Despite Shula’s preemptive concession, his Dolphins did win the contrived Team of the Decade designation—the deciding factor being his 104–39–1 regular-season record in the ’70s, bettering Noll’s 99–44–1. Naturally, it was cold comfort for his less-than-sublime record in the playoffs. And it meant little in the ongoing tug of war Shula seemed to always be having with the man who had brought the team into the world, Joe Robbie. The first order of business for Shula in 1980 was to obtain a new contract before his current one expired after the season. The problem was that Robbie was in hot water with the IRS, which in the spring of ’80 dunned him for what was reported to be $600,000 to $700,000 in back taxes. That meant Robbie had to secure huge loans, putting up the Dolphins’ bottom line as collateral, subject to collection if he didn’t make his IRS payments.1
Robbie’s stalling on a new Shula deal exacerbated their latent personal feud. Frustrated, Shula seemed to send up a smoke signal that he was through with Miami. He decided to sell his 10 percent of the team’s stock back to Robbie for $750,000 and give up his title as vice-president. This was something Landry had also done in Dallas, to loosen the tethers the Cowboys had on him; in both cases, it meant the coaches were underselling themselves—Shula’s interest in the Dolphins was probably worth around $3 million.
It appeared Shula might even wind up at Notre Dame, a perfect job for him. He went to South Bend to meet with the school’s athletic director, Moose Krause, who held informal negotiations on the golf course. As Shula recalled wryly, “Moose said there was no hurry. He’d accept my decision after we finished the front nine.” Shula could appreciate Krause’s impatience. His coach, Dan Devine, who had replaced Ara Parseghian in 1975 and won the national title in ’77, would soon announce he planned to retire after the ’80 season. Krause wanted a seamless transition to the next head man, and if Shula came to terms, it would mean both he and Devine would be lame ducks that year. It would also mean Shula, as coach-in-waiting, would invite the same sticky situation Chuck Fairbanks had.
The point became moot, however. There was no chance Shula could commit to this or any job based on an afternoon of golf, if in fact he had serious interest to begin with. He was, after all, hugely popular in Miami, and he knew he could leverage that popularity with Robbie. So he let the Notre Dame fable die, whereupon Krause would hire Gerry Faust, whose five-year reign would be unsuccessful. Shula continued negotiations with Robbie, in a process that took what one writer later called “an excruciatingly long time coming to terms,” which hardly helped the relationship any.
In the meantime, there were other contracts Shula and Robbie had to tie up, and Shula had to go about that task without George Young, upon whom he had relied to keep track of the contract minutiae. Wellington Mara had offered Young the general manager’s position with the moribund Giants—a job he would hold for the next 18 years, reaping two championships and, like Bobby Beathard, going to the Hall of Fame. (He was also the NFL’s senior vice-president of operations until his death in 2001.) The priority for Shula was Don Strock, whom he expected to be ready to replace Bob Griese. Strock was given a multiyear deal at $100,000 per season. As insurance, Shula drafted LSU quarterback David Woodley in the eighth round.
Besides Griese, the only championship Dolphins left were Larry Little, Vern Den Herder, and Bob Kuechenberg, all on borrowed time. And then there was Larry Csonka. Feeling young again after his comeback season, for which his teammates voted him the team’s MVP, he wanted more loot to keep going. When summer camp began, Robbie offered him a $100,000 raise, but Csonka held out for another $300,000, to be on the same level as Del Williams. Instead, Robbie said publicly, “We did more for Larry Csonka by a hell of a lot last year than Larry Csonka did for us.” When Csonka met with Shula in his office—where the coach kept a signed Csonka helmet on his desktop—he asked the coach if he agreed with the owner. Shula wimped out, saying, “I can’t comment on that.” Soon after, Shula did admit, “I totally disagree with the way that it was handled by Joe Robbie.” But if he tried to change the owner’s mind in private, it didn’t work.
Indeed, Robbie hadn’t even allowed Ed Keating, whom he detested, to enter the talks. “It’s all supposed to be family and team spirit,” Csonka said, “but when I try to talk to them, they make it sound like money, money, money.” He gave a little, dropping his demand to $250,000. Robbie made his final offer of $230,000 in early August, yet Csonka remained a holdout. Miffed, Shula felt he had gone as far as he could for his “son.” He announced, “The door is no longer open. It has been slammed shut.”2
Csonka was waived, feeling “bewildered” and “betrayed” after he had “busted my rear” for the team. Yet, Shula’s timing was right again. Csonka, who then retired, popped up in the news the following spring as the subject of a federal investigation into a “major marijuana smuggling operation.” He was said to have had discussions with undercover agents about transporting large amounts of weed between Louisiana and Miami.3 Csonka’s first response was “I’ve never smuggled anything.” Shula’s was a familiar “I find it hard to believe.” But when called before a grand jury, Csonka took the Fifth. In the end, he got off easy. Authorities concluded he was a “casual acquaintance” of one of the prime smugglers, and he had gotten suspicious and backed out of the deal. But if he hoped to come back to the Dolphins, that misadventure killed off Sundance for good.
Shula had no compunction about making his own demands. When the preseason ended and he still hadn’t gotten his contract, he said he would break off negotiations if not signed by opening day. Robbie took until the Saturday before the opener to give Shula another three years at $450,000 a year, then the highest salary paid to a head coach in the history of the game—though Ed Pope posited that “at least a half-dozen clubs” would have given him “upward of three-quarters of a million dollars” in ’81. “So,” concluded Pope, “it was more than money.”4 Presumably, that meant loyalty to a team owned by a guy he could barely stand. Perhaps it was just that he could see clearly down the road and liked what he saw. John Underwood, quoting a Dolphin insider, wrote that Csonka’s final exit “may have been good for Shula. It finally forced him to quit looking to old solutions.” Still, Underwood added, “the ugly, stupid dispute [with Csonka] opened at least the memories of old wounds and exposed the realities of life in wonderful, whimsical Robbieland.”5
Shula went into camp with his usual optimistic front. Underwood noted that the coach “has high hopes for some of the Dolphins’ recent acquisitions. That Jon Giesler [his first-round pick] and Eric Laakso have helped solidify the offensive line. That Alabama All-America Don McNeal is already a star in the secondary.” Armed with his new contract, Shula marched onto the field in Buffalo, where he had won 21 games in a row—and left it beaten, 17–7. Hobbling and brittle, Griese started, launching his farewell season by throwing two picks before being relieved by Strock, who threw two of his own.
But the Dolphins then won three straight, Griese rifling the Saints with 241 yards and a TD, going 16-for-23. He followed that up with 272 yards in a loss to the Colts. However, Griese came away with his right shoulder injured and Shula, playing a hunch, went with the rookie David Woodley in the next game, against the Patriots. Woodley couldn’t have been much worse, going 11-for-28 for 48 yards in a 34–0 loss, which exposed the Dolphin running game as anemic, more so because Shula didn’t start Del Williams in six games because of unspecified disciplinary issues. The workload went to Tony Nathan, the third-round draft pick in ’79 who had gone to the Pro Bowl that year as one of the league’s top punt- and kickoff-return men, and veteran Terry Robiskie, acquired from the Raiders.
Shula decided to stick with Woodley, who for all his flaws usually kept games close enough to win, reaching his acme when he threw three touchdowns and ran for another in a 35–14 blowout of the Rams. A week later, they beat the 49ers. That ran the Dolphins’ record to 6–5. The next game was a Thanksgiving night national TV showcase against the 7–4 Chargers in the Orange Bowl, pulling a record crowd of 83,013. They saw an instant classic. It swung wildly back and forth, the teams compiling nearly 700 total yards between them. In the fourth quarter, Don Coryell, whose high-flying offense, dubbed “Air Coryell,” relied on Dan Fouts’s arm, turned Fouts loose and he put the Chargers up 24–17 with his third TD pass. Then, with time running out, Woodley hit key passes, and on a fourth down, Williams plunged in from a yard out to send it to overtime.
The Chargers had gotten to Miami at 2 a.m. because of plane trouble, but seemed the fresher team. Halfway through the OT, Woodley aimed a pass for Nat Moore. Linebacker Woody Lowe smelled it out, grabbed it at the Miami 40, and ran it to the 12. A field goal ended it at 27–24; Shula called it “one of the toughest losses we’ve had around here in a long, long time.”
Still reeling, they were decked by Noll’s Steelers a week later, 23–10. The season now seemed meaningless, but they went on to beat the Patriots on Monday night, December 8, 1980. It turned out to be a historic game, not for anything that happened on the field, but for the stunning moment in the fourth quarter when Howard Cosell broke away from commenting on the game to solemnly reveal to the nation that the biggest avatar of his generation, John Lennon, had been murdered in the courtyard of his Manhattan apartment building.
The Dolphins finished 8–8, the soft spots obvious. The offense had the fourth-fewest points and third-fewest yards in the league. And yet, a play here or there, and who knows what might have been. Even though Woodley threw more picks than touchdowns, he won six of his 11 starts and nimbly evaded pressure with his scrambles, sacked just 10 times. Shula saw enough to be able to tell Griese he was free to retire at 35. He would punch his Hall of Fame ticket in 1990.
Shula again burned that there was no postseason for his team, but seemed somewhat relieved that he had almost no lingering ties and loyalties to the past. His young defense, ranked ninth, was stocked with ferocious hitters. He and Arnsparger had decided to go to a permanent 3–4 set, anchored by Bob Baumhower at nose tackle, left end Kim Bokamper, and inside linebacker A. J. Duhe, whom Shula had switched from defensive end because of his range and speed. His totally recast secondary had 28 interceptions, fourth-most in the NFL. Shula had staked his reputation and status on the kids, and they were about to roll.
In the crazy quilt of the Dolphins’ front office, however, things weren’t as calm. There still was no official general manager, the title being held by Robbie’s son Mike, with the understanding that Shula had the final say on all decisions. No one really knew who was supposed to be signing players—the one area Shula kept a distance from—and while he noted that personnel director Chuck Connor had helped him draft 22 players still on the roster, he said he was “understandably appalled” about losing Oklahoma halfback David Overstreet, the first-round draft pick in ’81 who, feeling stiffed by Robbie, signed with the Canadian league.
He also saw tragedy take another player. On July 1, Rusty Chambers, the roving linebacker and the team’s leading tackler in ’78 and ’79, was killed in a car accident. That, of course, jolted the team beyond words, and their grieving only added to the uncertainty surrounding the Dolphins’ future. The team, wrote one scribe, “lacks in so many areas it will be the miracle of the century if [Shula] breaks even again” in ’81.6 Robbie had gotten so frustrated that he began to hint that he might be willing to call a truce and rehire Joe Thomas, who had been run out of San Francisco after two galling seasons. Few could make sense of Robbie reclaiming Thomas. Speculating, John Underwood wondered if the owner was preemptively “cushioning himself for a fall if Shula finally calls it a career” and “doesn’t rebound from last year.”
But as long as he was in power, Shula wouldn’t be steamrolled. He’d had a cordial relationship with Thomas in the past, but he had watched him become a despot who created chaos wherever he went. A friend of both men said that Shula saw the irascible Thomas now as a “non person” for “doing in” some Shula allies, the latest being Monte Clark (who wound up coaching the Lions and would return to the Dolphins’ front office in the ’90s). Still, Shula owed Thomas for Del Williams and was willing to have him back, though he made it clear that there was “no room” for Thomas in player personnel, a function Shula would now conscript.
Given Shula’s all-encompassing leverage, Robbie could only offer Thomas an administrative position, with no say in drafting or trades. At least, that was the original arrangement, with Thomas as vice-president for special projects, such as being a liaison with the Miami Sports Authority, the city’s newly created sports bureaucracy with which Robbie would need to reach an agreement for a new stadium. Thomas, it was said, was conducting “how-to-watch-football classes for women,” to which Underwood jibed, “If that is the case, then Robbie hired Rembrandt to paint the mailbox.”
All this was meant to mollify Shula, and Thomas paid him the respect of calling him in order to “set the record straight” on his duties. Although Shula made it clear he believed “Monte got the short end,” he averred that he bore Thomas no ill will. But he did clarify, “This is still my product. I’m in charge of decisions that affect this team.” In a move apparently designed to install another buffer against Thomas encroaching on him, Shula got Robbie to hire Charley Winner—the former St. Louis Cardinal and New York Jet coach, and Weeb Ewbank’s son-in-law—to fill the role of personnel director. Only then did he agree to allow Thomas the leeway to help sign players.
But Thomas may have taken that concession as an inch he could stretch into a mile. While he confirmed he would not be involved in personnel matters, he would attend practice now and then. When he did, Shula would get his back up. Things were tenser than ever, the troika of executives rarely speaking and casting suspicious sidelong glances at each other.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Dolphin summer without contract drama. In the run-up to the ’81 season, Williams held out. Shula had no patience for such vanity; already a problem child, Williams was 30 and prone to nodding off in team meetings, which he claimed was due to narcolepsy. Shula dealt him to Green Bay, where he would be injured and retire. His place would be taken by 23-year-old Andra Franklin, the second-round draft pick out of Nebraska the year before, who had mainly sat during the season. In ’81, he was a workhorse in the Csonka mold, a pulverizing blocker in addition to carrying 201 times for 711 yards, second to Tony Nathan’s 782. This balanced backfield allowed the jittery Woodley to sit in the pocket, though he was prone to panic and tearing off on scrambles.
Shula, in fact, had put together another of his autopilot teams, the kind few regarded very highly but looked up to find at the top of the division all season. Without much notice, and with Woodley so unreliable that Shula often yanked him for Don Strock—the two known in tandem as “Woodstrock”—they finished 11–4–1. It was another little Shula miracle by a team that boasted exactly one All-Pro, Baumhower, yet gave up the fifth-fewest points.
It got them a home game in the first round of the playoffs—a break for Shula, who had not won a postseason game since 1973. The divisional-round matchup on January 2 brought another edition of the Air Coryell Chargers. That year, Dan Fouts had come within 200 yards of being the first QB to break 5,000 passing yards. Fouts’s targets were terrifying: future Hall of Famers Charlie Joiner and tight end Kellen Winslow—the league’s top receiver for the second year in a row—and All-Pros John Jefferson and Wes Chandler. Fullback Chuck Muncie, a great athlete with a checkered past and a festering cocaine habit, led the NFL with 19 rushing touchdowns. Coryell, who with his crooked beak and beady eyes rivaled Shula for owning the best coaching face in the business, notched a 10–6 record, his offense ranked No. 1, while his defense was the polar opposite—No. 26, dead last, against the pass.
The Dolphins brought out Miami’s Archbishop Edward McCarthy before kickoff. “May the best team win,” he said to the crowd, concluding his prayer with “and you know which one that is.” But the Chargers were slight favorites, and they seemed an easy bet as they screamed to a 24–0 lead after one quarter. When Woodley was picked off to set up a Fouts TD pass, he was benched—“ignominiously,” wrote Paul Zimmerman—for Strock, and the tough kid from the Pennsylvania coal country threw quick touchdowns to Joe Rose and Tony Nathan.
With six seconds left in the half, Shula got funky and called a “hook and lateral,” a schoolyard play that began when Strock fired a pass to Duriel Harris at the Charger 25. As he was going down, Harris shoveled the ball two-handed to Nathan, who ran in untouched for an electric 40-yard touchdown. No team had ever been behind by 24 in a playoff game and won. But the Dolphins surged, and with the crowd edging toward insanity, the comeback was complete on the first drive of the third quarter. Shula, seeing the Charger linebackers laying off his tight ends, called passes for Rose and Bruce Hardy. Another to Rose, a 15-yard dart, tied it at 24. But Fouts had Winslow, who was so talented, Coryell left him to his own devices; as John Underwood wrote in Sports Illustrated, “Winslow plays just about wherever Winslow wants to play: tight end, wide receiver, fullback, wingback, slotback,” as well as—fatefully—on special teams.
Fouts found Winslow for a 25-yard TD. Strock countered with a rare deep route for Hardy, who reeled in a stunning 50-yard bomb. After Lyle Blackwood picked off Fouts, Nathan ran one in for a 38–31 lead early in the fourth quarter. Things were looking good for Shula and grim for Coryell, who once said it took him months to “get over the depression” of losing, something Shula could relate to. Now, observed Underwood, Coryell was “hunched over, hands on knees, his eyes looking despairingly at the scoreboard, as if a new depression had already begun.”7 But he got a gift. With time running down, Franklin fumbled. Fouts took his team 82 yards to the Dolphins 10, and on a busted play, scrambled and floated one to tailback James Brooks in the end zone, tying it with the extra point.
Strock did get the Dolphins into long field goal range with seconds left, but at the snap, Winslow exploded straight up and batted down Uwe von Schamann’s kick. Players and fans were already limp in the muggy night, the vibe much like the Colts–Giants “greatest game ever” and the Christmas double-overtime win over the Chiefs. In this overtime, both kickers, first Rolf Benirschke then von Schamann, missed—again blocked by Winslow. A second extra session loomed when Fouts squared up and hit Joiner with an enormous pass to the Miami 12.
To that point, Fouts had rung up 433 yards, completing 33 of 53; Strock was 29-for-43 for 403 yards. Three Charger receivers had gained over 100 yards, as had two Dolphins. But it came down to Benirschke, a wafer of a man who’d nearly died two years earlier from Crohn’s disease. This time, from 29 yards out, he put it through. After four hours and a combined 1,000 yards and 10 touchdowns, the players seemed like they had survived the siege at Bastogne. Winslow was so spent, he fell to the earth and needed to be helped off by two teammates. Shula greeted Coryell, barely able to keep from imploding. No hyperbole seemed out of place, not even Winslow channeling Martin Luther King by saying, “I feel like I’ve been to the mountaintop.”
Ed Pope, in adjective overdrive, wrote an ode declaring it “the finest football game ever . . . a dizzying, dazzling, kaleidoscopic spectacular.” Fouts called it “the greatest game I ever played in.” Sports Illustrated dubbed it A GAME NO ONE SHOULD HAVE LOST. Most media types would settle on “The Epic in Miami.”
For Shula, it went beyond frustrating. “It’s going to be a tough one to live with,” he said yet again. “But our guys are men. They proved it.”8 So had he. Unlike Coryell, whose team was destroyed the next week by the Bengals, who went to the Super Bowl and lost to the 49ers, Shula had actually been to the mountaintop, twice. But all that meant a decade later was that his own success seemed to be mocking him.
In the ’82 draft, Shula’s top pick was an All-American guard out of USC: Roy Foster, a six-foot, four-inch, 280-pound man-mountain who would make All-Pro twice over the next eight seasons. He also added another wide receiver, Northwestern State’s Mark Duper, who was also a champion sprinter. The All-Pro team would make room for him, too, three times. The third- and fourth-rounders were also blue-chip prospects: Penn State cornerback Paul Lankford and Duke linebacker Charles Bowser. Indeed, this was perhaps Shula’s best draft of all, and it kept Joe Thomas at bay. Shula now had the league’s youngest team, with only two starters over 30, Kuechenberg and Ed Newman. Roster turnover had been so thorough that when Don Reese’s cocaine confessions ran in Sports Illustrated in June, they seemed almost irrelevant.
Shula had put to bed the negative vibe surrounding the Dolphins’ drug subplot far better than had Tom Landry and other coaches who still wallowed in the problem. As Mercury Morris observed, Shula had at least put a lid on it better, a truly remarkable thing, with the team situated in the hub of America’s drug trade, a status reflected in pop culture by hysterical movies like Scarface and glitz-and-grime TV takes like Miami Vice. While the Dolphins were still a prime attraction, a virtual stamp on the city’s identity, they also reflected Shula’s blue-nosed sensibilities, even as the team was no longer an outsider tweaking the establishment; they were the establishment, and Shula had no objection to that.
His timing was right, too. In ’82, fate seemed to give him a mulligan, the result of a sport cheapened by a game of chicken between the league and the players’ union. The latter, seeing the owners fattened even more by a flood of TV money, demanded a higher cut of revenues for salaries. Unable to make headway, the union played its hand by walking off the job during the season, after two games. For Shula, who publicly said the players deserved more—but, reflecting his latter-day elitism, added they didn’t have the right to “change the system”—it stopped a roll the Dolphins had started the season on, beating the Jets and Colts. For the next two months, the sport went dark, resulting in a $275 million drain in revenue and wages.
During the interrupted season, on October 9, Mary Shula called her son with the news that Dan Shula, who had been ill for months, had died of respiratory failure at 80. The son who had made their immigrant family a household name flew to Painesville to bury the quiet, stalwart man who had put aside his reluctance and let his son play sports instead of studying the sacraments. The son spent a week in his native grounds, eulogizing his father at the funeral and greeting old friends. He worried that his mother would lose her will to live, and found himself giving her the sort of pep talks he wished he could have given his striking players. Growing restless, he returned to Miami and, like other management, held firm against the players’ demands. He could see that the union would have to fold. And it did, in mid-November, accepting a token raise but vowing to continue the fight. Salvaging the season, a nine-game schedule would determine seeding for a nearly all-inclusive playoff scheme.
The Dolphins’ return game against the Bills on November 21 was unsightly. With no real practice time, the teams were rusty, creating a nine-turnover mess. Buffalo led 7–6 in the last quarter, but Uwe von Schamann saved it, hitting a 21-yard field goal to win 9–7. The next week, in Tampa Bay, Woodley was still in a funk, so Shula went with Strock, who threw two touchdowns but four picks in a 23–17 loss. They beat the Vikings, then played the Patriots in Foxborough in a blinding snowstorm. With 4:45 left in a scoreless game, the Pats got into field-goal range and their coach, Ron Meyer, directed a plow driver on the sideline to go clear the snow for kicker John Smith, who booted the winner, sending Shula into one of his neck-bulging rants. Seeing the plow as an unfair advantage, he bellowed to the referee Bob Frederic, “Why would you let that happen?”
Frederic himself didn’t know if it was legal or not, which angered Shula even more. Ironically, Shula then had a shot to tie on a long field goal, and Frederic assured him he could have the plow clear the snow for him too. But he passed it up, opting to go for it on fourth down, whereupon Woodley was intercepted, ending the game. Shula was steaming in the locker room. “I don’t know about illegal,” he seethed, “but it will certainly be in my report to the commissioner.”9 Most everyone had fun with the “Snowplow Caper,” even more so when it emerged that the plow driver was a convict on a work-release program. For Dolphins beat writer Larry Dorman, the defeat was a “crime,” but “the Miami offense should be picked up for vagrancy.”
Shula indeed took his grievance to Pete Rozelle, claiming that the defeat should be overturned because, under a broad interpretation of the rules, the use of the plow was an “unfair act.” The commissioner refused to make that radical call, instead banning the use of snowplows during games. Burned again that he never seemed to get proper respect from Rozelle, Shula was calmed a bit when von Schamann bailed out the Dolphins with another field goal the next week against the Jets. He finished atop the division at 7–2, gaining the No. 2 seed. They also had a defense that led the league and gave up the second-fewest points, including just seven touchdowns. The writers, looking to inject a little pizzazz to another workmanlike Shula team, took to calling the defense the “Killer Bees,” with Bokamper, Baumhower, and Doug Betters up front, Bob Brudzinski (obtained from the Cowboys) at left outside linebacker, and the Blackwood boys deep.
Actually, they were much like the No Names of yore. Only Baumhower went to the Pro Bowl. Paul Zimmerman wondered if their stats were “a statistical mirage.” What’s more, Woodley was inept much of the season, throwing five touchdowns to eight picks. But having the home field was a salve. In the first round, when they played the Patriots, someone in the Dolphins PR department thought it would be hilarious to hire an actor in prison garb to drive a snowplow onto the field before the game. Shula, not amused, said, “I don’t know anything about it. I don’t want to be associated with it.” His men then laid 460 yards of offense on the Pats, winning 28–13.
Next were the Chargers, who expected to break Shula’s heart again on his home turf. Said Bokamper later, “I read newspaper stories out of San Diego that the Chargers didn’t respect us too much. They thought we were a fluke or something.” The Chargers were indeed favored, but Shula’s team was merciless, winning 34–13, holding Kellen Winslow to one catch. That put the Dolphins back in the AFC championship game.
Bokamper, sounding a lot like his coach, said, “Today we went out and showed the country what kind of defense we are when it comes to the real serious situations.” Dan Fouts, who was picked three times, agreed. “Miami didn’t give us anything,” he acknowledged. “Its defense is the best we’ve seen.”10 Zimmerman’s game story in Sports Illustrated, the cover of which was emblazoned DAY OF THE DOLPHINS, hailed THE REVENGE OF THE KILLER BEES, though it seemed more like the revenge of Don Shula.
Many regarded the ’82 playoff tournament as the route toward a cheapened title. Indeed, not only were the Dolphins an unlikely contender, but their opponents were the Jets, making their first AFC title game appearance ever, a reward for the long-suffering Richard Todd, who’d succeeded Joe Namath and had once thrown 30 picks in a season. While still erratic, he had the luxury of the league’s leading rusher, Freeman McNeil. The Jets’ defensive front four, the New York Sack Exchange, got most of the attention, led by end Mark Gastineau, the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year, who punctuated sacks with seizure-like dance moves.
As always with the Jets and Shula, there were degrees of separation from Super Bowl III. The Jets were coached by Walt Michaels, whose older brother Lou had baited Joe Namath into his “guarantee.” But Shula didn’t need anyone to bait Todd. All he needed was some rain. And Miami got a lot of it on January 23. Shula may have learned something from Al Davis when it came to wet fields. Loathe to spend $4,000 on a tarp to protect the field, per league rules, the Dolphins claimed their grass surface, technically called Prescription Athletic Turf, made one unnecessary, as pumps below the surface were designed to clear the field of excess water. On this day, the amount of water bailed could have fit in a thimble. Before the game, Jets president Jim Kensil saw the field and bitched the same way Shula always did in Oakland.11
As it happened, the Jets had just come from Oakland, where they had beaten the Raiders in the previous round and the prickly Michaels was convinced that Davis had bugged their locker room. He was also miffed at Shula, misconstruing the latter’s remark during the week that the Jets had a “Swoyersville mentality,” referring to Michaels’s Pennsylvania hometown, which was meant as a compliment. Already melting down when he saw the Orange Bowl quagmire, Michaels needed to be calmed by Kensil.
During the game, he only grew more overwrought. The contest devolved into what one reporter called a “three-hour mud wrestling match.” Neither team did much with the ball, Todd and Woodley combining for eight picks. But the Dolphins were bailed out by A. J. Duhe, who in one report, displayed “the best defense since Clarence Darrow.”12 In the third quarter, his pick set up a touchdown and 7–0 lead. In the fourth, he grabbed another; then, two minutes later, he lined up as a down lineman, spun outside in midplay to cover halfback Bruce Harper in the flat, and when the ball glanced off Harper’s hand, Duhe took his AFC playoff-record third interception into the end zone for a 35-yard touchdown. Final score: Duhe 14, Jets 0.
In the mud, the Jets had only managed 139 total yards, the fewest ever in an AFC title game, and beyond the field conditions, some wondered if the Dolphins might again have all the answers. In his game story, no longer seeing mirages, Zimmerman asked, “Has Arnsparger finally come up with the perfect coverage scheme to combat the football of the ’80s?” He noted that Shula’s great defenses of the past had funneled coverage to the middle of the field, where the safeties roamed free and made the big steals. “Todd was made to believe the inside was open,” wrote Zimmerman, “and then it was taken away from him.”13
If ever Shula was given a free ride, this year was it. His offense on this day had only managed 198 yards, and Woodley was slapped back into reality. Michaels certainly wasn’t impressed. On the plane home, he had a near breakdown, screaming that he would demand an investigation of Shula. A day later, he was fired.14 Whatever one thought of Shula and his dubious season, he had done what he had to in order to find his way back to another Super Bowl.
Shula’s opponent at the less than lofty summit would be the Redskins, who beat Tom Landry’s Cowboys in the NFC title game, setting up a delayed rematch of the Super Bowl that capped the Dolphins’ perfect season. George Allen was long gone, now coaching in yet another fledgling football league challenging the NFL, the United States Football League. Still, there was a history between the two teams, and Bobby Beathard had made himself an elite general manager, building the ’Skins back into a force; when the head coaching job came open the year before, he recommended that owner Jack Kent Cooke sign Joe Gibbs, the best move the franchise ever made. Of course, there was also Joe Theismann, now entrenched in the NFL 12 years after snubbing Shula.
The meek-looking, soft-spoken Gibbs had been an assistant for 17 years, mostly as offensive coordinator under Don Coryell. Canny as Gibbs was, he knew the undersized, mercurial Theismann was no Dan Fouts. His system had the QB roll out to utilize his speed and scrambling ability and rely heavily on fullback John Riggins, the ex-Jet and a Csonka clone with speed, running behind the most massive offensive line in the game, known as The Hogs. The biggest of those linemen was 300-pound tackle Joe Jacoby, who with his fellow sows opened up passing lanes for Art Monk, Charlie Brown, and tight end Don Warren. Gibbs also stocked his defensive line with cattle, such as veteran tackle Dave Butz, another three bills of brawn.
That defense, anchored in the secondary by veteran all-Pro strong safety Tony Peters, was ranked No. 1, giving up just 14 points a game. Even the kicker, Mark Moseley, was something special; he won the NFC’s MVP award that year, making 20 of 21 field goals. The ’Skins had gone 8–1, then destroyed the Lions, Vikings, and Cowboys, looking like Shula’s ’68 Colts. Yet Shula had made believers out of the bettors; the ’Skins came in favored by only three and a half points for the game, played on January 30, 1983, in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.
Shula later admitted he was spooked by how good the Redskins looked on film. Gibbs had outdone Landry with funky, arcane formations, such as using three tight ends and an “I” stack of three receivers on the line. The scariest specter, though, was the 33-year-old Riggins, an insatiable runner who had carried 36 times against the Cowboys and wanted more. He was a slightly daft farm boy, one day impish, the next glowering. As a Jet, he had worn a Mohawk hairdo. During Super Bowl week, he showed up at one press confab in camouflage pants with an elephant gun belt buckle, at another in a white top hat and tails. Speaking less about football than killing coyotes, he dominated media coverage the way Namath had in ’69.
Shula hoped he could defuse Riggins, if Woodley would rejuvenate in the warm California sun. Abandoning his usual Super Bowl shell game, he would let Woodley come out flinging, hoping to catch the ’Skins off guard and force Theismann to play catch-up. He drummed this into his men for two weeks while sealing them off from the outside world, strictly enforcing curfews, and ringing the practice field with security.
Gibbs, who was so relaxed, it seemed he could nod off in midsentence, gave his boys a looser rein, no doubt partly because there was no way to rein in Riggins, on or off the field.
On game day, it was a relatively cool 54 degrees, but Woodley came out hot. On Miami’s second possession, he hit undersized receiver Jimmy Cefalo on the sideline between the short and deep zone, and Cefalo beat Peters in a footrace—76 yards, the biggest play of the season. But the most impressive thing they did was to somehow avoid being blown away. From the start, the Dolphins could not brake Riggins or keep from being suckered by the same kind of cut-back, misdirection trap plays, Shula had used to cream the Vikings in the Super Bowl. Gibbs even shifted all five eligible receivers back and forth before a snap, creating a vertiginous effect on the defense. The ’Skins built a huge surfeit in rushing and total yardage, and their defense recovered and kept Woodley under control with waves of blitzes and stunts.
And yet, they could not not break it open. When it was 10-all in the second quarter, Miami second-year return man Fulton Walker returned a kickoff 98 yards for a touchdown, the first in Super Bowl history and at the time the longest. The Dolphins were making big plays—interceptions by Bokamper and then Lyle Blackwood at his own one-yard line on, of all things, a flea flicker—and ’Skins screw-ups helped them keep the lead, 17–13, entering the fourth quarter. But Shula’s defense was gassed; later, Jacoby would say “their chests were heaving and the steam was coming off them.” With under 12 minutes left, on a fourth-and-one at the Miami 43, Gibbs went for it. Riggins, behind a running back and a tight end, went left, off tackle. As Shula recalled, “We were in a short-yardage defense, and he went off the left corner, and we had a man slip and a man miss an arm-tackle on him, and it didn’t work.”15
Riggins cleared the line, broke outside, and kept running, mainly untouched. Don McNeal tried arm-tackling him and bounced off like a pinball. Riggins’s 43-yard run claimed the lead. And here, many observers would criticize Shula for sending Woodley back in. He had gone 4-for-13 for 97 yards, just 21 since the Cefalo bomb. “I thought I’d give David one more series,” he would explain. Two runs and a penalty left Woodley with a critical third-and-11, and he missed on a pass to Harris. Riggins then ran eight of the next 12 plays, padding his numbers to 38 carries and 166 yards, still Super Bowl records. That took seven minutes off the clock, and a short TD pass made it 27–16 with two minutes left.
Only now did Shula go to Strock, who in an impossible situation threw three incomplete passes before the ’Skins ran out the clock. Over the second half, as Washington rolled up a then-record 276 rushing yards, Shula’s offense had two first downs and 34 total yards. A good many thought Gibbs had outcoached Shula, but most came away praising the latter for keeping it so close despite the avalanche of yardage against his team. Gibbs—who had beaten, in succession, Bud Grant, Landry, and Shula—backed off any suggestion he was in their league. “The truly great people in this profession are great for years and years,” he said, prophetically. “Let’s see how I am in 10 years”—by which time he had won as many rings as the latter two combined.
Afterward, reported Ed Pope, “Shula came off the phone from telling President Reagan that he was ‘proud’ of the Dolphins, then stood tall in Miami’s funereal dressing room and spoke without a quiver of how the Redskins had smashed his [team]. ‘Give them all the credit. They deserve to be champions.’ ” Really, what else could he say? He had to admit that “they manhandled us” and that Riggins was a “tremendously dominating force,” but then he turned to the broader, familiar themes of personal defeat, pity, endless redemption and fate. “It could have been a great story,” Shula said. “But now it will only be on the Redskins. I realize better than anyone else that after a Super Bowl they’re only going to be talking about one team, and it won’t be the Dolphins.” Then, by rote, “We had a fine season, and we have to turn this loss into a learning experience, which is the only positive thing I can possibly say about it.”16
The next day, on the flight home, he tried putting it out of his mind with the comforting thought that the last time he’d lost a Super Bowl, he won the next two. With the vagaries of the college draft, he might take that one step further if he could somehow get a quarterback with the next-to-last draft pick of the first round.