“STAY READY, EARL. STAY READY”
Both Don Shula and Tom Landry would have to continually keep their teams’ thirst for winning intense in the ’70s—Landry, as he had hinted, rid himself of Duane Thomas after he was busted for marijuana possession in February, a prelude to a bigger plague that would most destructively affect the Cowboys and Dolphins, who played in the country’s busiest drug ports.1 Landry would not get back to the Super Bowl for another six years. And Shula still had to get his first ring. For now, his men had a $7,500 loser’s share, on top of the $8,500 winner’s cut from the AFC title game. But after all of Shula’s henpecking about getting back to the summit and leaving as winners, it felt like money for nothing.
Shula could be pleased that the run-up to the ’72 season left him with the power he lusted after. He had gotten Joe Robbie to approve a budget for his assistant coaches to scout college kids and file reports to Shula and Joe Thomas. The latter seemed to accept the arrangement, but may have felt that, as vice-president, Shula had the upper hand. What’s more, Robbie may have sought to keep Thomas content; in February, he offered him a promotion to vice-president. However, he would be making only around $40,000 by 1974; indeed, the Dolphins were one of the most underpaid teams in the NFL, half the players making less than $20,000 a year, forcing most of them to take off-season jobs to make ends meet.
Whatever excess funds Robbie had—and he would rake in more by adding 5,000 seats to the Orange Bowl bleachers that season—he applied to the bottom line, and to Shula. Thomas, it was said, “chafe[d] over Robbie’s red pencil striking the nickel-and-dime stuff on my expense accounts.”2 Meanwhile, Robbie exalted Shula. As a result, Ed Pope wrote, Thomas’s “rapport [with Robbie] was [not] always complete.”3 And so he refused Robbie’s offer and quit. But Shula, too, was beginning to have reservations about the owner’s increasingly unstable behavior. Since the tragic death of his 22-year-old daughter Kathleen while on vacation in Mexico in September 1971, Robbie had been hitting the bottle harder.4 Shula would now have to deal directly with him as Robbie descended deeper into alcoholism and personal grief. Four years later, his son, Dr. David Robbie, twice arrested for drunk driving, leaped to his death from the Golden Gate Bridge.
Thomas, meanwhile, turned to another volatile owner. When Carroll Rosenbloom went ahead with his plan to “swap” the Colts for the Rams and needed someone to buy the Rams, then flip them to him, Thomas enlisted Chicago heating contractor Robert Irsay, a winter neighbor of his in Miami. The bizarre plan was consummated in July, when Rosenbloom, described in one account as “acne-scarred and Gucci-tailored,”5 began living in posh Bel Air with his wife, Georgia, keeping the Colts’ Vince Lombardi Trophy for himself. Thomas, with two owners in dutch to him, signed with Irsay as the Colts’ general manager, with total power. Soon, he would blow up the whole team, making Shula’s exodus from Baltimore seem brilliant.
The last draft Shula and Thomas collaborated on, only weeks before Thomas fled, was a bust. The only picks to stick were linebacker Larry Ball and safety Charlie Babb. With Thomas gone, Shula had Robbie hire Bobby Beathard as the player personnel director. The 35-year-old Beathard, an Ohio native and the older brother of former USC and AFL quarterback Pete Beathard, looked like a windswept surfer boy, but his scouting had been crucial to the Chiefs’ title team before he took his computer punch cards to the Atlanta Falcons for four seasons. Still, all decisions would run through Shula, who began to feel the prickly effects of running a winning team with no dearth of players who had grievances.
Mercury Morris was the loudest of them. Minutes after watching the Super Bowl from the bench, he had broken Shula’s 11th commandment, telling reporters, “Hell, no, I wouldn’t mind going somewhere else. I want to play.” Shula waited until the media were gone and then confronted him. As Morris recalled, “He came out of the shower with that wet-head look of his and found me. We were among the few left in the locker room. It was like a scene from Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.”6 Shula ordered Morris to come to his hotel room the next morning. He did, and apologized for speaking out. Pacified, Shula then told him he would be starting the next season: “This is your shot.”
But it was hardly the end of Morris’ griping. During the off-season, Morris boasted, “The only runner who can run the sweep is me. The only one who can get outside is me. But except for the national anthem and kickoffs, I don’t get off the bench.” Shula again cut him slack, having decided he needed that outside speed. He committed to use Morris and Kiick in a semi-platoon—one of several he employed, such as Fleming and Jim Mandich at tight end—not only soothing egos, but creating a competition in which the players would fight hard for their jobs. If it meant maximizing talent, Shula would try just about anything. And if it kept guys’ mouths shut, even better. But it rarely did.
When George Mira signed with the Canadian league in August, Shula’s only backup quarterback was Jim Del Gaizo, an undrafted free agent in ’71 who did not play at all that season. And so, once more, Shula sought Earl Morrall, who was assumed to be through when Thomas released him from the Colts over the winter. But it took only a $100 waiver fee for a team to claim him, and Shula did. Morrall then got on the next plane to Miami, likely to be a well-paid scrub. Shula kept telling him the same thing: “Stay ready, Earl. Stay ready.”
Jim Kiick, however, didn’t appreciate hearing the same thing when Shula began giving Morris an expanded role. He and Csonka’s heads had swelled, making them even more self-absorbed. The August 7 issue of Sports Illustrated ran a cover story on them, calling them “The Blood and Thunder Boys,” the blood referring to Csonka’s nose gushing so often. John Underwood wrote that “ 2,000 posters of them in Western costume” had been sold and that a TV movie was made, “featuring them on horseback, riding into the sunset at the close of another tough day on the trail (actually hotel row on Miami Beach).” Shula pitched in by calling Csonka “the image of manhood.” On the cover, they posed under a goalpost, smirking, Csonka seated cross-legged on his helmet, slyly slipping his middle finger against his shin.
More than Shula, they were the faces of the Dolphins. Women gathered outside the locker room, begging the team’s equipment manager, Dan Dowe, to fetch them a jockstrap signed by Csonka. A Kiick impostor made the scene in Miami, renting a luxury home and picking up women. And the fandango with Shula went on. Almost every practice, before almost every game, there would be some kind of episode, some argument about his rules. Shula always won, but each episode was fodder for the book they were writing, which came out late in the season, a sort of dual autobiography mostly given to cataloging the dust-ups with Shula. For Csonka, the most satisfying sentence may have been, “I say shitty things to him all the time and I get away with most of it.” For Kiick, Morris was the coach’s payback. “Shula,” he said, “stuck it to me.”7 By the opener, Shula gave the starting halfback role to Morris. Not that Kiick would be glued to the bench; Shula would use either according to down and distance, and would still rely on Kiick’s blocking. Years later, Kiick would recall how perilous even that role was:
I had many, many discussions with Coach Shula, arguing, “I don’t understand why a guy at 215 is blocking for a guy at 240.” He gave me a dirty look and said, “Just get back in there.” I got dizzy, got dinged a few times. You’d come to the sidelines and they’d ask, “How many fingers have I got up?” And you’d say four or three or whatever, and they’d say, “Close enough.” We were playing because we enjoyed the game. We were too naive to realize that, in the future years, this could affect us, our life, the brains.”8
Shula landed another ten-strike before the season, reeling in Marlin Briscoe. In 1968, he had been the first black quarterback to start in the NFL in 15 years, then the Denver Broncos traded him to Buffalo, where he was switched to receiver—a sore issue for black players who, like Briscoe, believed racism was involved. He was rotting in Buffalo, but Shula was willing to part with a first-round pick for him, and all he would do that year was ring up the most touchdown catches on the team. Briscoe was impressed with the mind-set on the Dolphins on game day, if not always before and after, when they bitched. Then, he said, “The players only cared about winning, the only team I found it to be like that.”9 Csonka already knew that. He said of Shula on the eve of that season, “As soon as we reported to training camp, he mentioned the Super Bowl thing. . . . Every few days he mentioned the Super Bowl. . . . It got to be the underlying spirit of the team.”10
Shula wanted more versatility and depth of strategy. The 53 defense was his sina qua non, he and Arnsparger adding such wrinkles as two blitzing linebackers, and even having Manny Fernandez drop off the line and into coverage. Buoniconti figured there were now “seven or eight variations” to the 53. While such refinement meant Shula would work his team to exhaustion, his practices were briefer so that they could spend more time in the classroom.
The ’72 season seemed to justify a greater intensity. Three of the first four games on the schedule were on the road, all against recent Super Bowl teams. The first was in Kansas City, in the new Arrowhead Stadium. Again, the priests were there, but Shula needed no divine help this time. Morris collected 67 yards on 14 carries, supplementing Csonka’s 118 on 21 carries. Griese went 8-for-15 for 111 yards and a 31-yard touchdown to Briscoe. Baffled by the 53 defense, Len Dawson threw for 237 yards and a TD, but was picked twice. Miami won 20–10. Said Shula, “I’m proud. Mighty proud.”11 The second week, the home opener, was an expected stroll over the Houston Oilers, 34–13. Then came the formidable Vikings in Minnesota. For nearly the entire game, the Vikings had them stymied and brutalized. On a pass to Csonka, linebacker Roy Winston jackknifed into his lower back, seeming almost to tear him in half, a moment that would be replayed over and over. As Csonka lumbered to the sideline, he crumpled, facedown, right near Shula, who had little sympathy.
“You can’t get hurt,” he yelled down at him. “You’ve got to go.”
“I don’t want to hear your shit,” Csonka yelled back. “I think my goddamn back is broken. Screw the game.”
Shula backed off, saying, “Take it easy. Take it easy.”12
Minutes later, Csonka got up and returned to an escalating defensive battle that swallowed up both Griese and Fran Tarkenton, who were intercepted a combined five times. Trailing 14–9 in the fourth quarter, Griese took the Dolphins down the field and threw a three-yard touchdown to Mandich, pulling the game out, 16–14. Gritty as it was, the poise of that final drive looked so familiar that the Herald summarized the game as “just another day’s work.” So was the third road trial, against the Jets. Falling behind early, the Dolphins erupted in the second half, piling up nearly 400 total yards, Griese outpassing Namath 220 yards to 156, Csonka gaining 102. The final score was 27–17. Now at 4–0, they were in a groove.
The following Sunday, against the Chargers, a new record of 80,010 spectators crammed into the Orange Bowl. Midway through the first quarter, Griese rolled left. With the still-fearsome Deacon Jones, who’d been traded to the Chargers that year, and tackle Ron East closing in on him, he set and heaved one over the middle for Kiick. As he released the incomplete pass, Jones and East slammed into him. They got up. Griese didn’t. His right fibula was fractured and his right ankle dislocated. It was a sickening sight, his mangled leg bent in different directions as he was placed on a stretcher and rushed to Mercy Hospital. Driving home after the game, guard Norm Evans, who had missed his block on Jones, stopped his car and began weeping, telling his wife, “I just cost us the season.”13 Jones, who coined the term sack, deflected any blame for the hit, saying he’d hit Griese high. “I don’t like to see nobody hurt,” he said. “Nobody, man.”14
Like Evans, the Dolphins believed the ride was over when Griese was taken off the field. But Shula, who said he “wanted to throw up,” at least had the smart old goat who’d bailed him out before. Getting his mind back into the game, he told Morrall to check Schnellenberger’s flowchart of down-and-distance play options. “I said [to Morrall,] ‘Look for this, look for that,’ and he stopped me and said, ‘Coach, I know.’ ” The big crowd, still stunned by the apparent sudden death of the Dolphin season, barely made a sound as he trotted in. Some players made an attempt at levity to break the gloom. “Old man,” Bill Stanfill told him, “get those cataracts in motion and turn up your hearing aid, and let’s go!”15
He was slower than ever, his gray-flecked crew cut as much a relic as the man, yet he began to seamlessly carry out the job. In Dolphin style, he mainly handed off. But after Anderson had picked up a Mike Garrett fumble and run it for a 35-yard touchdown to make it 10–3, he found Howard Twilley for an 18-yard TD, effectively putting the game away by halftime, 17–3. With the defense strangling the Chargers, picking off John Hadl twice, Morrall added some icing on top with another scoring pass, 19 yards to Warfield. The 24–10 final, leaving Miami 5–0, showed, according to Shula, “how a good team plays under adversity.”
Morrall, who went 8-for-10 for 86 yards, was named Offensive Player of the Week. Chargers coach Harland Svare called him “the best there is at rescuing a team.” Shula must have felt he was living in a Groundhog Day scenario, facing the same gargantuan task of ’68, with only the uniforms different.
With the only backup for Morrall the green Jim Del Gaizo, everything rested on Morrall. The next game was a cautionary tale. They played the 2–3 Bills in Buffalo. But while the Dolphins contained O. J. Simpson and gave up a mere 188 total yards while racking up over 300, Morrall threw an interception returned for a touchdown. At halftime, the Bills led 13–7. It stayed close, the Dolphins’ lethal ground game negated by three fumbles, but when Morris swept in from 15 yards for his second TD run, it gave them an eight-point lead and they survived, 24–23.
Now came the Colts. Shula’s old team was going through hell, losing five of its first six games. Then, when Don McCafferty refused Joe Thomas’s orders to bench the now-feeble Johnny Unitas in favor of Marty Domres, he was fired and replaced with John Sandusky as interim coach. Coming into their coach’s old home ground, Memorial Stadium, Shula’s men walked all over them, 23–0, Csonka plowing in two touchdowns, Morris another. As they churned on, they would tally 20 points in every game until the finale, and only one was close—a 28–24 edge in the second Jets match.
Always, it seemed, Shula had an answer when he needed one. Even when he strayed from his boilerplate system and played hunches, it worked. That was the only way he could manage the Kiick–Morris competition, sometimes choosing which one would start on a whim. Kiick got the nod in New York, because his family would be there, and Morris in Pittsburgh for the same reason. Other decisions he had less control over. More than a few Dolphins, like their peers nationwide, smoked weed in their spare time. More ominously, however, there were regular decisions made in the locker room to have players take injections of a concoction of liquefied Xylocaine and cortisone—or, as this mix of the anesthetic and anti-inflammatory steroid was called in the clubhouse, a “Xylocaine cocktail.” Griese recalled that the most regular injections went into the arm of Bill Stanfill, but he was far from the only one.16
This sort of thing was hardly exclusive to the Dolphins. Cortisone injections and speed concoctions had been common for years, and been routinely prescribed by team doctors for pain relief. As ex-Cowboy Pete Gent’s savagely satirical 1973 roman à clef North Dallas Forty described, players eased the pain freely, shot up by team trainers on game day, with little regard to the perilous toll being taken on their organs and immune systems, presaging the era of harder, more lethal drugs and steroids. Shula apparently had no objection to “cocktail” hour in his locker room, having taken a few shots for pain back in the day. It was legal, and normal to do so. But he had no clue, said Schnellenberger, about the rise of recreational drugs—a possible cause and effect in the case of Morris, some Dolphins ascribing his erratic behavior to dabbling in pot and coke. Shula, whose only frame of reference for illegal drugs was his old Colt teammate “Big Daddy” Lipscomb dying of a heroin overdose while with the Steelers, would get wind of such things and ask a player if he was “on anything.” They would say no. And that was that.
Morris revealed in a 1988 memoir, written after he served three years in prison for cocaine trafficking, that he did the hard stuff freely, but not as much as the opioid painkiller Demerol, which he said he took before every game in ’72; by game time, he said, “I was banging. And then I wondered why I would stay awake until 3 a.m. and chew my gum for fifteen hours.”
Sometimes, inexplicably, the team doctor, orthopedic surgeon Herbert Virgin—or Virgin’s son Charles, who was the assistant team doctor until 1984, when his father retired—prescribed him the barbiturate Seconal, a drug Morris said was “sold on street corners for junkies to go into a nod,” the night before a game, when Shula allowed players beer. “Barbiturates and alcohol,” said Morris. “That can be automatic death.” Telling the trainer he was groggy after waking up one Sunday, he said one of the Virgins pulled out two vials and gave him two green pills and one brown pill.
“Take these,” the doctor said.
“What are they?” Morris asked.
“Mood pills.”
“What do they do?”
“They get you in the mood.”
Morris added, “I wasn’t the only one ‘under the influence’ on the field. There were jars of these pills over every players’ lockers. Did the coaching staff know? In my opinion, they must have.”17
Feeling no pain, the Dolphins clinched the dreadful AFC East in midseason. As the argosy of their undefeated season became a running headline of the season, only two games loomed as hurdles. The first was when, at 12–0, they played the New York Giants in Yankee Stadium. The Giants were out of the playoffs, but at 7–5 were good enough to believe they could derail Shula’s runaway train. Intense as they usually were, the Dolphins were loose geese before the game. The week before, in practice, Csonka saw a strip of rubber under the goal post. He picked it up and tossed it toward Shula.
[H]e went, “Yow.” . . . I thought he had a heart attack. But it scared him so bad, he didn’t get pissed off. He didn’t know what to do. He chuckled. Then he walked around looking like he was going to get pissed off. Then he chuckled again. By then he looked lost and everybody was laughing at him. He can’t stand that. But he really didn’t get mad. I don’t know why.
The obvious reason was that he was too happy with what he was seeing week after week. The Dolphins trampled the Giants with 204 rushing yards. Morris had 98 on 19 carries and another touchdown, while Warfield racked up 132 receiving yards and a TD. The defense intercepted Norm Snead twice and recovered four fumbles. The win tied Shula with Papa Bear Halas, whose 1934 Bears went 13–0. (Paul Brown’s 14–0 season of 1948 in the AAFC technically didn’t count.) And so, what normally would have been a meaningless finale at home was now one for the ages, against, of all people, the ravaged Colts. They were 5–8, and Unitas would be wearing the Colt uniform for the last time, riding the bench.
As it turned out, the game was over early, and the only real drama of the 16–0 win was Morris’s pursuit of 1,000 rushing yards—if he got there, he and Csonka would become the first tandem of 1,000-yard rushers in history—and the return of Griese, who no one thought could make it back this season, but came in to make a couple of nice throws. The Dolphins also set a new record for team rushing on the season, with 2,960 yards. The fans cheered themselves hoarse, saving some love for Unitas, who walked off to an ovation, waving to the crowd. However, players and reporters were out of sorts about Morris, who gained 86 yards on 16 carries, but had to leave the game late because of an ankle sprain, nine yards shy of 1,000.
Csonka blasted the dreaded Poly-Turf for the injury, and for making Morris slip all game. Shula had to take heat for playing Morris so long just for the record. On a day when the headline was 14 AND 0, THREE TO GO, Ed Pope griped, “For all its sentimental aspects, the venture was foolishly prolonged, [risking] serious injury to Morris.” The happy ending to that minor squall was that Morris did get his 1,000 yards—after the Dolphins petitioned the league to review a play on which he fumbled a lateral, losing nine yards, but which they claimed was actually an incomplete pass. In a highly unusual and illogical move, since the series of downs couldn’t be replayed, the league agreed, restoring the nine lost yards, thus enabling him to hit 1,000 on the nose. People around the league gritted their teeth; was there anything Shula couldn’t get to go his way this season?
From any perspective, Shula had done the impossible. The offense and defense were ranked No. 1, the defense pulling down 26 picks. The Dolphins’ 2,960 rushing yards, the third-best ever, worked out to over 210 per game. Csonka finished fourth with 1,117 yards, Kiick over 500 as the third wheel. The hitch was that the passing ranked 16th, though this was a product of the system. Morris went to the Pro Bowl with a league-leading 12 rushing touchdowns, though he did fumble eight times, a recurring problem for a guy who once fumbled four times in a game. Nine other Dolphins made All-Pro—Morrall, as in ’68, on the first team, as were Anderson and Stanfill.
And yet, for a team with a perfect record, the Dolphins were a tough sell as the greatest of all time. Shula would be duly honored as the NFL’s Coach of the Year, for the fourth time. But the players would be shut out in the individual awards. Some contended that the Dolphins’ schedule was too soft, the ordeal of the opening month aside. Another postseason failure would expose them, especially Shula, to unending scorn. Which is why he had declined the game ball the team bestowed after the finale; the only game ball he wanted was for a Super Bowl win.
Again, Shula had to decide on his playoff quarterback. Griese, a class act, ventured that Morrall was healthier and “there should be no doubt who should start.” Morrall, though, even with a 91.0 passer rating, received no assurances from the coach. “Nobody’s told me who’ll start,” he said, sounding disappointed. “I haven’t asked Don Shula. I don’t know.” Morrall was surely the sentimental favorite. But while he was undefeated—as was Griese, of course—he wasn’t quite an MVP this time. Then, too, unlike Unitas in ’68, Griese had no problem with his arm.
Shula seemed to dither back and forth, willing to commit to neither. In the end, he went with Morrall in the first playoff game, against the Browns on Christmas Eve day. They were now coached by Nick Skorich, who took over when Blanton Collier quit in 1970. He had a thin roster; with quarterback Mike Phipps throwing 13 touchdowns and 16 interceptions, the rapidly aging halfback Leroy Kelly was basically the Browns’ whole offense. But on this day, he could gain only 11 yards. Phipps, meanwhile, was picked five times, including twice each by Anderson and Doug Swift. Charlie Babb picked up a blocked punt and scored for a 7–0 lead. Morris, his leg just fine, led the rushers with 71 yards. And yet, Morrall was a bit off, throwing just 13 times, completing six for 88 yards. The offense stalled. And when Anderson fumbled one of his interceptions, Phipps’s touchdown pass to Fair Hooker midway through the fourth quarter had the Browns up 14–13.
With an inconceivable upset looming, the Dolphins went on an 80-yard drive kept alive by two crucial slants to Warfield and an interference call. Kiick then ran it in for the lead. Needing a touchdown to win, Phipps heaved one toward tight end Milt Morin. Swift dropped back with him, and his second pick saved the 20–14 win.
Afterward, the lingering, and still familiar question was why Shula had stuck with a “floundering” Morrall and “committed himself to an overly dangerous degree.”18 Another question was whether the Dolphins were repeating the previous year’s malaise against the Cowboys.
Not wanting to show any panic, Shula stuck with Morrall for the AFC title game against Chuck Noll’s Steelers, who had also gone down to the wire in their playoff opener and had come away on a high after beating the Raiders on the flukiest play in memory—Franco Harris’s “Immaculate Reception.” That came when Terry Bradshaw threw a desperation pass to Frenchy Fuqua that ricocheted when the halfback collided with the Raiders’ Jack Tatum. Harris picked it off his shoe top and took it in for the winner. Shula could only pray that when it came to such fortune, “the Lord spreads it around a little bit.”19
Despite the Dolphins’ unblemished record versus the Steelers’ 11–3, under the NFL’s yearly rotation, the New Year’s Eve afternoon game would be played in Three Rivers Stadium, a snake pit with fanatics waving “terrible towels” and bearing bed sheet signs pledging allegiance to favorite players. (The league didn’t start awarding home-field advantage to the team with the better record until ’75.) Noll had not lost there all season, during which his men had surrendered the second-fewest points in the league. Noll and his defensive coordinator, Bud Carson, had built a “Steel Curtain,” led by the fire-breathing left tackle “Mean” Joe Greene and right end Dwight White, Pro Bowlers both, as was versatile outside linebacker Andy Russell. But they were young, still ascending, the considerable talents of Jack Ham, L. C. Greenwood, and Mel Blount still solidifying. In his first two seasons, Bradshaw had thrown 19 touchdowns and 46 interceptions; even in year three, he was just 12–12, aided greatly by Harris gaining over 1,000 yards on the ground.
During the week, Bradshaw was hospitalized with a bad flu, and Shula figured if he could force him to throw, it might turn the game, while controlling the ball would keep Greene and the Steel Curtain pacified. It wouldn’t be easy. If the Dolphins’ precocious cast and storybook quest were endearing, the Steelers were a highly sentimental favorite, vying for the first NFL title in their 40-year history of misery, their owner, the hearty, stogie-smoking Irishman Art Rooney, beloved in league circles. Warming to the battle, someone from “Franco’s Italian Army”—which included, so he said, Frank Sinatra—arranged to drop 2,000 leaflets on the Dolphins’ base, the William Penn Hotel, urging them to “surrender.” But a stiff wind blew the leaflets blocks away. Both teams fancied themselves as “no names,” were spectacularly coached, and gave ground grudgingly. Evenly matched as they were, it would be another nail-biter.
Shula wasn’t about to play it safe. While most teams double-teamed Greene, Larry Little—who said he was in a “deep concentration bag”—would have a savage head-on battle with him. Morrall, heavily pressured early, was picked by safety Glen Edwards, who ran it back 28 yards. Bradshaw tried to carry it in himself, but was hit by Scott and fumbled, and even though tackle Gerry Mullins recovered for the touchdown, Bradshaw came up limping and was replaced by Terry Hanratty.
Shula couldn’t take control, though he tied it on a nervy call. Seeing a flaw on the Steelers’ outside punt coverage, he had Larry Seiple fake a punt, and he rambled for 37 yards. Morrall then hit Csonka with a nine-yard TD pass. In the third quarter, a Steeler field goal put them ahead. Now, with the game hanging in the balance, Shula decided to bring in Griese. His first pass clicked for 52 yards to Warfield, giving the offense a jolt. The Dolphins would get several enormous breaks: one when Griese was intercepted by middle linebacker Ham, but it was wiped out by an offside penalty; another when Harris muffed a pass; still another when they blocked a Steeler field goal. With the Dophins’ ball-control game in gear—they would rush for 193 yards, led by Morris’s 76 yards on 16 carries—an 80-yard drive ended with Kiick taking it in from the two; in the fourth quarter, he did the same from the three. So it was 21–10, enough to absorb Bradshaw returning and throwing bombs, one of them a touchdown on a crazy one-handed snare by receiver Al Young. He had two more shots to win, amid pandemonium in the stands. But he was intercepted both times, by Buoniconti and Mike Kolen.
Game over, 21–17. Shula, as daring as he ever would be, had tested the odds by going for it on fourth down three times, converting each time, leading to the three touchdowns—“Fourth-Down Shula,” Braucher called him the next day. Explained the coach, “You have to go for the short ones if you want to be champ.”20
Super Bowl VII—played, like the first two title matches, in the smog of the Los Angeles Coliseum—had the same lingering feel of settling old NFL–AFL arguments, more so because Shula still bore the legacy of the league he was again trying to slay. Having lost the argument to Landry so convincingly, he might have included in his daily prayers a thank-the-Lord that the Cowboys had lost the NFC title to George Allen’s Washington Redskins.
Allen was definitely a handful—or mouthful, the exact opposite of Landry, and he provoked strong opinions, good and bad. After being fired by the Rams in ’71, he had signed with the Redskins as coach and GM, receiving the fattest coaching contract yet seen: seven years at $125,000 per, with a five percent stock option. He took with him seven of the Rams’ best players, and gave them such high salaries that owner Edward Bennett Williams lamented that he had given Allen an unlimited spending account, “and he has already exceeded it.”21
He also got himself into trouble. Back in the summer, he was fined $5,000 by Pete Rozelle for trying to trade draft choices he had already dealt. To Schnellenberger, who had coached for him in LA, Allen was “a promoter” and “a strange guy” who would “chew his food exactly 15 times, then spit it out.”22 Among his other obsessive-compulsive habits was to constantly lick his thumbs on the sideline, where he wore a manic, jack-o’-lantern grin. In the locker room, he conducted tribal dances to choruses of “Hail to the Redskins.”
Allen had molded the team as the “Over the Hill Gang”; his middle linebacker, Jack Pardee, was 36, as was his quarterback, the paunchy Billy Kilmer, whom Allen saved from the NFL trash heap. Belly hanging over his belt, socks drooping to his ankles, Kilmer was crudely effective, tossing 19 touchdowns against 11 picks. He also had the benefit of Larry Brown, who ran for 1,216 yards and caught 32 passes—winning him the MVP nod—and had a glittering pair of receivers in Charley Taylor and Roy Jefferson. Allen’s defense was the fourth-stingiest in the NFL, though if its age was a major problem, it was worst in the defensive secondary.
To better exploit it, Shula decided to start Griese. Schnellenberger wasn’t so sure it was the right choice. “Earl had a better working relationship with the team,” he said. “Griese was always a little standoffish. It would have been nice for Earl to make up for the [Jets] Super Bowl. But Shula said, ‘Griese’s gonna be the guy.’ When he gave an order, the conversation was over.”