Thanks For the Memories, Earl

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I guess everyone knows about the 1972 Miami Dolphins — the only team in modern pro football history to go undefeated through the regular season and the postseason.

Fewer people remember that more than half of those wins were accomplished without the Dolphins' star quarterback, Bob Griese, who went down with a broken leg and dislocated ankle in the fifth game of the season. He was replaced by backup Earl Morrall, who had recently been picked up on the waiver wire after being released by the Baltimore Colts.

Miami's coach, Don Shula, had been Morrall's coach for a time in Baltimore. They had been in Super Bowl III, which the Colts lost to the New York Jets. Shula knew precisely what he was getting when he picked up Morrall. Possibly no backup quarterback has ever stepped in as the substitute for the starter better equipped to run his coach's offense and succeed.

In fact, Morrall wound up leading the AFC in passing, just as Griese had the year before — in spite of throwing only one pass in the first four games.

He started the last nine games of the 1972 regular season and the first two games of the playoffs while Griese recovered. It wasn't always as easy as it may seem today; they struggled at times, but the Dolphins won all those games.

They hung on to beat Buffalo by a single point the week after Griese went down. They beat the Jets by four points in the 10th game, and they barely got past a mediocre Cleveland Browns team in the playoffs. Griese returned to the lineup in the second half of the AFC championship game, then led the Dolphins to the Super Bowl title.

He was on a third Super Bowl team as well. He was still on Miami's roster the next year when the Dolphins defended their title in Super Bowl VIII.

I remember having Morrall's football card and not knowing who he was. There were some players who were like that. I only knew their names because I had their cards. It wasn't until years later that I learned Morrall had been the quarterback of the Colts team that lost to Broadway Joe Namath and the Jets. I knew who Namath was, of course. Who didn't?

That was a good Colts team, too. Before facing the Jets, the Colts lost only one game. In a year when most teams were equally balanced between the run and the pass, Morrall completed more than 57% of his passes for nearly 3,000 yards.

Anyway, Morrall died Thursday at the age of 79. The news was confirmed today. From what I have heard, he had been in poor health for awhile.

He played pro football in relative obscurity for more than two decades. In those two Super Bowl seasons, with the sports world watching his every move, he led his teams to a combined record of 24–2.

He died in relative obscurity, too. I'm sure there were many young people across the country who didn't know who he was when they heard of his death.

The historian in me would like to think that someday football fans will re–discover the rich history of their sport — and Morrall's contributions to it.

But the realist in me doubts that will ever happen.

Defending Perfection

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Over the years, people have come to speak of the Miami Dolphins' perfect 1972 season in hushed tones.

I don't quibble with that. The 17–0 season was a remarkable achievement, accomplished, to a great extent, with a backup quarterback (starter Bob Griese went out with an ankle injury midway through the season) and a "no–name defense" that put the clamps on the best quarterbacks of the day — Len Dawson, Fran Tarkenton, Joe Namath, Johnny Unitas — and then beat an emerging Hall of Famer, Terry Bradshaw, in the AFC championship game.

But I have long believed that what the Dolphins did 40 years ago, in their followup season of 1973, was even more impressive. (Incidentally, until next month's Super Bowl in New Jersey, Super Bowl VIII stands as the third–coldest Super Bowl ever played.)

Heading into the 1973 season, the Dolphins had an enormous bull's eye on their chests. In the eyes of all their rivals, they were the 17–0 Dolphins of the previous year who hadn't lost in a game that counted since Super Bowl VI, when Roger Staubach and the Dallas Cowboys beat them, 24–3.

Every team that faced the Dolphins in 1973 was hoping to be the one to knock them from their lofty perch.

The '73 Dolphins managed to stay up there in the season opener, beating a declining San Francisco team, but they lost to Oakland in the second week. They only lost once more that year, in a meaningless game with Baltimore in the next–to–last week of the regular season, then hammered Cincinnati in the first round of the playoffs and avenged their second–week loss to Oakland in the AFC championship game.

Then, in Super Bowl VIII 40 years ago today, the Dolphins pounded the Minnesota Vikings to become the second team to win back–to–back Super Bowls.

(That's still a relatively rare achievement, by the way. Pro football will play its 48th Super Bowl next month, and teams have won back–to–back Super Bowls only eight times.)

In spite of the constant pressure they faced all season, even after losing that game to Oakland, the Dolphins followed their 17–0 campaign with a 15–2 season. That's 32 wins in 34 games over a two–year period. That's a two–year record that few Super Bowl champions have come close to matching.

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For a long time, I thought I was the only one (or at least one of the few) who recognized the accomplishment of the '73 Dolphins.

I remember a conversation I had with my friend Steve. He was a great admirer of the '72 Dolphins, and we often discussed that team. Once, I mentioned to him that I thought the '73 Dolphins were better, and his jaw just about hit the ground. After I explained my reasoning to him, he seemed to agree with me — or, at least, he agreed that I had a convincing case.

Anyway, recently, I read a retrospective article in the New York Daily News by Joe Belock that said what I have been thinking all these years: "Is it possible," Belock asked in his opening paragraph, "for a Super Bowl championship team to be underrated? Underappreciated?"

It's hard to imagine a Super Bowl champion being underrated, isn't it? Yet, that is precisely what the '73 Dolphins were — and still are, to an extent, as Belock's article suggests.

As Belock observes, they were better than the bunch that went unbeaten. "The schedule was tougher," he writes, yet the defense yielded fewer points.

Many coaches have won Super Bowls, but only a few have won two or more — and fewer still have won them back to back. It is so difficult — more difficult now, it seems, than it used to be — to repeat as champions in any sport. (We don't know yet who will play in this year's Super Bowl, but we do know that last year's winner, the Baltimore Ravens, will not be in it.)

I believe the Super Bowl that was won by Miami 40 years ago today was what secured Don Shula's spot in football history.

What happened in the following years added to his reputation, of course — most career wins (347), most Super Bowl teams (six) — but he was already regarded as a coaching legend by sundown 40 years ago.

Shula never won another Super Bowl. His '73 Dolphins were the last to achieve that for him.