Mike Celizic

Dan Marino was inducted into the Hall of Fame on Sunday, and there's no question he belongs. But give the voters a big thumbs up for also electing Steve Young, who many considered a borderline choice to get in.

I wasn't one of those, but Young wasn’t a slam-dunk is because he was San Francisco’s No. 1 quarterback for just seven years, and only three times did he play 16 games in a season. So he didn't have the gaudy stats that Marino had — Young’s 33,000 yards are just a bit better than half of Marino’s 61,000.

Indeed, for many people, when you’re talking about the greatest quarterback ever, the conversation starts and ends with Marino for the very simple reason that he threw for more yards and more touchdowns than anyone in the history of the game, records he will keep until Peyton Manning — if he stays healthy — does to them what Barry Bonds has done to the great home run records.

But if you had to win one football game — say a Super Bowl — and you had to pick either Marino or Young to play quarterback for you, which one of them — in his prime — would you want under center?

Call me crazy, but I want Young.

It’s not for the reason you may think, which is that when Young finally got his day in the Super Bowl, he won it, and when Marino had his, he lost. It’s because of the one number on Marino’s resume that never gets mentioned when people discuss his greatness.

It is this: In 17 years, Marino ran with the ball 310 times. He gained 87 yards and scored nine touchdowns, never more than two in a season.

Young ran 722 times and gained more than 4,200 yards — nearly six yards a carry — and scored 43 rushing touchdowns, 29 of them in his seven full seasons, and seven in 1994. That was also the year he led the 49ers to the Super Bowl and won it over San Diego, 49-26. In that game, he was 24-for-36 for 325 yards and six touchdowns. He ran five times for 49 yards — nearly 10 yards a carry.

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Young, in fact, had a better career quarterback rating than did Marino. Young’s record of 112.8 in 1994 was the league record until Manning rang up a 121.1 this year.

I’ll take that 1994 Young any day, even over the 1984 model Marino who threw for just over 5,000 yards and the record 48 touchdowns that Manning finally broke this season, 21 years later.

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