‘72 dolphins overcome sloppy first half to edge Bills 24-23
Dolphins 24, Bills 23 (Oct. 22, 1972)
With Bob Griese standing on the sidelines on crutches, the Dolphins couldn’t afford to fret over bad luck with the loss of their leader a week earlier and began the day against the 2-3 Buffalo Bills like they hadn’t missed a beat.
Miami took the opening kickoff and drove downfield to take a 7-0 lead on a 5-yard Mercury Morris touchdown, and when the Dolphins reached the Buffalo 2-yard line on their next drive, a 14-0 lead appeared inevitable and a rout of the Bills would be on. But when the Buffalo defense turned in a goal-line stand, the game took a dramatic turn and the rest of the day would turn into a struggle.
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The second quarter turned out to be Miami’s worst of the season as the Dolphins committed four turnovers. A Jim Kiick lost fumble turned into a 35-yard John Leypolt field goal and four plays after that, Morris mishandled an Earl Morrall pass deep in their own territory that linebacker Ken Lee picked off and rambled 16 yards to the end zone.
Just like that, Miami trailed 10-7 and things only got worse from there. Just before halftime, a Morrall swing pass to Morris was ruled a lateral. Thinking it was a forward pass, Morris didn’t bother to go after the ball but the Bills did, recovering the fumble and turning it into another short Leypoldt field goal seconds before halftime to make it 13-7 at the break.
Don Shula’s halftime speech probably likely would not be repeated on family TV, but it apparently worked. worked. Just three plays into the second half, an unblocked Manny Fernandez wound up in the backfield and literally stole the handoff from quarterback Dennis Shaw before he could hand it off to O.J. Simpson.
One play later, Larry Csonka took off around the left side for a 10-yard touchdown run to put the Dolphins in front 14-13 and they never trailed again.
A Morris 15-yard touchdown run midway through the fourth put the Dolphins up 24-16 to make it a two-possession game (there was no two-point play back then) and that was that. The Bills scored a garbage time”touchdown on a 6-yard Mike Taliaferro-to-Jim Braxton TD pass with 1:07 to complete the scoring.
“We made a lot of errors out there today and stopped ourselves on a lot of occasions but we still made the big plays when they counted and that’s the thing I’m happy about,” said Shula after the game. “You can’t look at it as getting a bad game out of your system because Buffalo’s a pretty good football team.”
