Turning 44 just nine days before the Super Bowl, Don Shula seemed such a natural winner that it was almost jejune to honor him for it. When he lost out to the Rams’ Chuck Knox as Coach of the Year, he could live with that. However, the afterglow of 1972 and ’73 would dim too soon, the first ominous sign coming when Bill Arnsparger rode his trail of success as Shula’s Sancho Panza into being hired by the New York Giants as their head coach. As with Schnellenberger’s leap, he had Shula’s blessing. But this loss, which Shula dealt with by hiring Vince Costello, Paul Brown’s former linebackers coach in Cincinnati, was trivial compared with the convulsion that came next.
That winter, a new pro circuit, the World Football League, began. Its founder and commissioner, Gary Davidson, had announced it the previous October, calling the NFL “arrogant and fat,” two things the sport’s new owners craved. Well-heeled fatcats could pay low entry fees to the league and spend millions to raid NFL players, though almost all the big names, unavailable until their NFL contracts ran out, could only sign future contracts. Although the lineup of teams had yet to be set, even into the winter, the elder league watched warily as the effort got off the ground, shuddering at the impact it could have on salaries by giving players leverage. But no one knew how big the impact would be until the league made its biggest score of all, hitting Shula like a tack-filled sock.
At first, like most NFL poobahs, he didn’t think he needed to fear the threat. But the new league’s most ambitious owner was John Bassett, a former championship tennis player and the son of one of Canada’s wealthiest sports and entertainment nabobs. Bassett owned a team in the rebel World Hockey Association and bought into the WFL in order to place a team in Toronto, to be called the Northmen. He immediately set out to woo Ed Keating and offer a package deal for Csonka, Kiick, and Warfield. The notion that the three Americans would deep-six the Dolphins after winning two straight titles must have seemed laughable to Keating. For one thing, they each had a year left on their contracts, so even if they jumped leagues, they would have to play an awkward final season in Miami. And Csonka seemed more interested in politics. In early March, he said he might run that fall for a seat in the Florida state legislature, something Keating said was a “complete surprise to me, but he’s full of surprises.”
But Bassett was relentless, and he had the green, having paid a good bit of it to hire former Dayton head coach John McVay. When Bassett made his offer, it made Keating’s head spin: $3.5 million to be split by the trio, as well as a cut for each player of the league’s merchandising, a no-cut/no-trade contract, a new luxury car every year, and a rent-free apartment in one of Toronto’s choicest neighborhoods. What’s more, the contracts were classified as “personal service” agreements, meaning that if the league went under, they would still be paid, something no NFL owner would ever have done, or could have, under league rules.
Ed Pope broke the story, reporting on March 13 that the three would be meeting with Bassett in Toronto 15 days later. He quoted Csonka as saying he was not eager to leave the Dolphins—“Especially Don Shula, the best coach in the world”—but the snowball rolled fast. A week before the meeting, the WFL held a draft, and two other Dolphins—Jim Mandich, who was among 14 unsigned Dolphins, and Don Strock—were chosen. The Birmingham team also would come after Tim Foley and Bob Kuechenberg, whose older brother Rudy signed with the Chicago team coached by Jack Pardee. This put Joe Robbie in a bind. He needed to move on re-signing the in-limbo players, but the deal offered Csonka, Kiick, and Warfield was more than the entire Dolphins’ payroll, and one-sixth of the team’s overall value.
As it was, Robbie had kept Mercury Morris from the WFL by tearing up his three-year, $190,000 contract after a season and signing him to a new five-year deal for $675,000—his annual salary of $135,000 a barometer of a new era of untethered spending. He also re-signed Mandich, who had played the entire ’73 season without a contract. But if he was hoping this would convince the would-be jumpers that they’d be paid well, he couldn’t see any math that would work. As the Bassett contracts were structured, each player would have a three-year deal, Csonka’s for $1.4 million (eight times his Dolphin salary), Warfield $900,000, Kiick $700,000. Bonuses worth another million drove the total tab to $3.84 million, a breathtaking figure.
Still, Csonka wouldn’t sign until he could talk to Shula, feeling he owed it to a man he was so close to that, whenever the coach would call him on the phone, Kiick would say, “Your dad called.” The would-be defectors didn’t expect Robbie to match the WFL offer, but they did expect him to at least say he wanted them to stay.1 Csonka said as much to Shula, who relayed the message to Robbie. But the next day, the owner chose to call not Csonka, but Keating, scolding the agent for having “spirited off” the players and “held them for ransom.”2 Frustrated, Keating issued an ultimatum: Robbie would need to immediately deposit $3.3 million in a bank of Keating’s choosing and match the bonus and personal services clauses in the Bassett contracts, an obvious overreach and an impossibility in the NFL. Spitting profanity, Robbie slammed down the phone and shut down any further contact. As much as Shula blamed Robbie for his intransigence, as management, he couldn’t publicly criticize the owner—not with his own mercenary past.
On Sunday, March 31, the deal was announced when the three runaways had a joint afternoon appearance on Howard Cosell’s ABC television show. While Bassett was thrilled, the players were oddly dour, seeming unsure even now. In Miami, and around the NFL, the news hit like a bomb. Foreseeing that he, more than the defecting players, would be blamed by the team’s fan base, Robbie held a press conference in his office, Shula by his side, during which he sputtered, “We were torpedoed” and promised to push back in court against the hijacking of players still under contract to him. Looking as sad as a man can look, Shula merely said he was “disappointed, shocked, sick.”
Robbie—who had made it possible for Shula to jump from his old team—also dashed off an open letter in the Herald. He said he “deeply regretted” the defections and insisted “we did everything under the circumstances that were contrived,” claiming falsely that both he and Shula were kept from speaking with the players by Keating. He insisted he made attractive offers that included outside “business opportunities.”
Robbie clearly hoped to save face with the fans, but the fact that the letter ran on April Fool’s Day seemed all too appropriate.
The other Dolphin players were sympathetic to the jumpers. “Everybody has their price,” said Bob Kuechenberg. Larry Little thought it was good for the NFL, as it would cause a spike in salaries. Others voiced willingness to hear out WFL offers too. Nick Buoniconti wasn’t sure that Shula wouldn’t be in that crowd of possible defectors, saying, “Shula may be the next coach in Toronto. He’s got to be looking for greener pastures now, too. Shula’s done everything he can in Miami except win three Super Bowls in a row and he’ll probably get that done this year.”3
Although the wild projections of the WFL’s influence were far too optimistic, these were heady days for a league that hadn’t played a down yet. Pete Rozelle had to put up a brave front, saying the deals would never stand up, that Bassett wouldn’t be able to even pay the tax on the deals, much less the salaries. But nationwide headlines were blaring about the NFL losing these valuable assets, leaving league owners and general managers gasping for breath; reflecting the general tone of the reporting, Time called it “the deal that astonished sports.”4 Al Davis, though he would lose Daryle Lamonica to the new league and see Ken Stabler sign a future deal with it, wasn’t upset as much as envious that the WFL had done in a few months what it took the AFL six years to do: reach parity. It was another highly premature take, but anything seemed possible now.
As for Shula, losing Csonka in particular was, he said, “a bitter pill.” Dorothy went further, saying it was like “losing a son,” and “we had pictures of Larry and Jim hanging all over the living room, but the day I heard they signed with the WFL, I took them down.”5
But Shula could be soothed by his own success. During the ’73 season, Robbie had given him a five-year contract extension—his existing deal had been due to expire after the ’74 season—bumping his salary to over $100,000, more than any Dolphin player at the time. But, according to people who knew him, Robbie believed he was not getting proper credit for the team’s astounding rise to prominence, not with all the kudos directed at Shula. To his credit, Robbie always kept his distance, literally; his office was located 13 miles from the Dolphins’ team office and facilities. But when they did have contact, Robbie seemed to want to pick arguments over failed drafts and trades and continued to pinch pennies with even the stars of the team. John Underwood would write in Sports Illustrated:
[Robbie] is an enigmatic man, a case study of the type of guy who would pick a fight with Bo Derek on their wedding night. Robbie isn’t happy unless the sparks are flying. He has been known to say terrible things to people in the privacy of public barrooms. He has had disputes with community leaders, the press, businesses that dunned him for nonpayments, Pete Rozelle, NFL owners and, of course, coaches, players and agents. The “little people” who work for Robbie complain the loudest, but usually behind his back. There he is roundly rebuked as a “skinflint.”6
According to Dick Young, the acerbic columnist for the New York Daily News, whenever Shula referred to Robbie privately, he called him “that ass——.”
Already reeling from the defections, Shula’s tipping point came on the night of April 26, at the team’s annual awards banquet at Miami’s Fontainebleau Hotel. A stickler for punctuality—as was Shula—Robbie became angered when the coach lingered outside the hall, waiting for Dorothy, who was running late. Robbie walked toward him, and as Shula said later, he expected “some kind of greeting.” Instead, Robbie expressed his impatience. “We’ve got a thousand people waiting on you,” he bellowed. “Let’s get up there!” Jaw tensing, neck vein bulging, Shula snapped.
“Don’t ever yell at me in public again or I’ll knock you on your ass!”7
Robbie wisely backed off and went inside. Dorothy arrived soon after, and they sat on the dais, Shula avoiding eye contact with Robbie. The chill lasted through the evening, and was the talk of the team. Bill Braucher filed a story about it on May 15, reporting that it had taken the intervention of Archbishop Carroll to bring the two men together over lunch. “If we have not been behaving like champions,” said Shula, “I regret it,” admitting he was “embarrassed about losing my poise,” though he made sure to add that “it was very evident he had been drinking.” Robbie chose to say nothing publicly about the whole ugly business. Extrapolating from the incident, Underwood wrote, “Under normal circumstances, it would seem too long ago to worry about, an incident one might even laugh over in time. Shula himself is famous for flying off the handle, but once the irritation is off his chest, he forgets it. His relationship with Robbie, however, has never warmed; they aren’t even close to being good friends.”
Rumors even flew that Shula would leave Miami. When People interviewed him and Dorothy during the season, broad hints were dropped: “In spite of the lavish palms and patio Miami living,” wrote Ronald B. Scott, “Dorothy longs for the colonial home she left in Baltimore. Both she and Don are wondering what they will do after this season, even though his contract has three more years.”
Things had certainly become hairy in Miami. Right after the Super Bowl, Shula had received death threats that he reported to the FBI; that winter, bureau agents guarded his home. He was in good company; around the same time, both baseball’s Reggie Jackson and golf’s Jack Nicklaus were also given protection after threats.
Scott averred that “prospects for coaching the Jets creep into his handsome, massive head,” and Shula threw in, “I do love the change of seasons—and Dorothy loves Connecticut.” Still, the bottom line, wrote Scott, was that “If he leaves he must sell his share in the team.” And, as Shula concluded, “I plan to honor my contract with Miami.”8
He did just that. But during the summer of ’74, there was more frustration. Yet another player strike derailed camp and two preseason games, players’ union head John Mackey believing he could use the leverage of the WFL raids to gain looser rules for free agency. That limited freedom was a key selling point for the WFL when it went after players. When that league’s 12-team season began a 20-game schedule on July 10—moved up from the fall to capitalize on the strike and fueled by a syndicated TV deal for Wednesday and Thursday night games—the teams were filled mostly with obscure names, but had a few established NFL stars. The season was meant to whet the appetite for ensuing years when names like Calvin Hill, Craig Morton, Danny White, Don Maynard, John Gilliam, Duane Thomas, both Raider quarterbacks, Lamonica and Stabler—and, of course, Butch, Sundance, and Warfield—would be free to join the league.
While the WFL hogged the summer spotlight, Shula could again only work with rookies and free agents, giving a boost to draft picks who would play important roles, such as the Dolphins’ first-rounder, Jackson State defensive end Don Reese. “You’re in the big time now, baby,” Shula told him on the phone after making the pick, suggesting he go out on the town and “order anything you like.” As Reese recalled, “I ordered a vodka and orange juice. Then a gin and orange juice. Then a bourbon and an orange juice. I was flying high.”9 Other top picks included Arizona State halfback Benny Malone, Hawaii cornerback Jeris White, Texas Tech tight end Andre Tillman, Florida receiver Nat Moore, and Penn State defensive lineman Randy Crowder. But two others, offensive tackle Bill Stevenson and linebacker Bob Lally, signed with the WFL.
The walkout would stretch on for 41 days, coinciding with the fall of Richard Nixon, whom the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach on July 27 for obstruction of justice in the Watergate cover-up. He resigned on August 8, handing the presidency to former Michigan All-American Gerald Ford. As that convulsion rocked America, and a new one began when Ford pardoned Nixon, the strike ended two days later, when the players predictably caved—seven Dolphins had already crossed the picket line—and reported to camp without a new collective bargaining agreement, union leaders deciding to bank everything on the antitrust lawsuit Mackey filed.
Shula could now get busy defending his second title—which would be tested severely by Chuck Noll and his Steelers, who boasted four 1974 draft picks to become Hall of Famers: Lynn Swann, Jack Lambert, John Stallworth, and Mike Webster. Shula also had to deal with more melodrama from Morris. That summer, a cheaply made blaxploitation flick Morris had “acted” in called The Black Six, with costars that included Mean Joe Greene of the Steelers and Carl Eller of the Vikings, hit theaters. If Morris felt like a star, he came to camp as Shula, needing to reconsider his backfield once Csonka and Kiick were gone, planned on working in Benny Malone and Don Nottingham, the latter having come in a trade from the Colts the year before. From day one, Morris was moaning about seeing less time in a revamped Dolphin cast that would also include Nat Moore, who was so fast and slithery that he became the go-to receiver early on, leading the team with 37 catches as well as returning kickoffs and punts.
Meanwhile, the WFL got off to a fast start, with teams in most big-market cities, and some smaller ones like Orlando, Portland, Birmingham, and Honolulu. Playing in stadiums both big-league and comically inadequate, there were big crowds at first, until the NFL strike ended and the novelty gave way to the tedium of low-grade football and headlines about scarce crowds and failing franchises. Players who committed to the league soon had reason to believe they’d erred. The Dolphins’ big three, who hadn’t even put on their WFL stripes yet, wondered what they’d gotten into. As it turned out, they would not be playing in Toronto after all, but in Dixie. After the Canadian government introduced a law that would bar American players from competing in Canada in any league but the Canadian Football League, John Bassett moved his Northmen to Memphis, to play as the Southmen. By then, the defectors perhaps hoped the league would fold before their time came.
In the meantime, the Dolphins managed to keep ahead of rising teams in the AFC East. The Patriots, their opening game opponent, had added 18 rookies, including future Hall of Fame guard John Hannah, though the team that rose fastest was the Bills, who rode O. J. Simpson’s rushing to finish 9–5 that season. Still, when the Dolphins met the Pats in Foxborough, Fairbanks’s team ran out to a 24–7 lead and won 34–24. The Pats would win five of their first six games before collapsing. And Shula’s boys? They won the next three, but after dropping a close one, 20–17, to Allen’s Redskins, at 3–2 Shula was moaning, “Our defense hasn’t stopped anybody, and offensively we haven’t been consistent.”10
Then, as if flipping a switch, they won eight of the last nine, dropping only a meaningless season finale to the Jets. Games panned out with the usual mechanical dispatch, the Dolphins scoring the third-most points and giving up the sixth-least despite injuries that cost Csonka two games, Warfield five, Griese one, and Morris nine. The latter’s absence, as he feared, opened the door for Benny Malone, a mini-Csonka whom Morris called “a wild man,” running straight into defenders instead of around them and frequently getting banged up. Carrying more than anyone but Csonka, he netted 479 yards, and Nottingham 273 with eight rushing touchdowns.
But, in keeping with the team’s habit of finding turmoil in victory, Morris became a migraine, his fat paychecks buying no peace for Shula. Having injured his left knee in the third preseason game, he played sporadically. After he made a sensational catch in the win against the Chargers, he was scheduled to come to the team facility for whirlpool treatment, but chose to work out on his own at a local gym. Steamed, Shula sent Larry Little to fetch him. When Morris arrived, Shula told him, “I ought to fine you and suspend you.” Sulking, Morris stayed home the next day, and Shula sent him a telegram saying he was suspending him “for good” and fining him $9,000.
“For good” turned out to be exactly one day. After Morris admitted he was wrong in a TV interview, Shula reinstated him. But the trouble went on. Morris recalled that he “allowed them to give me an injection to my knee when I didn’t even need one.”11 He would sit out the next six games, even though Dr. Herbert Virgin pronounced him healthy enough to play. Pressed by Shula, Morris did return for two games late in the season, but ran carefully, not with his usual abandon. Meanwhile, both Csonka and Jim Mandich played through significant injuries. Other than Doug Swift, who broke his arm in game eight, replaced at starting outside linebacker by Bob Matheson, everyone but Morris was prepared to play, no matter what.
The season ended at 11–3, another division crown in Shula’s pocket. The contretemps with Morris was mostly kept from the fans, though Bill Braucher at one point referred obliquely to the team’s “internal strife.” Within the Dolphin family, however, players had to choose who to believe: a fellow player who’d always given his all, or management, who said he was a slacker. It was an undercurrent nobody needed, and it would only get worse.
The first playoff round offered up the most compelling game of the season, against the 12–2 Raiders in Oakland, where it rained all week and the field, intentionally left uncovered by Al Davis, would be a bog expected to slow the Dolphins’ elephantine running game. The Raiders were the highest-scoring team in football, as Stabler—who had another year before his WFL commitment would kick in—threw 26 touchdowns versus 12 interceptions, making first-team All-Pro. Yet the Raiders seemed to win mainly with their vicious defense, especially their defensive backs—one of whom, free safety Jack Tatum, nicknamed “The Assassin,” would leave a receiver a paraplegic after a legal hit in 1978. The strong safety, George Atkinson, left Lynn Swann with a concussion in ’76, with Noll impugning the Raiders’ “criminal element.” Shula, who might have privately admired them for doing much the same thing he had done himself on killing fields in the ’50s, now had to find a way around them.
Dan Jenkins ventured in Sports Illustrated that “the real Super Bowl will be played in the mud of Oakland this Saturday.” It also pitted the two best coaches, John Madden—called “Pinky” for his big-top-elephant appearance and pulpy Irish skin that glowed in the cold—having proven himself to Davis after he got the top job in ’69 at age 32.
Shula hoped against hope that Morris could make it, but the latter seemed more intent on retribution against his own coach. Before the team left for Oakland, Morris recalled, “I went to see this Haitian root man, King Solomon, on 54th and 12th . . . you’d go down to his place, and you’d see lawyers there and people like that waiting for him to put some roots on somebody. . . . I told him, ‘Shula’s trying to kill me. I don’t want him hurt, but I want him off me.’ ” The night before the Dolphins left for Oakland, “I was out in the backyard at 2 a.m., saying chants,” and “I made a Shula doll and put it in a box and buried it.”
During the game, Morris sat sullen, as if in a trance, in a Dolphin parka on the bench. On the opening kickoff, Moore left Raiders grabbing at air as he streaked 89 yards for a touchdown. The rabid, biker-gang Raider fans, who held semiliterate signs like SHULA + FLIPPER R ROOMMATES, were stunned. The Dolphins also rattled Snake Stabler into an early interception. But Stabler, whose left arm was the only non-cadaverous part of his body, tied it with a 31-yard bullet to halfback Charlie Smith. The game then swung back and forth, Yepremian’s second field goal putting Miami up 19–14 with just under five minutes left. Stabler, on his own 28, then hit Cliff Branch, who slipped in the mud and went down. Henry Stuckey, who came in at cornerback after Foley and Lloyd Mumphord were hurt, went to pin him, but he also slipped and Branch got up and scampered for a 72-yard TD.
The Dolphins charged right back down the field. Malone sprung free on a sweep, bounced off a couple of tackles, and ran for a 23-yard touchdown and a 26–21 lead. Stabler had 2:08 left. Burning all his timeouts, completing short, pinpoint passes, he led the Raiders to the Miami eight with 35 seconds left. On the snap, he saw Fred Biletnikoff was covered and began to scramble right. Vern Den Herder grabbed him by the ankles, but Stabler managed to let a pass go as he fell to the ground. The ball floated end over end—a “wounded duck,” as Den Herder called it—to the left front of the end zone, aiming for halfback Clarence Davis. Three Dolphins were there, and Mike Kolen got a hand on it—“I thought I had a clear interception,” he said later—but the five-foot, nine-inch Davis somehow wrestled it away, tumbling to the turf with it, scoring the lead TD with 27 seconds left. In the NBC booth, Curt Gowdy kept shouting, “Unbelievable!”
Dubbed the “Sea of Hands Play,” it was the yin to the yang of the Immaculate Reception that had destroyed the Raiders two years before. Davis’s explanation was that it was “by a little luck and the grace of God.” Manny Fernandez wasn’t as poetic. “I mean, this guy couldn’t catch a cold,” he said of Davis years later. “It was probably the only pass he caught in his career. It was a lousy pass, a lucky reception [and] I’ve never forgotten it.”12
Shula made the walk to midfield to dutifully congratulate Madden, whose team would be trampled 32–14 on the same field the next week by Noll’s Steelers. Grim-faced, Shula strode off the field, many fans swearing they’d seen the best game ever. For Shula, who had seen a few on that level, the defeat was the worst to bear—at least Super Bowl III didn’t come down to two fluke plays. Losing on that soggy day, he must have known, had knocked him back down a peg below Lombardi.
In the locker room, reported Pope, Shula was “as close to tears as he ever will be as a coach,” and “his voice quivered although his chin never dropped.” Hiding behind sentiments recycled from past failures, Shula said it was “the toughest defeat I’ve ever experienced” and that “we went down fighting and that’s all you could ask.”13 Shula had to submerge his anger. At Al Davis. At Morris. At the inch more of Stabler’s ankle that Den Herder couldn’t grab in time. And at himself, for not compensating for it all. Far more emotionally consumed in defeat than they ever were in victory, his players barely moved from their stools. Foley sat with his head hung between his legs, back facing the room, shoulders heaving as he sobbed. When a TV man held a microphone near Griese, he snapped, “Don’t put that thing in my face.”
The three now-ex-Dolphins all testified to the joy of playing on “the greatest dynasty ever.” Csonka, who had rumbled for 114 yards, insisted, “Until I get back to Miami, I’m still very much a Dolphin.”14 Morris, meanwhile, was shaken, actually believing his voodoo ritual against Shula had worked, and backfired, sinking the team; he would still believe it far into the future. Yet not until the late ’80s was he ready to admit his attitude toward Shula had been immature all along, and that “it was only after growing up that I understood Don Shula and saw the contribution he has made to the game.”15
The game stories the next day carried headlines like “WOUNDED DUCK” FELLS A FOOTBALL DYNASTY. It could have been a metaphor for Shula falling from grace that soggy day, dragged from the throne by Al Davis, when, as Pope codified it, “Camelot disappeared.” The plane ride home, wrote Pope, felt like “six continents long,” and in that time, the best coach in football could only replay in his mind what he had told the press when he lost some of his shining armor. “When you lose like that,” he said, “your dreams go down the drain.”
As the ’75 season began, it was just plain weird to see Csonka—the 10th-best rusher in NFL history, with over 5,900 yards—Kiick, and Warfield in their garish brown Memphis uniforms, letters peeling off the back, wondering what in the world they had done as their league crumbled all around them. Rozelle was right: the WFL’s owners found themselves owing so much in taxes that when the league had held its first championship game, it was played only because the IRS—to which the league owed $237,000—agreed to take a part of the gate, and the winners’ jerseys, as payment. The circuit somehow managed to survive even though some teams moved or folded. One coach, Jack Pardee, whose D.C. team moved twice before going under, was able to escape, leaping at the chance to become head coach of the Chicago Bears.
Ironically, now that the bloom was off the orange in Miami, Shula himself again seemed itchy to test the waters. When the Chiefs fired Hank Stram after the ’74 season, rumors leaked that Lamar Hunt might do what Robbie had: induce Shula to jump with time on his contract. That, of course, never happened. For one thing, Shula had lucrative commercial endorsement deals in Miami. He would also have been required to sell his interest in the Dolphins—which now stood at 10 percent—the value of which was far above that of the Chiefs. Besides, running out at the first sign of a downturn would be a sure way to regurgitate old notions of betrayal.
That winter, he took Dorothy and the kids on a skiing vacation in North Carolina with Bob Matheson, a departure from the distance he normally kept from his players. He also went on a family pilgrimage to the old country—he, Dorothy, and Dan and Mary Shula taking a long flight to Hungary. They rented a car in Budapest, looking for Mulenshook. “It didn’t show on the map,” the son recalled, “but Papa inquired and they pointed us in the right direction.” When they found it, Dan recognized the house he’d grown up in; when the door opened, there stood a cousin he hadn’t seen for 65 years. Inside, over a bed, hung a tattered picture of Dan and Mary on their wedding day, which Dan had mailed to the house, not knowing if it would ever get there.16 Before they came home, they detoured to the Vatican and had an audience with Pope Paul VI.
Shula returned from this idyll less morose, eager to get to work plugging the holes in the Dolphin ship. He talked George Young into leaving his job with the Colts to become the Dolphins’ director of player personnel and scouting. But it would soon seem like he was bailing out water. Once summer camp and preseason games began, Buoniconti broke his right thumb in seven places and was out for the season, and other players kept coming up lame; one, defensive tackle Bob Heinz, tore up a knee and he too was lost for the season. Only one holdover on the defensive line would start: Den Herder. A WFL refugee, John Andrews, was at defensive end.
Griese, Little, Scott, and left offensive tackle Wayne Moore, an undrafted free agent in ’69 who had elevated himself to the Pro Bowl, all turned 30 that year, Twilley 32. But the fruit of the previous year’s draft crop paid off. Don Reese and Randy Crowder started on the defensive line, and Andre Tillman at tight end. Kolen replaced Buoniconti, but only until a rookie, middle linebacker Steve Towle, moved into the position after eight games and made the most tackles on the team. Matheson took Kolen’s outside linebacker slot. Another rookie, five-foot-eleven stringbean receiver Freddie Solomon, who played quarterback in college but was projected as a receiver to help fill the Warfield void, helped do that as well as becoming one of the league’s best kick returners. Among the old names, Mercury Morris, through voodoo or not, would stop bitching for a while when he finally got his wish to start consistently in the backfield. Adding a fullback, Shula traded with Joe Thomas for the stumpy Norm Bulaich, his last first-round pick with the Colts.
Shula would start the season against the Raiders in the Orange Bowl, booked by the league as the first Monday night showcase. Al Davis had cemented the last piece of a championship puzzle by sticking it to Shula—acquiring his prototypical linebacker/lineman with the Colts, Ted Hendricks. And he stuck it to Shula again on the field. The game was a mess. Each team turned it over five times. Stabler threw three picks—all to Charlie Babb—and, almost inconceivably, Griese threw four. After the Dolphins fell behind 17–0 early, Griese had to air it out 32 times, completing just 15. The Raiders’ Harold Hart returned a Dolphin kickoff 102 yards. Final score: 31–21, Oakland.
Things looked even bleaker the next week in Foxborough. Against a team that would go 3–11, they were down 14–0 at halftime. But in the second half, Don Nottingham, who had carried just four times against the Raiders, came in for a struggling Bulaich and kept breaking big gains, one for 40 yards, racking up 120 in all on 16 runs and scoring a touchdown. Bulaich came back for a short TD run, and two Yepremian field goals put it out of reach—a 22–14 win that Sports Illustrated qualified as “uneasy.” Still, again confirming the premise that Shula did his best coaching when against the wall, the Dolphins not only were jelling, but it seemed possible that Shula’s prodigal sons would return to him.
The WFL could only make it through 12 games of its 18-game schedule before closing up shop, with no champion declared. This spared players like Stabler, who had signed future deals, from playing peewee-league football for uncertain money. For Csonka, Kiick, and Warfield, all of whom struggled, none making the league’s All-Star team, it threw into doubt their guaranteed personal-services contracts and whether they even still worked for Bassett. His team, renamed the Grizzlies during the aborted season, had drawn well and Bassett wanted to hold on to his prize trio. After the league drowned, he and the owner of the Birmingham team would apply for entry into the NFL. The Dolphin renegades would still be paid their king’s ransom, and were precluded from signing with the NFL again until the courts could rule on whether their personal services contracts were still valid. Adding more confusion, the Dolphins still retained NFL rights to Csonka, Kiick, and Warfield, though this, too, was uncertain because the Mackey lawsuit was moving toward a conclusion in a Minnesota circuit court, the ruling on which would determine whether the Rozelle Rule’s oppressive compensation realities applied to the current crop of free agents, including the WFL survivors.
Things sat in limbo for the rest of 1975, though in Miami there was an expectation that the wandering triad would come back home. The Herald ran a headline reading, WFL IS DEAD—CSONKA EYEING RETURN TO DOLPHINS. Csonka said he was open to the idea, but there were complications. For one, Robbie was no more forgiving of their betrayal, nor the players of him for saying they had held the Dolphins for “ransom.” And the Dolphins were doing fine without them; as Csonka said, “I can see that Shoes has no bleeding ulcers where running backs are concerned.” Shula agreed, saying Nottingham and Bulaich were doing “excellent jobs.”17 He also raved about Solomon and the other receivers, a message to Warfield. If the three, and especially Csonka, were like sons to him, it seemed Shula’s attitude was that once fish swam, they were on their own.
Bassett’s attempt to keep the Memphis team in business would also take months to play out, and he advised Csonka, Kiick, and Warfield to sit tight, that he would continue to pay them to do nothing. That sounded good to Csonka, who seemed more eager to relax on his Ohio farm than play. Kiick, though, began to openly petition for employment, not on the Dolphins but his native team, the New York Giants, coached by Bill Arnsparger. Warfield spoke of finishing out his career with a final year back in Cleveland. Pending the resolution of the Mackey suit, Keating still had to deal with the Dolphins. And Robbie was no more open to paying any of the “traitors” what they wanted. When Csonka got hungry to play again, he called Shula, only to find his old coach and father figure standoffish, unwilling to do anything until the courts had their say. He also worried about Csonka’s health after years of punishment.
Csonka spent the autumn on his ranch, his only appearance being with Kiick and Warfield when they went to New York and were called out of the audience of Howard Cosell’s new, ill-fated Saturday night variety show. They rose, smiled, waved, then went back to playing the waiting game. In Miami, meanwhile, Shula would win seven in a row. With two games left, they were 9–3, a game ahead of the resurgent Colts. Even without Arnsparger, the defense under Vince Costello would surrender the fourth-fewest points in the NFL. With Howard Schnellenberger back running the offense, they would rack up the sixth-highest scoring attack. Morris, by midseason, was the NFL’s second-leading rusher behind O. J. Simpson. But when Shula started alternating his starts with Benny Malone, he once again violated Shula’s public-bitching rule, saying he wanted to be traded. Shula said he would try to accommodate him. But for now, he needed Morris to get him through the playoffs.
A win against the Colts in week 13 would clinch the AFC East. Ominously, Griese was out injured, replaced by Don Strock. As impressive as the Dolphins had been, so were the Colts under coach Ted Marchibroda, whose big weapons were Bert Jones’s strong arm, Lydell Mitchell’s jitterbugging feet, and the “Looney Tunes” defensive line led by Joe Ehrmann and John Dutton. The game was a slog for both teams under a low fog of what seemed like pea soup in a funereal Memorial Stadium, but the Dolphins’ running attack was in high gear. Dutton would say the Miami line “conducted a clinic out there. I never knew where their blockers were coming from next.”18
In the third quarter, Morris, who skirted for 96 yards on 21 carries, scored the game’s first touchdown on a three-yard jaunt. Mitchell tied it with a six-yard TD in the fourth. The Dolphins had chances to ice it, but it ended up in overtime, whereupon Jones conducted a long drive from his own four and the Colts kicked the winning field goal. “Miami was on top for a long time,” said Mitchell, pronouncing his team the new kings of the division—big words from a team that would be crushed the next week by the Steelers.
On the Dolphins’ team bus back to the hotel, Morris, who led the team with 875 yards rushing over the season, was seated behind Shula, who Morris said was in a “particularly bad mood.” Seeing Lloyd Mumphord, who had been his roommate in Miami until traded to the Colts after a run-in with Shula, waving to him to get off and “party with him,” Morris did, knowing full well that, by leaving the bus, he would break the rules again. As he recalled, “Shula stared at me, and I knew that was it,”19 meaning his time as a Dolphin.
At 9–4, Miami still could draw an inside straight for a playoff berth. The Colts needed only to win their final game to cop the AFC East. But if Baltimore lost, and the Dolphins won the finale on Saturday at home against the Broncos, they’d sneak in. They did their part—barely. Spotting Denver a 10–0 halftime lead, they had to rally behind Earl Morrall, whose 10-yard TD pass to Howard Twilley cut it to 10–7 before a late drive capped by a short Bulaich run stole the game, 14–13. Shula may have thrown in an extra Hail Mary at Mass on Sunday morning, and more as he watched on TV as the Colts trailed the Patriots 14–10 at halftime. But the Colts pulled away and won 34–21. That was more bitter fruit for Shula, who had nonetheless done quite likely his best coaching job yet, going 10–4 with a sundered team held together by Scotch tape and spit. Those who had been expecting him to fall on his craggy face had to give him renewed props. Still, he felt cheated being out of the playoff picture for the first time in five years, just as his protégé Chuck Noll rose to eminence by winning consecutive Super Bowls. Indeed, Shula would have to preserve his reputation by winning more games than anyone could have foreseen, within a continuing maelstrom of discontent.