The Shula family became a wider brand in 1992. Dave Shula, given credit for the development of Troy Aikman as the Cowboys improved from 1–15 to 7–9, was offered the job of receivers coach by the Cincinnati Bengals, who had won their division but needed better work from Boomer Esiason’s receivers. Dave took the job, but things went bad fast. The team went 3–13 and head coach Sam Wyche was fired by Mike Brown, Paul Brown’s son and the team president. To replace Wyche, Brown took a chance on the Shula pedigree, passing over Chiefs defensive coordinator Bill Cowher—perhaps, it was speculated, in solidarity with another fortunate son overshadowed by a legendary father. At 32, Dave was a year younger than his old man when he got the Colts job in ’63. Meanwhile, Mike Shula would remain on the Dolphins sideline through that year before moving on to become Dave Wannstedt’s tight ends coach with the Bears.
As for the patriarch, Shula pere would begin his 30th year as a head coach, safe enough that Wayne Huizenga, whom he had aggrandized, was on board with making him the top-paid coach again. Jimmy Johnson, having turned the Cowboys around, had gotten an extension the year before at $3 million a year, which no other owner beside Jerry Jones would have even considered. Keeping up with Jones as best he could, Huizenga gave Shula a two-year extension, to take effect in ’93, when Shula’s salary would zoom to $1.7 million. In ’94, he would be paid $2 million. The extension was announced at a presser at Shula’s Golf Resort in Miami Lakes. Relieved that things had gone so smoothly, Shula said after signing in mid-July, “We had two meetings in the last three days. One of them lasted 6 minutes, and the other one I think took 12 minutes.”1
While Johnson would earn his meed by winning NFL titles in ’92 and ’93, even as he bridled under Jones’s meddling thumb, Shula, left alone by his owner, earned his with another magic carpet ride with Marino and borderline talent. The Dolphins won their first six games in ’92, including a 37–10 massacre of the 10-point-favorite Bills in Rich Stadium, when Marino hit on three touchdown passes and the suddenly revitalized defense intercepted Jim Kelly four times and held Thurman Thomas to 33 yards. The running game was still weird. Higgs would carry 256 times for 915 yards that season; the next in line, Bobby Humphrey, a former 1,000-yard rusher with Denver, but barely used by Shula, had 102 carries for 471 yards. Third-highest again was Marino . . . with 20 carries, 66 yards.
But Marino could turn games in an instant. Shrugging off losses to the Colts and Jets, he then faced the Colts again and went 22-for-28 for 245 yards and two touchdowns in a 28–0 rout. Then, after losing three of four, one a close loss in the return match with Buffalo, the Dolphins baked the Raiders 20–7, Marino going 16-for-26 with a 62-yard touchdown heave to Duper. The Dolphins finished strong at 11–5, their overtime win over the Patriots in the finale banking another division crown for Shula, Marino depositing over 4,000 passing yards again.
Their first playoff game was the divisional shakeout against the revitalized Chargers, Shula’s personal tormentors. Worse, Higgs hurt his knee in the finale and was done for the postseason. Shula patched up the already famished backfield by starting a third-round pick from ’91, Aaron Craver, who had run three times for nine yards over the season. This time, at Robbie Stadium, everything went right. Marino pumped three touchdowns, Craver ran for 72 yards, one more than Humphrey, in a rare 157-yard rushing day, and Miami won 31–0. However, while this ushered Shula into the AFC championship game in style, he would need to dispose of the Bills to get back to the Super Bowl.
He was at home, but never had a chance. Kelly had a low-key 177 passing yards and two picks. But his 17-yard scoring pass to Thurman Thomas put the Bills ahead 10–3, and their 182 yards on the ground burned the clock and kept adding points, aided by egregious Dolphin giveaways. They fumbled the second-half kickoff. Minutes later, Thomas fumbled, too; rookie defensive end Marco Coleman tried to scoop it and run, but he fumbled it right back. Marino, his ground game back to being a non-factor—11 carries, 33 yards—choked the air with 45 balls, completing 22 passes for 268 yards, with two picks. Clayton and Tony Martin dropped long completions. Harassed and chased by Bruce Smith and linebackers Cornelius Bennett and Phil Hansen, Marino was sacked four times and fumbled once. His late scoring pass to Duper was moot, making the score 26–10. The final was 29–10, with Bills coach Marv Levy punching his ticket to another losing Super Bowl, to be cut down this time by the Cowboys.
For the Dolphins and the fans, it was all too routine. The 71,224 at Joe Robbie Stadium, who were deafening when the team took the field, seemed too inured to failures like this to boo or make much noise at all once the outcome was clear. The same went for Shula. Wooden and blank-faced, the familiar tight jaw a bit slack, he repeated his old script. “It’s a real disappointment that we didn’t play better in a game that meant so much,” he said. By now, what else was there to say? No analysis of what went wrong mattered on a cellular level as much as the continuation of big-game failure with no real answers.
Shula could still make the case that he alone could have gotten within one win of a Super Bowl with the cast he had. But an argument could also be made that leaving the running game so thin rendered eventual failure almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. The old bugaboo about the team coming out flat for those summit games had grown into one of the great mysteries in sports. On balance, the pros and cons still weighed on his side, at least in the view of Wayne Huizenga, the only one who really counted. Then, too, he was always the biggest celebrity of his team, his off-field businesses sunk into the loam of South Florida, the events of his life major news.
That off-season, the latest news was that he had a new love in his life.
As prudish as he was, at least on the surface, he had mourned enough after two years. Always a man who needed a woman to come home to, and to whom to turn over matters of domestic responsibility, as he prepared for the new season, a headline appeared that read, WHO IS THE WOMAN ON DON SHULA’S ARM? The answer was Mary Anne Stephens, the thrice-married, 48-year-old ex-wife of, most recently, Jackson T. Stephens, a filthy-rich financier from Little Rock, Arkansas, who had a piece of Walmart and Tyson Foods and was a major donor to the Republican Party. Stephens had made Mary Anne co-chair of George Bush’s 1988 and 1992 presidential campaigns in the state.
Beautiful and magnetic, she became a high-society figure in Miami after Stephens bought a mansion on Indian Creek Island for $8.9 million in 1989, the most expensive home sale in Dade County that year. In ’91, the house was given to Mary Anne in a divorce settlement, in addition to $1 million a year in alimony. As a society matron, she threw dazzling parties, one at the Fontainebleau Hotel that raised half a million dollars for the Miami Heart Fund. Raven-haired with ruby lips, sparks flying from her fingertips, she certainly wove a spell on the dashing widower the moment they met in 1992 at a New Year’s party at pro golfer Ray Floyd’s home near hers on the island. There were even rumors in the ensuing months that they had secretly eloped, and clucking from her tony friends that a football coach, even one who was a millionaire, wasn’t up to her standards. One such “friend” was quoted as saying, “I just hope Don Shula is worthy of that woman.”2 Of course, his friends had the same reservations about her. As they were seen in public more often, arm in arm, beaming at each other like lovebirds, Howard Schnellenberger’s take was that “she chased him and he didn’t fight it. It wasn’t love at first sight for him. He already had that. You only get it once in your life. But Don needed a woman around him. And he got a damn good one.”3
Others simply took Mary Anne for a gold digger and social climber. But he was too much in love to care, and as the pair inexorably neared marriage, not even the obsessive work he put into a football season would get in the way.
That work had different parameters now, making his life as an executive both less and more complicated. In 1993, the players’ union won an enormous victory in court, as a result of which free agents could be signed without restrictions. While many owners insisted they wouldn’t break the bank for available stars, Shula no longer needed to pinch pennies as he had for Joe Robbie. Huizenga, who that year bought out the Robbie family for $115 million, giving him total control of the franchise, was obviously a free spender, and he jumped at the big free agents. The Dolphins nailed the biggest, Philadelphia Eagles tight end Keith Jackson, who’d been first-team All-Pro in his first three seasons. He signed with the Dolphins for four years and $5.9 million. Shula also harvested Eagles fullback Keith Byars, a tremendous receiver out of the backfield, and Irving Fryar from the Patriots. They would earn their fortune; the latter two would make All-Pro that year as Dolphins, Fryar with 64 receptions, Byars with 61, eight touchdown receptions between them. Jackson added 39 catches and six touchdowns. Shula also acquired Giants receiver Mark Ingram, that team’s first-round pick of ’87.
The ’93 season panned out as another manic-depressive carousel ride. After a 3–1 start, in the Dolphins’ game in Cleveland, Marino began to feel pain in his right heel. He tried to take a step and nearly buckled, needing help to be lifted up and taken off the field, foot dangling. Shula sent in backup Scott Mitchell, whose first pass was intercepted by Browns cornerback Najee Mustafaa and run back 97 yards for a touchdown, the longest such return in Browns history. Mitchell settled in, his third-quarter touchdown passes to Tony Martin and Jackson taking back the lead and clinching a 24–14 win. Shula had faint hope that Marino might not be seriously hurt. But a day later, it was confirmed that he’d ripped his Achilles tendon and was through for the season. For the first time since he became a starter, he would miss games (not counting the strike), ending a run of 145, the longest streak by any quarterback then in the league.
But even an injury to Marino couldn’t derail the wedding. Shula and Mary Anne had agreed to tie the knot on October 19, during a bye week. They made no announcement, and the ceremony was private, held before a small party at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. On that blessed day, he put on his best suit and stood at the altar with his best man, his son Mike, who took a day off from the Bears—Dave couldn’t do that with his Bengals team. Mary Anne was walked down the aisle by her debutante daughter. After the vows, a reception was held at Mary Anne’s mansion, which would now be Shula’s primary residence. The honeymoon would be delayed until after Shula’s latest quest to find his lost glory. Most of South Florida didn’t learn of the nuptials until he returned to the Dolphins office three days later, “flashed a sly grin and said, ‘What’s new?’ ” before revealing the news.4 Even the skeptics could see that he needed that wedding band on his finger. For many, it was the first time he looked happy since Dorothy died.
During the week off, he had begun to duly scour rosters for a serviceable arm, bringing in Tampa’s backup, 39-year-old Steve DeBerg, the league’s oldest player. But he held off signing him when the Browns suddenly released the once-overhyped Kosar. While Shula went about wooing Kosar, he let Mitchell start the next game, against the Chiefs, and he went 22-for-33 with 344 yards and four touchdowns in a 30–10 blowout. It was Shula’s 324th career victory, tying him with Papa Bear Halas as the NFL’s winningest coach.
Kosar subsequently signed as a backup for Troy Aikman in Dallas, so DeBerg became a Dolphin, but he had no practice time before Shula had his first try at beating Halas, against the Jets. With Mitchell under center, he lost 27–10. The next try was in Philadelphia on November 14. DeBerg still wasn’t ready, and Shula was snakebitten again when Mitchell separated his shoulder early in the third quarter. Rather than rushing in DeBerg, he swallowed hard and went with Doug Pederson, a third-string scrub who hadn’t thrown a single pro pass. But Pederson did not need to do much. The Dolphins were aided all game by Eagles fumbles, two of which came on strips by Shula’s slightly crazed outside linebacker Bryan Cox, the second setting up a Pete Stoyanovich field goal that put them ahead. Pederson then led a long drive, leading to another field goal with 3:36 left that made it 19–14. Shula had to sweat it out when the Eagles got the ball back and Ken O’Brien, who had landed in Philadelphia after the Jets gave up on him, heaved a long one to an open James Lofton, who dropped it.
Some of the Dolphins began to pick up the Gatorade bucket to dump on Shula’s head, but Mike Westhoff, the special teams coach, told them it would piss Shula off. Instead, Sims and defensive tackle Larry Webster hoisted him on their shoulders. He enjoyed being on that metaphorical top of the world, pumping his fist in the air. Someone dug up the fact that Shula’s record with backup quarterbacks was 29–8, a better percentage than his overall 325–153–6. Said Pederson, who would, far in the future, enjoy the same glory Shula had as a Super Bowl coach, with the very team he had just defeated, “He just kept telling me I could do it.”
Shula called it a “special” win, given its makeshift nature, and waxed thoughtful and melancholic, rewinding his life. “You take a job at age 33 and you go out every day, every week, to do as good a job as you can,” he said, relaxed in a postgame setting perhaps for the first time since winning his second championship. “You hope the second year will be better than the first, and the third better than the second.”5 Now, he only needed to be better than he was in the 29th year.
The front page of the Herald was etched with “ 325” and carried factoids of the Shula reign—such as him now having more wins than 17 other franchises, and that 187 other head coaches had been employed during his tenure. There were sidebars about his rise from a “Grand River boy into the King of Miami,” and a whimsical Dave Barry column ruminating that Shula had to win the most games, because, “With that GLARE, how did he ever lose?”
But Pederson, after being regaled in the media for a week, was said to be “crushed” when Shula told him DeBerg would be taking the snaps now. In his first start, against the Patriots, he nailed two fourth-quarter touchdowns to win 17–13. Then, on Thanksgiving, the Dolphins, their 8–2 record notwithstanding, went to Dallas as 10-point underdogs to the 7–3 Cowboys. In a surreal sight, heavy snow came down through the signature hole in the roof of Texas Stadium. Even on the slippery turf, Byars took a handoff, broke two tackles, and streaked 77 yards—tying the team record—for a touchdown. After an Aikman touchdown pass and Kevin Williams’s returned punt for a 64-yard touchdown, Dallas had the lead, 14–7. Shula crept closer on two Stoyanovich field goals. With 15 seconds left, down a point, the Dolphins had a third down on the Dallas 24. Not risking a run or pass, Shula sent Stoyanovich out again for a 41-yard attempt, but it was blocked, the ball squibbing down the field and spinning like a top at around the 10-yard line, though the yard markers were obscured by snow.
The shivering crowd erupted. Cowboys on the sideline celebrated. Jerry Jones went into some sort of spasmic victory jig. But down near the goal line, as Cowboys kept away from the ball, their hulking lineman Leon Lett, thinking it was a free ball, sliced in and tried to recover it. Sliding in the snow, he inadvertently kneed the ball, nudging it a few yards toward the end zone. That set off a mad scramble, and Jeff Dellenbach emerged with it somewhere near the goal line. The baffled officials discussed what had happened, then gave the Dolphins possession at the one (though it should have been ruled dead where Lett touched it at around the seven), with three seconds left. Dolphin players now began kicking and clawing chunks of snow and ice, some bloodying their frozen fingers, from where Stoyanovich would again kick—the 19-yard line. The field goal sailed through and the game was over, 16–14 Miami.
Shula later cracked that he wished he’d had a snowplow available to him, and for once he could crow about winning a “miracle” game, one that ended, wrote Ed Pope, as if “the gentle rain of mercy droppeth from heaven.”6 Bemoaning his cruel fate, Jimmy Johnson said, “It was the most disappointing loss I’ve ever been around.”
He’d get over it, the loss not deterring him from his first ring. For Shula, though, the “miracle” in Dallas seemed a good example of the magic he could spin and his ability to re-create himself. Next, against the 8–3 Giants, DeBerg put up 365 yards, but was intercepted twice in a tough 19–14 loss. Then the Dolphins went to Pittsburgh for a Monday night game against Bill Cowher’s Steelers, who would win their division for the first of four straight years and played like it. They went out to a 21–6 lead. Then DeBerg, who would throw for 344 yards, cut it to 21–13 with a short touchdown pass to Jackson, and O. J. McDuffie returned a punt 72 yards for another, forcing the Steelers to hang on for dear life, winning by a point.
With Mitchell’s shoulder healed, Shula now gave DeBerg the Pederson treatment. He went back to Mitchell for the fourth killer game in a row, against the Bills at Joe Robbie Stadium. His two early touchdown passes put Miami up 17–9, but then they imploded. An interception was returned for one touchdown, a fumble for another—“We played Santa Claus,” said Shula—and it was 47–20 in the third quarter, the final to be 47–34. At 9–5, with three losses in a row, the last two games would be on the road, the first a Monday night showcase in their personal snakepit, San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium—where, for all intents and purposes, the Dolphins’ season died. They were never in it, and by the third quarter were down 31–13, the Chargers in the process of laying 220 rushing yards on them and Stan Humphries throwing three touchdowns.
Entering the finale in Foxborough, they really did need a miracle to claim a wild card. The game went back and forth. The Pats’ rookie quarterback, Drew Bledsoe, got a 17–10 lead with a touchdown pass, but Mitchell got even with one of his own to Ingram early in the fourth quarter. Down the stretch, Bledsoe threw another touchdown to go up 27–24, but Stoyanovich kicked a clutch field goal to send the game into overtime, only prolonging the agony until Bledsoe’s fourth touchdown pass ended it, 33–27. For Shula, finishing 9–7 seemed pallid, given the five straight losses that added up to disaster.
In mid-December, before the collapse was complete, Sports Illustrated named him its 1993 Sportsman of the Year, and the honor was still valid. On the cover, Shula was presented as Lincolnesque, in black and white, using an intaglio print style like that on a dollar bill, his face turned to a three-quarter view, his jaw jutting. Paul Zimmerman wrote that Shula had managed to keep winning while down to his fourth quarterback. In truth, the selection felt more like a lifetime achievement award, Zimmerman noting that the honor was for Shula’s “unparalleled success and pursuit of excellence.”7
Of that, there was no doubt. But pertinent now was that he had failed in spectacular fashion more than a Lombardi would. If he had any self-doubt, he kept it to himself. The season crumbling, he allowed, was something “we’re going to have to live with”—the emphasis on the editorial we—“and that’s something that’s going to be tough to handle.”8 Still, with two years left on his contract, the echoes of Landry’s sad demise—not to mention Paul Brown’s in Cleveland—were unmistakably trenchant, the precedent having been set for a lion winding up as a sacrificial lamb. Objectively, he had to be next, but when?
Flexing his power, Wayne Huizenga would soon have Robbie’s name scraped off the stadium, having made a 10-year, $20 million deal with Fruit of the Loom to call the grounds Pro Player Stadium, after one of the underwear company’s sub-brands. Tacky or not—and shortsighted, as the brand would go belly-up in 1999—it showed that Huizenga wanted a quick return on his investment.
For now, he kept faith with the coach, who still had a base of support. Indeed, Shula had every right to believe he was safe. Before the ’94 season, Huizenga, no doubt wanting to avoid the obloquy Jones invited by firing Landry, gave Shula a two-year extension through the ’96 season, putting him over $2 million a year—the top coaching salary by default after Jimmy Johnson reached the breaking point with the meddling Jerry Jones, who, after their second straight title, bought out his contract and let him go, blasting Johnson as “disloyal.” Shula also was given the sop of a renewed ownership stake: 3 percent of the team.
That way, Huizenga need not respond to inquiries about Shula’s job status. However, what the owner kept quiet was that, just before he extended Shula, he had one of his adjutants call Johnson’s Miami attorney, Nick Christin, to assay Johnson’s interest in coaching the Dolphins. This, of course, was a minefield for both Huizenga and Johnson; if word got out, it would be a monumental insult to Shula. Johnson would not dismiss the notion outright, claiming he would only consider the job if Shula voluntarily retired. Knowing Shula would never quit, thereby forfeiting his stock, Huizenga’s only recourse was to commit to him for those two years, leaving himself wiggle room to accommodate Shula with a payoff deal if he wanted to ease the coach out before then.
To be certain, the end was near. As if that was a given, Shula was being sanctified now for his past rather than being put in context as a contemporary of such men as Bill Parcells and Bill Cowher. One could look in the paper at any given time and see him being given something like the Jim Thorpe Pro Sports Award along with Wayne Gretzky and Hank Aaron. When the ’94 season began, it was almost as if a de facto farewell tour had begun, not that Shula would have acknowledged that. The season’s fifth game, against the Bengals in Cincinnati on Sunday night, October 2, would match Shula against his own spawn, marking the first time a father would coach in the NFL against his son.
People had been waiting for that since Dave became a head coach, and the senior Shula took the occasion to sell 100 commemorative “Shula vs. Shula” autographed footballs for $500 each, to benefit his breast cancer research foundation. That week, 40 members of the extended Shula clan gathered in the Queen City as guests of Dave, whom his father allowed to handle most of the interviews, keeping himself and the Dolphins sequestered in a Marriott hotel 15 miles outside the city. Early in the week, Dave tried a little prank. He called the hotel manager and told him to treat his father “like a king,” with instructions to “make sure there’s plenty of Heineken and butter-pecan ice cream. That’s what he loves.”9 Luckily, the manager checked with the Dolphins, because he found out that Shula hated Heineken and butter-pecan ice cream.
The Dolphins had won three of their first four, while the Bengals—a grotesque 8–28 in Dave’s reign until then—were winless. The “king” admitted to being uneasy at perhaps hastening his boy’s firing by dealing him another loss, appealing to Mike Brown to “give David a chance to work his way out of this thing.” Sympathizing with Dave, whose team was an eight-point underdog, Shula’s daughter Donna said, “We love Dad, but I think just about all of us are rooting for David.” But the old man took no pity; the Bengals scored first on a 51-yard pass, but Marino threw a touchdown to take a halftime lead, and another to go up 17–7. The Bengals turned it over five times and lost 23–7. They met at midfield, embracing, the father tousling the son’s hair and draping an arm over his shoulder before going his own way. In the locker room, he said the Bengals “came out looking like a good team” until the parade of turnovers. He added, “I looked over at their sideline during the national anthem and I felt proud seeing David across the way. Then the game started, and it was just football.”
For the son, it was the only love he would get over the season, going 3–13. But the old man called it: Mike Brown would keep Dave as coach another year, and when he got another shot at the Dolphins in ’95, it would be the patriarch who needed to worry as much about staying employed.
Joe Robbie Stadium would host the Super Bowl for the second time to cap the ’94 season, and Shula’s team put the league on notice, racing to a 7–2 start. Ominously, he did this again with a hash of a run game. Byars and Terry Kirby were lost for the season with knee injuries, and the load fell to former scrub Bernie Parmalee, who ground out 868 yards. For now, it was good enough.
And Marino was plenty good. Just in case, before the season, Shula had belatedly signed Bernie Kosar. During camp, there were suggestions that Marino was slower afoot, more vulnerable to the pass rush. Hearing the flak, Marino seemed bitter. “It’s like, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ ” he said. But that year, he would take almost every snap and return to the Pro Bowl, passing for 4,453 yards and 30 touchdowns and compiling a 62.6 completion percentage and an 89.2 passer rating, while going down only 17 times. None of these numbers led the league, but his four comeback drives did.
Against the Jets in Giants Stadium on November 27 came the pièce de résistance of Shula flimflammery. With just over three minutes left, trailing 24–21, third down, no timeouts, ball on the Jet eight, Marino came to the line pointing to the ground, the common hand signal for spiking the ball, which would have stopped the clock so that the field goal unit could come in. But Shula had a play in his quiver that he’d had his team practice without using—until now. At the snap, Marino—who was a monster that day, 31-for-44 for 359 yards and four touchdowns—seemed to stop moving. Expecting him to spike, the Jets also stopped. Then, in an eye blink, he shifted into gear and popped a pass to Ingram in the end zone.
Thus did the “fake spike” enter football lore, lifting the Dolphins to a 27–24 win and an 8–4 record—a critical margin that eased the pain when Shula himself became a casualty in early December, ripping his Achilles while taking a wrong step. Undergoing surgery, he took no time off, instead plopping into a golf cart on the sideline during practices and games. He finished 10–6, ruling the AFC East again. He did this with a defense ranked 17th, with Bryan Cox its lone All-Pro. But Marino was so locked in that it seemed he alone could get Shula up that last step. His prime target, Irving Fryar, with 73 receptions and seven touchdowns, went to the Pro Bowl, as did Webb and Sims on the line.
The first playoff round brought the wild-card Chiefs to Miami on New Year’s Eve day. With the Dolphins tilling 132 yards rushing, Marino threw a modest 29 times, completing 22, including consecutive short touchdown passes to backup tight end Ronnie Williams and Fryar to tie the game and then take the lead in the eventual 27–17 victory. It was neat and clean, unspectacular in the pre-Marino manner, and it got them to the divisional round. But that would be played in—good Lord, no—San Diego, the Chargers having finished one game better in winning the AFC West. Coached now by Bobby Ross, and rebuilt by Bobby Beathard as their general manager, they were a conservative bunch reliant on fullback Natrone Means, who ran for 1,350 yards and 12 touchdowns.
Despite the misery they had laid on the Dolphins in Jack Murphy Stadium, the attitude among the Chargers was that Shula had never given them due credit, his postmortems leaning toward themes of self-destruction. Even Beathard, whose career was made by Shula, had a run-in with him before the game, for a familiar reason. A rare rainstorm in San Diego had drenched the field the previous day, and in a reverse take of Shula’s spat with the Jets before the Mud Bowl, the issue became the tarp that covered the grounds. Beathard refused to take it off the field, preventing the Dolphins from working out in the park. Rather, Beathard told his former boss to take his men to a practice field outside the stadium, and he ordered guards to keep the gates closed to the Dolphins. Shula, neck veins bulging, appealed to Jerry Seeman, the league’s director of officials, who ruled the visitors could use the field, upon which Shula smugly laid down tracks in his golf cart, leaving Beathard to sputter a grievance heard often around front office circles: “Anything he wants, he gets! He runs the goddamn league!”10
When the three-point-underdog Dolphins took a 21–6 halftime lead in the game on three Marino touchdowns, they repaired to the locker room, whereupon they found the lights and air conditioning not working. Players sweated through their uniforms in the darkened room, bitching about Beathard presumably acting like Al Davis. Still, the lead looked secure. Midway through the third quarter, Marco Coleman stopped Means one on one on a fourth-and goal. However, one play later, Bernie Parmalee was tackled in his end zone for a safety. Means, who shredded the Shula defense with a career-high 139 yards, then ran one in from the 24, cutting the lead to 21–15. The Chargers would get the ball with three minutes left, same score, Shula one more stop from a glorious win.
Riding the fate that had so often cursed Shula, Stan Humphries took his team on a 10-play journey, cashing in four first downs. From the Miami eight, he floated a pass in the flat to receiver Mark Seay. Troy Vincent was late covering him, and Seay took it in with 35 seconds on the clock. The extra point made it 22–21, San Diego. But Marino was a dangerous man with 35 seconds and three timeouts. He got a 32-yard pass-interference call on a long ball, putting the ball on the Charger 30—no doubt confirming for Beathard his conspiracy theories about Shula’s deep-state control of the sport. The Dolphins were in long-field-goal range. Marino tried getting closer, but misfired twice. On third down, five seconds left, Stoyanovich trotted on for a 48-yard shot for the win and a berth in the AFC title game. The snap was high, forcing the holder, John Kidd, to stretch for it, messing up Stoyanovich’s precise timing. As the kick went up, Shula rose from his cart. As it slid wide right, he slumped back down, cursing. Beathard had the last laugh.
As agonizing failures went, this one was particularly brutal, as it all but slipped a noose around Shula’s neck. For his part, Marino would never let go of it. Months after, he said, “I had two downs to put Pete at least 10 yards closer. . . . I’ll be driving in my car somewhere, and all of a sudden I’ll just start thinking about it. These things are harder for me to take than they were years ago.”11
The Chargers reacted much like the Dolphins had in the Dallas “miracle.” They danced off the field to blaring rock music piped through the PA system. Shula, who had to thread his way through gyrating Chargers to shake Ross’s hand, could only repeat once again the chronic ritual he had come to detest, saying, “That’s about as tough a loss as I’ve ever been around,” yet another “bitter disappointment.” But had he done more to bring it about than he would admit?
For one thing, he had worked the team hard, in full pads, during the week, while the Chargers, coming off a bye week, were fresh. There was also the usual disappearing running game; the Dolphins ran all of eight times for 26 yards, the fewest runs in club history—this, even when they had a big lead. One reporter also noted that the team had wilted during the season, and had a critical loss in the penultimate week, when a win would have given them the playoff bye; that loss, to the Colts, occurred because, inside the enemy 10 late in the game, they ran seven plays and failed to ram it in. Shula remained oblivious to the criticisms, assuming he was still on safe ground and that he’d fight any suggestion that he step aside.
But, in the broader frame, his biggest loss wasn’t to the Chargers, who would ride the momentum through the AFC title game against the Steelers but be routed by the 49ers in the Super Bowl at Robbie Stadium. Rather, it was the exit of the Robbie family from the Dolphins’ power structure, and the unfortunate timing—for Shula—that Jimmy Johnson was idle. The acrid reality was that, for Shula, a quarter century of loyalty now counted for little in a world where a Jimmy Johnson was a coaching get. In Miami, where Johnson had also coached a winner, and still lived, the forces of a cheapened culture were ganging up against Don Shula.
Huizenga was subject to these forces when he bought the Robbies out. And even without the public aware of his secret feeler to Johnson, the latter was lurking over Shula’s shoulder, seemingly from the day of his split from Jerry Jones. That only heightened any criticism directed at Shula and his men, which was happening far more easily all the time, even from within. During the summer of ’95, Sports Illustrated writer Johnette Howard found that, around the team’s summer camp, the players and coaches were “tired of making excuses. Fed up with having to make allowances for injuries. Sick of starting each season with talk about going to the Super Bowl, only to flame out by year’s end.” Then, repeating the growing speculation about the coach-in-waiting who had already replaced one fallen legend, “for the past 15 months,” Jimmy Johnson “has been biding his time in the nearby Florida Keys, waiting for the ‘right opportunity’—hint, hint—to lure him back to coaching in the NFL.” The title of the story, referring to Shula, was IT MAY BE 1995 OR NEVER.
That trope was no longer verboten now that a younger cohort of outspoken sportswriters, brazenly indifferent to yellowing history, had claimed spots in the media. The prickliest, Dan Le Batard, openly beat the drum for Johnson in his Herald column, writing that he had “better results than Shula” and was “a coach who won as many Super Bowls in five years as Shula did in 25,” and that, “If you are going to fire Shula, Johnson is just about the only man you do it for.”12
References to the overly tanned and lacquered Johnson were like hornet stings to Shula, worse because Johnson never really tried to quiet the speculation that he would lead a palace coup for the second time. Hoping to head that off, Shula went on another shopping spree over the off-season, signing free agents like tight end Eric Green and receivers Gary Clark and Randal Hill, lavishing a six-year, $12 million deal on Green. He traded for Bears defensive end Trace Armstrong and Packer cornerback Terrell Buckley, using Keith Jackson and Mark Ingram as the trade bait. When Byars and Higgs couldn’t make it back from their knee injuries, Shula traded them, too, freeing up more money to spend and luring defensive tackle Steve Emtman with a $5 million deal and $750,000 signing bonus—which was doubly satisfying as payback to the 49ers, who had beaten Shula to Deion Sanders the year before. Their general manager, Dwight Clark, who was also hot for Emtman, reacted with magnificent hypocrisy. Shula, he moaned, was “trying to buy a Super Bowl.”
Huizenga had to pay $18 million in signing bonuses alone, for Shula the price for proving wrong the critics and people he now deemed enemies. But, knowing that Johnson was looming over him, Howard noted, “irk[ed] him considerably. The irritation shows in Shula’s occasionally curt answers and in the way his famous jutting jaw clenches when the subject of his future is broached.” Ed Pope wondered why Shula was subjecting himself to it—why, at 65, he didn’t just walk away from the grubby, ego-driven jungle the game had become and enjoy his life.
There were times when Shula had to ask himself the same thing. In the spring that year, he and Mary Anne took off for a month of globetrotting, during which they made the scene at Wimbledon, did Paris, and cruised the Mediterranean. It was a hell of a lifestyle. But if he was going to walk away from the game, he didn’t want to look back with regret. Thus did he head into another season with his array of shiny new toys on a roster that included 19 former first-round draft picks. Huizenga was so impressed, he forgot about Jimmy Johnson for a while and all but claimed the Lombardi Trophy in advance, joking, “Welcome to the Super Bowl.”
Huizenga’s boast seemed prescient on opening day, when the Dolphins lost a 14-0 lead, took it back on a 50-yard Marino touchdown to Irving Fryar, and put it away 35–14 on Troy Vincent’s 69-yard interception. The final—52–14—was a message to Shula’s tormentors. So, too, was his perfect record after four weeks, the last of these wins coming on another ambivalent afternoon, coaching against his No. 1 son. Dave’s Bengals played it tough, requiring Marino to throw 48 times, completing 33, for 450 yards and a late 16-yard touchdown to provide the winning edge in the Dolphins’ 26–23 victory. Again showing his soft side, the patriarch bragged more about his boy’s coaching than his own team’s performance.
But now the optimism began to die a slow death. The Dolphins then dropped three straight, one in overtime, the last two with Kosar at quarterback after Marino sustained hip and knee injuries, undergoing arthroscopic surgery for the knee. By the end of November, they were 6–6, and talk had resumed about the silver-haired beachcomber needing to come to the rescue. The Herald, Palm Beach Post, and Sun-Sentinel ran polls as to whether Shula should be replaced by Johnson. All were landslides for Johnson, the Sun-Sentinel taunting Shula with the headline DON VOYAGE. At Pro Player Stadium, he was now hearing scattered chants of Johnson’s name. During one game, a small plane flew overhead with a trailing banner riffing on Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire”: “Move Over Rover, and Let Jimmy Take Over.”
Part of this thirst for change was due to the parallel rise of the NBA’s Heat, whose pulse was quickened by the slicked-back, Rodeo Drive–bred image of their coach, Pat Riley, who made Shula seem as dated as the 1970s movie that had given his two super teams their élan. Sports Illustrated, which only recently had all but sung hymns to his grandeur, split-shot the two men’s faces on the cover of the December 11 issue, Shula looking like an aging blowfish, beneath the line HOT & NOT: MIAMI LOVES PAT RILEY BUT WANTS TO GIVE DON SHULA THE BOOT. Huizenga still clung to his mantra that he had “all the confidence in the world in Don,” and called the polls “a vocal minority,” though he explicitly refused to rule out firing Shula. For his part, Johnson unctuously said during his regular gig on the Fox pregame show that he was a “non-story in this situation.” Despite his stated respect for Shula, however, he had no qualms about writing in his syndicated column that the Dolphins, with all their talent, “have a group of individuals. They don’t have a team.”13 That was about the most unflattering thing anyone could say about any coach.
Worse, Shula was again being weakened from within. Ever since Dorothy’s death, and with Mary Anne further softening his edges, players were challenging him in ways Csonka and Kiick never would have dared. Some claimed that his age was an issue, that discipline had broken down. The AP’s Steven Wine pronounced the team “in a shambles,” and that an “ugly backlash” had developed, with players “shouting at coaches and literally pointing fingers on the sideline.” The mouthiest of them, Bryan Cox, had screamed at Shula during one game. Safety Gene Atkins, who also had roughed up a reporter without being disciplined, said he would quit if Shula didn’t play his buddy, safety Mike Stewart. Upset about not getting enough passes, Eric Green said, “I’m so down. Sometimes I feel like just giving back the money.”14 Players openly ragged the coaches’ play calling, mainly that of Tom Olivadotti, who, even with his defense 10th best in the league, admitted, “I’m dead in this town.”
Old rivals, who might have been rankled by Shula but had held their peace about him, piled on. Ron Meyer airily concluded that Shula had “lost control of his team.” Mike Ditka said in one breath that “Shula is entitled to write his own ticket as to when he retires. I don’t think he’d necessarily want to do another 10 years, but I’d bet he’d want to do it for another five years”; in the next, “You can’t win without order. The head coach is the boss. The inmates don’t run the asylum.”15 Shula, clearly feeling the heat, said, “I’m upset [too],” but “I can’t let it drag me down. I’ve got hard work to do . . . the buck stops here. I take full responsibility.” But he also offered some rare introspection about living within the pincers of discontent:
You try to shut the criticism out, but it’s pretty hard to do. You see people on the street, friends, people that you know are in your corner, and they come and tell you how bad they feel, and that’s not the kind of conversation you want. I don’t want anyone to feel bad for me.16
Shula, as always, had his defenders. To many, the mob mentality of the once-protective Dolphin fans was the sorriest part of the nightmare. Detroit News columnist George Puscas’s New Year’s resolution for Shula was: “Forgive the Dolphins fans, Don Shula. But you have some real idiots there.”17 And Shula did forgive. He neither called out the fans nor any players, even though most of the high-tag free agents were underperforming. Seeing him take crap from players with impunity, Kim Bokamper said, “He used to get right in your face if you screwed up. And now players get in his face? And he’s patting guys on the butt when they mess up?”18
All of this came to a head the week of the December 3 game against the Falcons. Shula, saying it had been “the toughest week I’ve ever spent in my coaching career,” called a team meeting the day before, during which everyone was free to spout off. On Sunday, they went out all riled up, then seemed to forget why. Early in the fourth quarter, they were losing 20–9. A Parmalee TD run got them closer, but the extra point failed and it looked bleak when Marino subsequently threw his second pick. Then, with time running down, the score 20–15 Atlanta, the Falcons had a fourth-and-one at the Miami 27, but coach June Jones passed up a game-clinching field goal try to go for it. Ironhead Heyward took the handoff, but Cox wrapped him up—no gain. With 1:49 left, Marino—who threw 50 times, completing 35 for 343 yards—connected on three quick passes. He then took off and ran one for 12 yards to the Falcon 21, with 11 seconds left. Now he dropped back and zipped one to Irving Fryar for the lead, 21–20, which, after the two-point conversion failed, was the final score.
That was winning ugly, but Shula was ecstatic, dancing through the end zone to wave at Mary Anne, later saying, “It was such a tough week on her.” She said the same of him: “Boy, my coach is tough.”19 Pointedly, he gave the game ball to Olivadotti, the object of so much scorn. The following week, he had another gritty win, getting by the Chiefs 13–7. And though he fell to the Bills 23–20 on a fourth-quarter field goal, he was 8–7 and still in it when the team went to St. Louis for the season closer against the mediocre Rams on Christmas Eve. Though outpassed by Mark Rypien and picked twice, Marino broke it open with short TD passes to Fryar and O. J. McDuffie in the second quarter, greasing the way to a comfy 42–22 win that delivered the 9–7 Dolphins a wild card—Shula’s 20th year in the postseason, and one of his most satisfying seasons of all, considering that, with all the static, one could reasonably ask: How?
Shula’s Christmas was merry, but the reward for success was a trip to Rich Stadium, on December 30. “I never thought I’d be happy going to Buffalo this time of year,” he said. He was confident that the Dolphins had closed the gap with Marv Levy’s team, which was only a three-and-a-half-point favorite. But one could only imagine Shula’s helplessness as it just kept getting worse. Down 24–0 halfway into the second quarter, his defense ripped to bits by Thurman Thomas barging through gaping holes and Cox nullified by gang blocking, Shula quickly bagged his running game and let Marino wing it, 64 times, tying Bernie Kosar’s then playoff record and five shy of Drew Bledsoe’s overall record. His 33 completions were just three fewer than Warren Moon in a ’93 playoff game, his 422 yards third to Kosar and Fouts—all that with 10 of his passes being muffed by stone-fingered receivers.
But nothing slowed down the Buffalo run on the other side, the Bills ringing up an AFC playoff record 341 yards, Thomas with 158 of them. On one schoolyard play, Kelly faked two double reverse plays, handed it to halfback Bill Brooks, and he broke for a 41-yard touchdown, leaving Louis Oliver to ask later, “How can we let that happen? I mean, a fake double reverse? C’mon!”20 The carnage ended, mercifully, at 37–22. Few Bills took pity on Shula’s team, who seemed wholly unprepared. Troy Vincent even used the dreaded “Q-word.” He said, “It was an attitude game. They had it. A lot of guys today just quit. We brought in a lot of players to get us to the promised land, and some of them didn’t show up.” Jeff Cross was so disillusioned, he said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if nobody around here came back next year.”21
While a front-page Herald story was titled FOR MARINO, A FAMILIAR, HOLLOW RING, the recriminations were mainly saved for the old coach. Indeed, the numbers had become grim for Shula. He was now 5–17 head-to-head against Levy, his 22-year streak without a title tying him with Chuck Knox for second all-time, in all pro sports. An AP photo of Shula in the closing seconds of the game showed him alone, hands in pockets, looking up at the clock, or perhaps the heavens. Still a compelling figure, he was now also a pitiable one as he stood for the umpteenth time at attention in the hallway, regurgitating the well-practiced banalities of losing—“We didn’t compete, and all of us have to live with that.”
He had, of course, said that before, ad nauseam, but he had never needed to address whether he would have the chance to get it right the next time. Because never before did anyone ask if he would; it was implicit. Now, someone asked if he would be there for the ’96 season.
“I intend to fulfill the last year of my contract.”
What if Huizenga had other ideas?
“I’m not going to address that now.”
The general assumption was that he was already gone, one game story assuming that the defeat was “a terrible way for Shula to go out.” The Los Angeles Times’s Bill Plaschke painted him as worse than ineffectual, “a legend who never looked so small, shaking a bared fist that has never seemed so harmless. . . . On the sidelines, Dolphins either argued or huddled underneath capes and avoided each other. The more Shula shook that fist, the more they seemed to ignore him.” Plaschke added by rote that Jimmy Johnson was “available . . . and he wants to come home to Miami. Why would Huizenga want to make Johnson wait one more year—thereby risk losing him to another team—in exchange for a tired and very lame duck? And why would Shula . . . want to be in that situation?”22
Huizenga’s only public comment that day was, “I have nothing to say today. It’s just a very disappointing day,” though Plaschke, either using ESP or reading body language, believed that “The way Huizenga glared at his team as it passed by the locker room afterward left little doubt about what he didn’t have to say.” To be sure, the owner was under heavy pressure from season-ticket holders, especially younger ones who wanted a new, bold face for the team. And Johnson, by playing coy, had only put himself in greater demand.
For three days, nothing happened. Then, on Thursday, as Shula celebrated his 66th birthday at a party at Indian Creek Country Club, the Herald’s Armando Salguero reported, “Word of Shula’s imminent departure from the sideline [has] spread like an unchecked epidemic.” Hours later, Huizenga had him over to the team office and dropped the ax. Having rehearsed this scenario for months, he eased the sting by presenting Shula with a face-saving way out. And he needed one, because Shula would not have gracefully accepted being kicked to the curb as Jones had done to Landry. Besides paying him his remaining year, Huizenga would allow Shula to keep his Dolphins stock and remain with the organization. That apparently convinced Shula to swallow his pride and say he was leaving voluntarily. That sticky situation dealt with, Huizenga could turn to signing Johnson as soon as Shula made an official retirement announcement.
As leaks were fed to the press, ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reported that Shula was out, followed by confirmations by three South Florida TV stations. Salguero wrote that Shula would “remain with the organization one more year in the figurehead role of vice-president and director of football operations.” Shula would say nothing until the next day, Friday, January 5, at a press conference hastily arranged at a downtown hotel. That morning, he dutifully arrived and entered a ballroom crawling with reporters and TV cameras that would beam his announcement live throughout the state. A cadre of some of his ’70s players was there, jointly holding a sign reading, “Thanks, coach.” Groups of fans still loyal to him stood on the street outside.
Huizenga, looking much relieved, if a tad guilty, bathed Shula with sincere praise and confirmed the happy ending that kept Shula a Dolphin executive for a year, not as football operations director but “vice-chairman of the board of directors,” an intentionally nebulous term delineating no responsibilities. It was good enough for the owner to say, “This is not goodbye” and “We love you, Don.” Shula, in an immaculately tailored dark blue suit, pinstriped shirt, and silk print tie, took to the podium, Mary Anne and his children standing behind him, all with damp eyes. He began by saying it was “the day you thought was never going to happen. Now it’s here.” Then, turning to Mary Anne, “Today is the first day of the rest of our lives.”
The decision to step down, he said, was “soul-searching and gut-wrenching.” But he insisted, more than once, that he had not been fired or forced out, pointing instead to the timeworn shibboleth about “family considerations.” In fact, he said, Huizenga had actually offered him an extra year as coach—two more seasons—if he would fire his staff and bring new ones in, but he had declined because he could not have found people who’d take a job, only to be ousted in a year or two. Besides, he said, staying on as coach for two years was “the last thing I want to do.”23
Although he made all this sound convincing, the more hard-boiled writers had a hard time believing it. For one thing, they knew him as a man who never would have obeyed an order to sack his trusted assistants. For another, given the massive turn of public opinion against him—and knowing of Huizenga’s infatuation with Johnson and the heat he was getting from the season-ticket holders—how could the owner have offered him even one more hour as a coach? Then, too, was Shula really adverse to a two-year extension at top-shelf money? As he admitted that day, “This is the first time in 43 years that I haven’t been on the sideline [and] I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say it’s going to be gut-wrenching the first time a football is kicked off,” and that “we felt were a football team that was building.”
But this was not a day for scrutiny. He had the stage to himself and he was feeling it. At times, he was the old bulldog, not able to keep from calling some of the flak he took “mean, dirty criticism.” But he withheld most recrimination. “We’re going to make this a happy day,” he said. “I’m at peace with myself and am looking forward to spending time with my lovely wife,” a sentiment that led one ESPN commentator to say he sounded less a coach than a “ 66-year-old grandfather wanting to get on with his life.” His remarks, wrote Salguero, were “filled with one-liners and love.”24 Maybe a tad too ebullient, he stopped at one point and said, “I’m putting on a helluva front.”
To Ed Pope, who knew all of his moods, Shula seemed “relieved.”25 Not that Shula would ever be able to look back at this exercise easily. Five years later, he would say, “I didn’t go out as I would have liked,” in part because he had gone out losing, but possibly also because he believed he had been manipulated, the farewell a sham.26 As Greg Cote observed of the staged event in the Herald, “I’ve heard of putting the best face on something, but this makeover was a masterwork. The technical adviser must have been Maybelline.”27
In the end, he was a good company man. In his heart, he believed he still had a place in the game, but he readily accepted that he wasn’t made for the new trend of coaches subjugated by management. As Howard Schnellenberger said, “The game was going to hell with these coaches hired and fired in a year. In his day, our day, great coaches were all around. But how many teams now are molded by their coach? Belichick. Who else? Nobody. Because the loyalty factor is gone. Don saw that coming, and he didn’t want to be a part of it. He didn’t want to be on trial anymore. And he went out with class because that was the only way he knew how to do it.”
Questions would linger about the sincerity of the event, but not Shula’s character. Marino’s benediction was, “Everybody should appreciate what this man has done for all of us in South Florida.” Huizenga promised that the famous “jutting jaw” would be on that landscape “for many years to come.” When a reporter asked the owner if he really would have given Shula two more years, he turned it up a notch. If Shula woke up the next day and changed his mind, he insisted, somehow keeping a straight face, “he can coach as long as he wants for the Miami Dolphins.”28
The next day, Huizenga sent a helicopter to take Shula and his goombah Ray Floyd to Huizenga’s golf course for a round, just the two of them. Shula also sat for an interview in his palatial home with Jimmy Cefalo, now a broadcaster with a local TV station, the show including Mary Anne and his two coaching sons. But he did not make a side trip to the Dolphins’ facility, where his current players were packing for the off-season. Shula hadn’t spoken with many of them since they left Buffalo. “There was absolutely no warning” about the retirement announcement, Trace Armstrong said.
But that was Don Shula. In the job, he sucked up all the oxygen, a virtual puppet master for the players. Now, much like when he quit Kentucky and the Colts, he was gone, smoke through a keyhole. He would return in time to remove his belongings and mementos. But all he really needed to remember about the glory days was safely in his head. The locker room wasn’t his anymore.
Shula could finally bask in fustian but well-deserved elegies. Carolina Panthers general manager Bill Polian said of his retirement, “It’s tragic. It’s a loss for the NFL, it’s a loss for America.”29 Marv Levy wrote in Sports Illustrated: “What the Babe was to baseball, Shula is to football coaching. . . . This was a man who didn’t just like coaching; he liked coaches. He never got too big for the other guys in the game.” He called Shula “the last of the legends.”30 Paul Tagliabue, keeping him in the league’s inner sanctum, extended him a place on the league’s competition committee.
As for Huizenga, he now admitted what he knew all along: Jimmy Johnson, he said, was “at the top of the list” to replace Shula. But a complication arose in Shula’s undefined role with the Dolphins, with Johnson bridling at the thought of Shula looming over his shoulder. Whatever Huizenga may have promised Shula—who only said he would be “making recommendations” and “give input” to the new coach, if asked—Huizenga told Johnson that Shula would have no part in player or management decisions. That was fine by Shula, who wanted as little to do with Johnson as Johnson wanted to do with him. It was good enough for Johnson. He agreed to a five-year deal at $2.2 million a year—a pay cut from his Cowboy days, but with stock options and numerous perks and bonuses, as well as inheriting Shula’s lucrative weekly TV shows. He would have Shula’s old title of coach/director of player personnel.
Huizenga introduced him at another press conference on January 11, the TV ratings for which dwarfed Shula’s final bow. Having gotten their wish, the Johnson whisperers in the Miami media celebrated, not aware or not caring that Johnson’s success in Dallas was due to an abundance of stockpiled high draft picks that the Dolphins lacked. As a sop to Shula’s pride, Johnson would retain two assistant coaches, Gary Stevens and Mike Westhoff. (Carl Taseff, anticipating Shula’s retirement, had left after the ’93 season after nearly a quarter century; Tony Nathan, who, after he retired, became running backs coach, was one of the coaches fired.) Eddie Jones remained as the titular GM.
Privately, Shula burned at the thought of leaving his team to the Judas of the coaching profession. He held his tongue for now, saying only nice things about the new man, and Johnson about him, each sounding like hostages. Keeping his distance, Shula would spend almost all of his time as a Dolphin “executive” on the golf course, notching a hole in one on one round. The encomiums came on a semi-permanent conveyor belt. One of Ed Pope’s columns about him was titled TESTAMENT TO HONOR.31 In another, Pope, who was on the Hall of Fame’s board of selectors, wrote, “I have to present Shula, and after merely mentioning his name what could I possibly add other than, ‘What could I possibly add?’ ”32
For a time, it seemed as if he might change his mind about his “voluntary” retirement, and he seemed to revel in the speculation. When he was sighted in the Dallas airport a few days later, a writer asked where he was going. Knowing that what he said would be in the papers, he kibbitzed, “On my way to see Jerry Jones.”
One serious offer did come in. Only days after Shula bowed out, Bill Belichick was canned from his first pro head coaching job by Art Modell after five trying seasons with the Browns. Modell was so eager to be rid of Belichick that he ate the last two years of his $1.3 million-a-year contract. Modell then went after Shula, inviting him to his Palm Beach home, portending that Don Shula might soon be walking in the historic footsteps of Paul Brown. However, it wasn’t so easy. Modell had announced that he was moving the team to Baltimore, and he would be enjoined legally from using the Browns’ name and team colors. Even so, there was another circle-closing angle to coaching again in Baltimore, and Modell would have given him full authority and equity. But Shula’s gut told him he didn’t need to uproot his life and start over at his age, and so he shut the door, saying he “wasn’t interested at this time.”
Then, with the Shula smirk, he added, “But you never know.”33
An undercurrent of that decision was that he could have stuck it to Belichick by taking the job, and with cause. Shula had known Belichick for decades, having been close with his father, Steve, an assistant coach at the United States Naval Academy in the late ’60s. Back then, Shula had allowed Steve’s teenaged son to hang around the Colts’ camp as a ballboy and gofer, sucking up the game the way Shula had at the same age. He liked the kid’s moxie. When the kid grew up and became a head coach, however, he apparently promised Mike Shula a job as an assistant coach, only to renege. Taking Belichick’s job would have been the family’s payback. Instead, Shula was the bigger man, not letting it enter into his decision. But it would not be long before he had a more personal reason to want to sully Belichick, for even better cause: coming dangerously close to treading on Shula’s most prized historical turf.