time until Danny got back. [He] was on fire at that point.”
Cote, and his column, continued to be the subject of much discussion throughout the course of the week. Later in the week, he told George Diaz of the Orlando Sentinel, “I’m wearing my bulletproof vest and surviving the firestorm down here.” In a follow-up column Cote wrote four days later, he explained that readers were flooding his message line, he had been receiving hate mail, and that local radio call-in shows were “engorged.” In addition to the Sports Jam hit, he appeared on TV and radio interviews across the country. The backlash, he believed, was predicated on one big misunderstanding. “I am not an animal!,” he wrote. Readers had misconstrued his message. He was not championing a “Dump Marino” campaign, he claimed. Instead, he was just putting it out there as something that people should consider. “All I’m saying, bottom line, is that this may become an issue the club must deal with and weigh strongly, so let’s talk about it.”
The following Sunday, the Jets handily beat the Dolphins 27–10 at Giants Stadium, which put the brakes on the Marino trade talk. “Thank God for one thing,” wrote Sun-Sentinel staff writer Charles Bricker a few days after. “Scott Mitchell’s soiree in New Jersey over the weekend will put an end to the trade Dan Marino drivel for at least a week.” After the game, Jets quarterback Boomer Esiason excoriated Cote’s suggestion to trade Marino. “Whoever wrote that better have his head examined,” Esiason said. “One of the main reasons we won is that the Dolphins didn’t have Dan Marino and they are a much different team without him.”
The week after the Dolphins’ loss to the Jets, Mitchell hurt his collarbone on the side of his throwing arm in a win over Philadelphia and was ruled out for at least a month. After a miracle win over the Cowboys on Thanksgiving, the Dolphins lost their final five games and missed the playoffs. Mitchell started the final two games of the season, but he wasn’t 100 percent. “I could barely pick my arm up,” he remembered.
“[SCOTT MITCHELL] IS HOPEFULLY THE MISSING PIECE OF THE PUZZLE THAT WILL ONE DAY TAKE THE DETROIT LIONS TO THE SUPER BOWL” (1994–1998)
The Dolphins did not trade Dan Marino. Mitchell did become a free agent and turned his seven starts into a three-year, $11 million contract with the Detroit Lions. It included a $5 million signing bonus. In 2022, that kind of money is small potatoes for an in-demand free agent quarterback, but back in 1993, it was a small fortune. With that contract, however, came pressure. At the press conference introducing Mitchell to the Lions, head coach Wayne Fontes glowingly stated, “This guy is hopefully the missing piece of the puzzle that will one day take the Detroit Lions to the Super Bowl.”
Mitchell’s tenure in Detroit is a subject of debate. In four seasons as a starter, he led the Lions to the playoffs three times. In 1995, Mitchell’s best season as a pro, he threw for almost 4,300 yards, 32 touchdowns, and only 12 interceptions. However, in his time with Detroit, the team never went further than the first round of the playoffs. In 1998, Mitchell was benched for backup Charlie Batch after the second game of the season and never earned his job back. He played three more seasons, all unmemorable—one with the Ravens and two with the Bengals. In 10 total games with the two teams, he threw four touchdowns and 15 interceptions.
Mitchell hung up his cleats after the 2001 season. He sometimes looks back to what could have been with the Lions. After the 1996 season, Fontes was fired and offensive coordinator Tom Moore, who had developed a high-powered Lions offense that fit Scott Mitchell’s strengths, moved on. The Lions hired Bobby Ross to replace Fontes. According to Mitchell, Ross just didn’t give a formerly great offense a chance to succeed. “I had really good years in Detroit,” Mitchell said in 2020. “We made the playoffs, and we would have continued.” His frustration does not stem from the way that they played but that the Lions kept changing things around so often. “If you really understand how hard it is to win in the NFL, and to win Super Bowls, you would want to exercise more patience with teams.”
In 2011, the NFL Network aired a program listing the “Top 10 NFL Worst Free Agent Signings.” The Lions’ signing of Scott Mitchell in 1994 was rated No. 9. Some interviewed for the program thought that was a bit unfair. “Scott Mitchell just gets totally destroyed in history,” said Giants play-by-play announcer Bob Papa. “He wasn’t as bad as everybody says he was… [he] wasn’t the greatest free agent signing, but there’s been a lot worse than that.” Aaron Schatz of the stats and analytics–based website Football Outsiders also defended Mitchell on the broadcast. “People forget just how good Scott Mitchell’s season was in 1995,” he said. “In our play-by-play breakdowns, he comes out as the best quarterback, most valuable quarterback in the league.”
“LOOK, THEY WEREN’T WINNING WITH [MARINO]”
Ironically, Marino, who was on a supposed career downslide, lasted almost as long as Mitchell. He produced incredible statistics and had a marvelous career, but he never made it back to the Super Bowl. Marino retired after the 1999 season and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005.
Does Marino’s lack of postseason success, in some way, vindicate Cote? Cote thinks so.
“The way it turned out, what Dolfan can honestly say the Fins might not have benefited from the change I wrote about? It was worth considering, which essentially is all I said,” he wrote in 2016. “Look, they weren’t winning with him.”
Decades later, the fact that someone put Mitchell in the same sentence with Marino, one of the legends of the game, is going to be ridiculed, especially given how Mitchell’s tenure with the Lions is generally perceived. It is a perception that Mitchell believes is unfair. “It’s frustrating because there is nothing I can do about it… I was a very good player in the NFL, and I don’t have any problem with that,” he said. “It’s just that being in a better situation would change things.”
In hindsight, would things have been different in 1993 if he hadn’t injured his collarbone? Mitchell thinks it is possible. “Had I not got injured, that season would have been different for our team,” he said. “Especially if we go to the playoffs and do well in the playoffs.” If such was the case, the trade-Marino conversation, which fizzled after the injury, may not have subsided. “I’m gonna play another 12 to maybe 14 years in the NFL at that point… I’m not so sure that the discussion wouldn’t have become reality.”
While it is impossible to know if Mitchell could have taken the Dolphins to greater heights after 1993, it is an objective fact that Marino did not. In the remainder of Marino’s career, the Dolphins didn’t even make it back to the AFC Championship. Mitchell thinks that may have been different if he remained in Miami. “Being in the same system, I would have done very well in Miami—I have no question about doing very well.” With an offense Mitchell was comfortable with, and many years left in the tank, could it have been much worse for the Dolphins? While most will still scoff at the thought of trading Marino being anything but sacrilege, in retrospect, Cote believes his suggestion wasn’t so far-fetched. But the reality is, as time passes, that kind of context fades away, and all that remains are the words Trade Marino. Keep Mitchell, which will live on forever.