Only Don Shula had a real chance to keep Vince Lombardi from his throne. Because the Colts had been a headache for the Packers during the regular season—albeit losing to Shula by a total of four points over two meetings—their season-within-the-season in ’65 loomed as a personal grudge match, with a shot at the title at stake for the winner. In the draft—held ridiculously early, on November 28, 1964—Shula and Don Kellett could make another down payment on the future. With the 14th and last pick in the first round, Baltimore took Duke fullback Mike Curtis. Shula, who hadn’t kept his eye on the college game much, knew Curtis was an absolute mad dog—nicknamed “The Animal”—but he already had one of those in the backfield in Matte. Instead, he wanted to try Curtis at outside linebacker, utilizing his speed and ferocity. He liked what he saw in camp and made the switch, though Curtis would pay his dues, mainly sitting as a rookie.
Clearly, Shula needed youth on the roster. Before the season, Marchetti and Pellington called it quits. Gino broke the news to Shula when the two, along with Unitas, accepted an invitation from the air force to conduct a football clinic at the base in Weisbaden, West Germany. Without depth up front, Shula had to improvise, using the 30-year-old placekicker Lou Michaels, whom he had obtained in ’64, back at his aboriginal position on the defensive line, putting faith in a guy who had tested his discipline, drawing numerous fines for beer-drenched curfew violations. Shula, foreseeing Pellington’s exit, had made a key trade the year before, ridding himself of a problem child, halfback Joe Don Looney, who lived up to his name with some truly loony and violent behavior and general insubordination. Looney, who would die at 45 in a motorcycle accident, was traded for the Lions’ Dennis Gaubatz, who eased in between the outside linebackers, Steve Stonebreaker and Don Shinnick.
But Shula must have been temporarily insane when he traded his second-round pick, Oklahoma offensive tackle Ralph Neely, to the Cowboys for punter Billy Lothridge, who was promptly sent off to the Rams in August. Neely would play 13 years for Landry and make the ’60s All-Decade team. On the other hand, Shula drafted a future gem, Jackson State defensive end Roy Hilton, a steal with his 15th-round pick.
On balance, he had a strong if aging team. Marchetti’s absence would mean teams could better contain the holdover defensive linemen, Fred Miller, Billy Ray Smith, and Ordell Braase. But they had a strong offensive line and secondary. And they had Unitas, Orr, and Moore, the game’s best offensive triangle, with Mackey always a potent threat, and Shula hired a new assistant, former Colt Dick Bielski, as his receivers coach. However, disaster hit just as things looked rosy.
The Colts won the opener, a blowout of the Vikings, then pulled into Green Bay for the first critical Packer game. On a balmy 47-degree day, they pushed the Pack around, outgaining them 309 yards to 184. But turnovers—the biggest being a Unitas pick that was returned 44 yards by Herb Adderley for a touchdown—kept it close. In the fourth quarter, Unitas capped a drive with a five-yard touchdown pass to Berry for a 17–13 lead. The Pack were hurting. Both Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor had left the game, as had Bart Starr with a leg injury. But his sub, 34-year-old Zeke Bratkowski, lofted a lazy spiral for Max McGee. Lenny Lyles, the corner, missed bumping him and McGee beat safety Wendell Harris for a 37-yard score. Down 20–17, the Colts had a last shot, but Matte caught, then fumbled a pass, gift-wrapping a win for Lombardi in what Sports Illustrated called “a thriller.”
Lombardi, with a sigh of relief, hailed “two superb defensive teams.” Shula, though, was upset. “We just gave them the game,” he lamented. “This is tough to swallow.”1 Rosenbloom was less politic. “We blew it,” he said. As the season wore on, Unitas battled injuries, coming out of one game with a bad back and missing another. Still, the Colts won eight straight, followed by a tie with the Lions, to lead the division. In week 12, against the Bears, Unitas was mauled—he completed just three of nine for 24 yards. With four minutes left in the half, he took a hit and fell to the turf, grabbing at his right knee. Unable to rise, he was helped, limping, off the field. After the Colts’ 13–0 loss, he was diagnosed with torn ligaments and was in the operating room a day later, finished for the season.
Dauntingly, the next game was the rematch with the Packers, who loomed half a game back. Unitas’s backup, Gary Cuozzo, a former Phi Beta Kappa student at Virginia, confidently proclaimed, “That’s what I’m here for.” He kept the Colts in it for a half, but the defense cracked, allowing Hornung and Taylor to go on a stampede and letting Starr, who hit on three touchdown passes, control the ball. But then Cuozzo went down, too, separating his shoulder seriously and undergoing surgery the next day. Matte, the nominal third-string QB, was probably more shocked than anyone when he was told to go in and take snaps, with Shula sending in the plays. He threw three passes, completing none, and had one intercepted in the 42–27 loss.
Suddenly, Shula was behind in the race, by half a game, and had no quarterback as he neared the finale, a Saturday game against the Rams in LA. During the week, he called Woody Hayes, Matte’s old coach, for assurances about him. The garrulous Hayes said Matte could do the job. There was just one flaw in his game, said Woody: Matte was bad at taking the snap from center. As Shula recalled years later with a dollop of sarcasm, “That’s all I needed to hear.”2
Helpfully, the Steelers’ owner, Art Rooney, offered Shula his team’s third-string QB, 37-year-old Ed Brown. Shula said okay, but it took three days for him to clear waivers. Brown arrived in LA the day before the only game he would be eligible to play in, which would also be the last of his career. Shula had Brown come right to his hotel room, where he, his offensive coaches, and Unitas—on crutches—gave Brown a crash course in the Colts playbook. During pregame warmups, Shula recalled, the team looked “horrible. . . . Everyone appeared flat,” and Matte and Brown “couldn’t complete a pass.” Fortunately, the 4–9 Rams were an easy touch, and if the Colts beat them, the Packers would need to beat the 49ers up the coast on Sunday to clinch the division; with a loss, they would have to face the Colts in a playoff.
Shula figured he could get by with defense and the running game. Matte started, a condensed Colts playbook written in code on his wristband so he could call a play if he had to. Shula, though, gave Matte and Brown strict orders not to pass unless told to. Despite Shula’s exhortations, the Colts indeed came out flat. Matte had awakened that morning with a fever, and Shula alternated him with Brown, who looked lost. Over the entire game, Brown threw five passes, Matte two. The running game did its job: Matte, Moore, and Hill ran for 210 yards. But the Colts trailed 17–10 in the fourth quarter. Then, given one of Unitas’s favorite plays, Brown hit Mackey over the middle on a stunning 68-yard touchdown to tie it up, his third and final completion of the game. With four minutes left, Michaels, who had made a 50-yard field goal earlier but blown three others, booted one from 23 yards. The defense preserved the lead when Roman Gabriel dropped back to throw with a minute and a half to go. The ball was tipped by Billy Ray Smith and grabbed by Bobby Boyd, icing the exhilarating 20–17 win.
The Colts hung around LA that night. Some of the players were invited to a party in Hollywood that Matte recalled was “full of young starlets.” He and Unitas had a few beers, “chatting up the girls,” when defensive back Jim Welch “came out of one of the bedrooms, whispering, ‘They’re snorting cocaine in there.’ I turned to John and he was already gone. With a cast on one leg, he hopped down three flights of steps faster than you could believe.”3 On a more natural high, the team flew home, the Ram win treated in the press as some kind of bold statement. The next day, Bob Maisel opined in the Sun, “The Colts may not win the World Championship this year, they probably won’t even get a chance to play for it. But, yesterday in Los Angeles, they played what might have been the most satisfying football game in their history.” Cameron Snyder’s take was that “a miracle [was] performed” and “the Colts looked like dirty-faced urchins caught in the act of stealing an apple after their astounding victory.” All agreed with Matte’s appraisal of the coach, which produced the headline HUMBLE MATTE GIVES COACH SHULA CREDIT.
The following afternoon, the Colts got the shock of their lives when the Packers could not close the deal, the game in San Francisco ending in a 24–24 tie. With Shula and Lombardi both 10–3–1, the league hurriedly set the playoff game—the 10th in league history—for the following Sunday, the day after Christmas, which normally would have been on a bye week leading up to the title game a week later. Lombardi got the home field by dint of the Packers’ two wins over the Colts, and this was no small advantage over any team that had to come to Green Bay in late December and somehow function in finger- and toe-numbing arctic conditions.
With Brown’s one-game contribution over, Shula had no choice but to put the task of beating Lombardi into the raw hands of Matte, who would once again wear the wristband containing the plays. As in the Ram game, he would be instructed to run on first, second, and, if possible, third downs. If Matte didn’t hand off, he would roll out like an option quarterback and look for a hole—or else, if he saw a receiver close enough, shovel a short pass to him. All else was in the hands of the defense.
It was cold, of course, at Lambeau Field—22 degrees with a wind chill of 12—steam rising over the open grandstand from rabid fans’ heavy breathing. But Shula’s defense made the first big break. On the Packers’ first play, Bart Starr threw a short one over the middle to Bill Anderson, who caught it, but fumbled on the Packer 25. Don Shinnick scooped it and ran it in for the touchdown. Worse for the Pack, Starr, trying to tackle Shinnick, took a spill and injured his ribs. So now Lombardi had a quarterback problem too. And the Colts were sky high after making a goal-line stand, blunting Hornung and then Taylor to take over on downs. Packers guard Jerry Kramer recalled that Shula used a surprise five-lineman, one-linebacker set, and on the Taylor run, it “fouled up our blocking, and [Dennis] Gaubatz had a clean shot at Taylor.”4
All game, Colt pass rushers would harass Starr’s sub, Zeke Bratkowski. At the half, Baltimore led 10–0. No one thought Lombardi would go down quietly, though. While Taylor gained only 60 yards on the day, he carried 23 times, battering the Baltimore front line. The Pack loaded up against the Colts run, daring Matte to throw, which he did 12 times for 40 yards. But Matte did his job, running 17 times for 57 yards, the same as Hill, though Moore was held in check. The game plan was indeed simple. As Matte recalled, “Every time I came off the field, I ran straight to John [Unitas],” who would tell him what to do.
Finally, the Pack began to move. A 33-yard Bratkowski pass to Carroll Dale set up Hornung to run it in from the one in the third quarter, cutting the lead to three. But the defense was tenacious. Bratkowski was intercepted by Logan, then by Boyd. As the clock ticked down on an astounding upset—the greatest ever, as Shula envisioned it—Bratkowski got one last drive going, aided by a dubious face-mask penalty on Billy Ray Smith that moved the ball to the Colts’ 15. With 1:58 left, kicker Don Chandler came in to try for a 22-yard field goal for a tie and perhaps to force the game into overtime. Striding into the kick, Chandler sent up a wobbler that the wind ushered to the right. Chandler jerked his head in disgust. But when the ball crossed over the 10-foot-high upright, it seemed impossible to call. The ref, Jim Tunney, stationed under the crossbar, needed to make a decision immediately. He thrust his arms into the air, signaling that the kick was good. On the sideline, in a topcoat and fedora, Shula let out a scream, wildly gesturing “no good.” Colt players cursed and kicked the turf, some sinking to their knees in disbelief. After the clock ran out, they had to regroup for the second overtime in NFL history.
As with the ’58 Colts–Giants game, the league was picking up new fans by the minute, and the teams extended the contest deep into the extra period. The Colts had a shot when Michaels tried for a 47-yard field goal, but Bobby Boyd, the holder, botched a high snap from center Buzz Nutter and the kick dribbled short. That left it for the Pack to move it to the Colt 18, where Chandler kicked an undeniably good field goal after 13 minutes, 39 seconds of overtime, ending what was the longest NFL game to that point—a far more savage, and better, game than the alleged “greatest game ever played.” Well after it was over, Chandler’s hands were still shaking from the tension. Hornung had bruised ribs and could barely breathe. Packers Hall of Fame tackle Forrest Gregg called it “one of the toughest games I ever played. You got to give them a lot of credit for the way they played with what they had to play with. I’m glad it’s over.”5
Shula, who congratulated Lombardi at midfield, sending him on his way to decimate the Browns 65–12 in the title game, had come so close to changing the course of history that, inconsolable, he kept the locker room door closed to the media for 20 long minutes so that he and the players could blow off their anger. Shula then calmly engaged in coach-speak about how proud he was of his team, and that the ref didn’t beat them, that they had their chances but let them slip. The only sour note came when a reporter bizarrely asked him, “What program are you planning for the Playoff Bowl?”—referring to the joke of a consolation game that would take place the following week. Glaring, Shula stared at the guy.
“I was thinking about that all afternoon,” he said, oozing sarcasm.6
All he would say about the tainted field goal was that he thought it was wide, but he would never let go of the belief that he had been jobbed. A few days later, when NFL Films came out with its celluloid record of the game, the critical kick was shown in slow motion and stop-action, from behind the end zone—and, clearly, a few feet wide. Indeed, Chandler would tell John Steadman 30 years later, “When I looked up, the ball was definitely outside the post.”7 Old Colt fans still curse Tunney and the NFL for what they swear was a conspiracy against Shula and for Lombardi, never mind the Colts’ overtime foibles. The league, too, seemed to admit that the call was wrong when it made significant changes, lengthening the uprights to give the refs a better perspective on field goals, and putting a second official on the goal line under the bar. Whenever Shula ran into Tunney through the years, even a half century later, he would want to argue the call. Exasperated, the ref would tell him, “Christ, can’t you let it go?”
C.R. was more vocal. “We didn’t deserve to lose,” he fumed in the locker room. “There was no justice out there.” Under those circumstances, he added, “I was never more proud of any team I’ve ever had,”8 which certainly appeased Shula. Indeed, the unexpectedly close contest only helped cement his reputation. Bob Maisel wrote that Shula “never did a better coaching job.”9 The Monday headline in the Sun accentuated the positive—“WE GAVE IT OUR BEST SHOT,” SAYS COLTS’ DON SHULA. A common theme emerged around town that the Colts were something like uncrowned champs. Nobody argued with Matte, who sank to his knees as the winning kick was made, and who later said, “We have nothing to be ashamed of.” Least of all him. Matte came away a folk hero in Baltimore, his wristband itself a folk legend, to be enshrined under glass at the Hall of Fame. In the Runner-Up Bowl, Shula unwound, letting Matte throw all he wanted. He strafed the Cowboys 35–3 before the biggest crowd ever to see one of those vacuous games—over 65,000. Afterward, Tom Landry praised Matte for being able to dissect his famed Flex Defense, not that the Cowboys took the game seriously. Shula giggled at Landry’s over-generous compliment. Matte, he said, “didn’t have the faintest fucking idea what the Flex Defense was.”10
As the ’66 season began, months of secret negotiations had transpired between the most powerful executives in the NFL and AFL to end their costly war, one that had sent salaries soaring, and merge into a unified NFL. In doing so, the AFL owners betrayed their own commissioner—none other than Al Davis, who had been given the job, ostensibly, to bring the NFL to its knees, begging to merge on the AFL’s terms, with Davis as NFL commissioner. But in reality, Davis had been given the title to keep him from gumming up the negotiations between Cowboys president Tex Schramm and Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt, who signed the deal on the tarmac of Dallas’s Love Field. Davis was so infuriated at being shunted aside that he upbraided his league for capitulating too soon, quit as commissioner before he could be fired, and went back to the Raiders, gaining additional leverage as co-owner.
The merger was scheduled to commence with the 1970 season. In the meantime, the identity of each league was kept intact, and a world championship game between the two leagues’ titlists would be played at a neutral site. Most NFL people thought the AFL’s teams—all of them—were too inferior to play in such a game. Indeed, the NFL title was regarded by most as the real championship, while the newly made NFL-AFL Championship Game was viewed as merely a bow on top of the season. As such, it seemed unthinkable that Lombardi wouldn’t be certified king or saint or god after that ’66 season. And he was, but only after Shula made it close. Too close.
The Colts were an enigmatic team coming into the season. At 33, Unitas would need to have his knee drained periodically, further limiting his mobility, and Lenny Moore was clearly on the way down. Jim Parker had to move from guard to tackle because of a retirement. But Unitas was still Unitas. Sports Illustrated, in its preseason forecast, said the Colt roster was “not as deep as it could be, but should give the Packers a grim enough fight for the conference title.”11 The league had scheduled the first Colt–Packer game of the season for opening day, in Green Bay, and Lombardi took Shula down, 24–3. Unitas had two passes intercepted and run back for touchdowns in the second quarter. The Colts mustered just over 200 yards of total offense. That stung, but Shula got them back on track, winning seven of the next eight, even with Unitas hampered by injuries. Johnny U would have more interceptions than touchdowns over the season, 24 to 22, but again make All-Pro by rote.
When the Colts met the Pack again, on December 10, the Colts were 8–4, having just disposed of George Allen’s Rams as a divisional challenger, and two games behind Lombardi with two weeks left. Memorial Stadium was full and loud on a mild Saturday afternoon on which a steady rain left the field a muddy bog. It was a physical test, with players dropping all over. Starr, after having back spasms, couldn’t go back in. After a head-to-head collision with Matte, cornerback Bob Jeter needed smelling salts. Chandler missed three field goals, and the Colts controlled the ball. But Unitas, his shoulder aching, had one of the worst games of his career, throwing three picks. Shula yanked him briefly for Gary Cuozzo, who threw one pass—an interception. A seeming Unitas-to-Mackey TD was ruled incomplete.
Staying close at 10–7 in the fourth quarter, Bratkowski took the Pack on an 80-yard drive and found Max McGee for the go-ahead touchdown. Unitas took his men down the field, hitting Berry at the Packer 15. Then, flushed from the pocket, he ran for five yards, was clubbed by linebacker Willie Davis, and the ball popped loose. It skidded in the mud, and the other outside linebacker, Dave Robinson, fell on it, protecting the 14–10 victory. “I just said, ‘Come to papa,’ ” Robinson said later, “and there it was.”12 Sports Illustrated called it a “million-dollar fumble.”
When the latest grim frustration was over, Shula was numb. According to one report, he “sat on a training table smoking a cigarette and staring into space, as was Carroll Rosenbloom nearby. Finally Shula turned to a clutch of reporters and said, ‘Anybody want to get it started?’ There was a question and before it could be completed Shula said, ‘They threw mud in Unitas’ eye,’ ” swearing that some Packers had done that literally, to keep Unitas from seeing the loose ball on the ground.13 He also slagged the official who had called the pass interference that wiped out a Colt touchdown. “You were there,” he said, “you saw it.” After losing four straight times to Lombardi, no greater an analysis was needed. Whatever it took for the Packers to win, it seemed Lombardi got it. It held true the next week, when the Pack went to Dallas for the NFL title game against Tom Landry’s Cowboys. With time running out, the Cowboys were near the goal line with a chance to tie, but a fouled-up pass by Don Meredith was intercepted, sending Lombardi to the first NFL-AFL Championship Game—unofficially, the Super Bowl, a term not adopted until the third game, in 1969—an event he dominated in blowing away the Kansas City Chiefs, and one he left in coronation.
Shula knew he would need to break that glorified narrative if he had any chance of supplanting Lombardi in their division. As it was, he ended the ’66 season at 9–5, a step back, earning only one more trip to the Playoff Bowl, where the Colts beat the Eagles 20–14. He had assets, and, of course, Unitas, but whatever else the next season would bring, he was now almost obsessed with Lombardi. Everything Vince said provoked a reaction in Shula, who became even more fixated on beating him. And he would have no dearth of chances to do it.
That off-season, he and Dorothy moved their brood out to the suburbs, in Lutherville-Timonium, buying a newly built five-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath split level on an acre of land at 2222 Pot Spring Road. This upward move was befitting his increased status and authority. When Don Kellett retired the year before, the new GM was former Colts linebacker Joe Campanella, who, after his playing career, had partnered with Alan Ameche and Gino Marchetti in their chain of restaurants, then ran his own eatery, the Rustler Steak House, which he sold off for a fortune. At C.R.’s urging, Campanella took the job, but was well aware that Shula, his old teammate, was the de facto GM. That deference was common within the front office, and Campanella easily complied; he and Shula worked well on drafting and personnel moves. Often, they made such moves after playing handball. However, in February 1967, during another handball game at the Downtown Athletic Club, Campanella felt faint before collapsing to the court. Shula rushed over, but Joe died in his arms as they awaited an ambulance. Killed by a heart attack at just 36.
Devastated—he would be haunted for years by that memory—Shula delivered the eulogy at his funeral, calling Campanella “a wonderful human being” and “one of my closest friends.” He and Marchetti were overcome with grief at the service, as was Rosenbloom, who had to name a new GM. He promoted Colts PR man and former navy combat veteran Harry Hulmes, who also deferred to the coach on all decisions, though they relied heavily on the advice of another new hire, personnel director Upton Bell, son of the late commissioner and actress Frances Upton, who began as a Colts training camp ball boy. Their first order of business was the draft, held in mid-March, the first common draft under the merger agreement. The Colts, who had enough excess talent to trade up, decided that getting a high pick was worth parting with the only insurance they had to back up Unitas. With the expansion New Orleans Saints holding the top pick, they dangled Gary Cuozzo—a no-brainer, since Cuozzo had asked to be traded. For Tom Fears, the Saints’ first coach, the prospect of gaining a reputable quarterback was seductive; he even threw in his third-round pick and the veteran ex-Packer center Bill Curry.
Now, with the top pick, Shula had options. The scuttlebutt had it that the Colts would use it to land Florida’s Heisman Trophy–winning quarterback, Steve Spurrier, and groom him to one day replace Unitas. Instead, they tapped Michigan State’s mammoth All-American defensive end Bubba Smith, a six-foot, seven-inch, 265-pound terror who had led the Spartans to a shared No. 1 ranking with Ara Parseghian’s Notre Dame Fighting Irish. In all, four of Duffy Daugherty’s players were chosen in that first round, eight in all.
Shula then used his existing first-round pick on Michigan running back Jim Detwiler, and in round two, another Wolverine All-American, safety Rick Volk. He did go for a QB in round six: Baylor’s Terry Southall, who, like Detwiler, would wash out. That meant Shula would go into another season with no competent backup for Unitas; by default, the job went to the 14th-round pick from a year before, Jim Ward, who would throw 16 passes in six mop-up appearances. Fortunately, Unitas remained in one piece, which seemed all that was required to win his final MVP award. He passed for 3,438 yards, completing a career-high 58.5 percent, with 20 touchdowns and a manageable 16 interceptions.
While this was more passing than Shula was comfortable with, he had to compensate for the deteriorating ground game now that Lenny Moore, who was to retire after the season, was on his last legs. It also birthed a new receiving corps, transitioning away from the aging Berry and Orr, with Willie Richardson, who caught eight TD passes, buttressing Mackey. Unitas, Richardson, and Mackey were all first-team All-Pros. The offense was a monster, but the defense matched it. Shula had hired a new assistant, Chuck Noll, to oversee the secondary, into which Volk—a virtual Shula clone, a wily and tough nut who had also played fullback in college—fit right in at free safety. As he recalled:
Sure, Shula was a dictator, but he could relate to you. Sometimes he’d get too wound up, drone on for half an hour, and Danny Sullivan would fart just at the right time and we’d all break up. Don, too, ’cause he knew we needed a break. People said the Colts were all business, a machine, but we had a good time. We knew we had the best team and the best coach. Yeah, better than Lombardi.14
Volk was a Pro Bowl selection as a rookie with six picks that year, setting a team record when he ran one back 94 yards for a touchdown against the Bears. The secondary, benefiting from the ravaging Smith up front, rang up a ridiculous 32 interceptions. The Colts gave up the second-fewest points in the league, helping Noll climb toward the Steelers’ head coaching job two years later. And yet, because of the structural changes in the league as it moved toward the merger, Shula was faced with a crazy anomaly. That season, the NFL expanded to 16 teams with the addition of the Saints, and the Eastern and Western conferences were each split into two divisions of four teams (the Colts were in the Coastal), the winners of each division advancing to a playoff round to determine the title-game contestants.
After 13 weeks, the Colts were undefeated, at 11–0-2, the two ties on successive Sundays in October against the Rams and Vikings. Shula could breathe easier, knowing that he had put distance between himself and Lombardi, whose team played in the Central Division, and the Colts handed them a bitter defeat in their one confrontation that season, 13–10, on a pair of late TD passes. Still, Lombardi faced little resistance en route to winning his division with a 12–2 record. While the win over the Pack was one Shula could savor, the Colts had a tougher fight in their division with the Rams, whom George Allen had turned into a terror, breeding All-Pros in Roman Gabriel, halfback Les Josephson, receivers Jack Snow and Bernie Casey, and three of their Fearsome Foursome defensive line, Deacon Jones, Merlin Olsen, and Shula’s old charge in Detroit, Roger Brown. Allen had been able to tie the Colts in Baltimore and to keep pace with Shula all season. The season finale, on December 17, brought the rematch into the LA Coliseum, with Shula on the verge of the NFL’s only undefeated season since Halas’s two—13–0 in ’34 and 11–0 in ’42 (like the Colts, two other undefeated NFL teams were not perfect, the ’22 Canton Bulldogs going 10–0–2, the ’29 Packers 12–0–2)—while the Rams were 10–1–2. If Allen won, the Rams would tie the Colts, but would make the playoffs by sweeping the season series. Shula, with a single defeat, would be on the outside looking in.
That would be a nightmare scenario for Shula, and with more than 77,000 people in the Coliseum, he couldn’t shake his men awake from it. They got off well when Unitas found Richardson for an early touchdown. But Gabriel hit Snow with an 80-yard bomb in the second quarter and the Colt defense, which had given up 30 points just once during the season, crumbled into dust. They allowed two more TD passes by Gabriel, who went 18-for-22 and whose passer rating (a geeky stat the NFL didn’t adopt officially until 1973, but which has been applied retroactively to every past season) was 154.9 out of a perfect 158.3. Unitas, sacked just 18 times all season, ate turf seven times, Gabriel not once. Unitas was also picked off twice, once deep in Ram territory when Deacon Jones, a man who proudly made his name synonymous with sacks and dirty hits, slammed his forearm into him. Another pick, by linebacker Jack Pardee, was run back 29 yards. Unitas’s passer rating was a puny 64.7, and no Colt runner gained even 40 yards. Two fourth-down gambles failed. The final tally was 34–10, at the end of which, wrote one scribe, “Baltimore’s sun sank slowly in the West.”15
Shula was loath to admit personal failing. Assessing the pass to Snow, he blamed Jerry Logan, saying that Gabriel “caught us with our strong side safetyman playing up.”16 According to one account:
Shula went over to a training table and put his head in his hands for several seconds, then stared long at the ceiling. He had to be thinking, one loss—one loss—and we blow it all. “I feel really sorry for my team,” he said finally. “We’ve held our heads high all season and now we’ve got to live with this through a whole winter. The Rams deserved to win, I’m not denying that, but what a way to go . . .” 17
For Shula, who also lost the Coach of the Year award to Allen because of that season’s one defeat, the worst of it was that history was robbed of what would have been a pivotal crossroads: an undefeated Colts team against a seemingly mortal Packer squad, the winner to get the next crack at an overmatched AFL team and walk off with Lombardi’s vestments. Instead, Lombardi, after brushing by the Rams in the first playoff round, broke Tom Landry’s heart again, this time in a subarctic Green Bay, Bart Starr’s quarterback sneak with seconds left codifying the “Ice Bowl” and entitling St. Vince to the highest level of idol worship—and another coronation in the warmth of the Orange Bowl, taking apart Al Davis’s Oakland Raiders. In truth, the difference between the proud, aging Pack and both Shula and Landry’s teams was small, but in the metaphysical sense, it was enormous. Both Shula and Landry marveled at the depth of character Lombardi could sink into his players’ hearts and minds; neither of them could inspire that kind of loyalty. No athletes would ever really willingly die for a coach, but when Packers spoke of the spell Lombardi had on them, it didn’t seem so far-fetched.
Shula didn’t crave that kind of idolatry, nor accept it. What he wanted was Lombardi’s apostolic manner of elevating players to a seeming state of calm when opponents were losing their equilibrium under duress. This was the one element no Paul Brown playbook could provide; it had to come from within Shula. That Shula didn’t have it, at least not yet, had begun to make him sound like Hamlet, wondering how he could redirect fate, which his bible always told him was immutably ruled from above him. He had proven he belonged on the same consecrated fields as St. Vince, and though it wouldn’t become clear for a while, he was better positioned than Lombardi. No one knew that better than Vince, who that winter suddenly abdicated as Packers coach, spending the next year as the club’s general manager, then walked away from the sundered team a year after that to coach the Redskins, in a mercenary turn that shocked many who had bought the saintly jive. Shula could also see the shifting of the league’s landscape, and that the field was wide open for him, if he could survive the fall he had taken.
He would enter the ’68 season having already left his mark on history; as Bob Maisel pointed out in the Sun, “Never before in the history of the National Football League has a team gone undefeated all the way through until the last game of the season and then been eliminated from the chase in that final start.”18
Okay, so it wasn’t exactly the work of a saint or an apostle. And the fact that Shula had lost that last game made for a nagging suspicion that he was somehow predisposed to heartache. It would take only one more season to make that seem like an epitaph.