What made the 1972 Dolphins perfect? ‘It was a beautiful team’

Tony Dungy was a senior high school quarterback at Parkside High School in Jackson, Michigan, during the 1972 season when the Miami Dolphins went undefeated. An ardent Big Ten fan, Dungy grew up watching quarterback Bob Griese and wide receiver Paul Warfield at Purdue and Ohio State, respectively. So, he knew how talented some of the Dolphins’ top offensive playmakers of the early ‘70s were.

But as he watched Miami string together win after win during the NFL’s only perfect season, Dungy, who played in the NFL and later became a Super Bowl-winning head coach with the Indianapolis Colts, was amazed at the potency of the team’s rushing offense.

“I’m kind of waiting for [Griese and Warfield] to explode,” Dungy told the Miami Herald in a recent phone interview. “And that wasn’t [the Dolphins’] style that year. They weren’t going to put up 40 passes and throw a lot of bombs. They’ve got Paul Warfield there and it’s almost like whenever they needed, they would pull it out. But this running game is so powerful, they run the clock and play defense. They’ve got these receivers that I wouldn’t say [were] afterthoughts. But if those guys were playing in this era, they would have put up some numbers that you can’t believe.”

PERFECT MEMORIES

Join us each Wednesday as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the perfect 1972 team

Fifty years have passed since Miami went 17-0 and after the Philadelphia Eagles became the final team to lose a game this season, the question once again begs: What made the ‘72 Dolphins perfect and why has no team been able to replicate it?

‘They played with so much precision’

Those who spoke to the Miami Herald pointed out a litany of things that made the ‘72 Dolphins great, but their thoughts typically came back to one overarching theme: how complete of a team it was from top to bottom.

ESPN anchor Chris Berman grew up in a New York suburb in the 1960s and his family had Jets season tickets so he often saw the Dolphins when they were an AFL franchise in the late ‘60s. Though the franchise struggled in the AFL, it quickly turned things around as a nascent NFL organization.

It started with Don Shula, the winningest coach in NFL history who was hired to lead the Dolphins in 1970, Berman said.

“He could win in a lot of different ways ... Nobody has every angle covered, but he was pretty close,” Berman said.

Savvy personnel moves quickly formed a team that was an AFC contender. The Dolphins won 10 games in their inaugural NFL season and lost in the divisional round before advancing to the Super Bowl in 1971, where they lost to the Dallas Cowboys, 24-3.

As many players from the team have stated, the objective was never to finish 1972 undefeated.

“Their main goal was getting back to the Super Bowl and proving that they were a Super Bowl champion-caliber team,” said Jon Kendle, who has worked as an archivist at the Pro Football Hall of Fame for 18 years. Kendle has interviewed several players from the ‘72 team for projects at the Hall of Fame.

Kendle and Dungy said there were other great teams and up-and-coming squads that season, including the then-Oakland Raiders and Pittsburgh Steelers, who were a few years away from their Steel Curtain dynasty.

“But [the Dolphins] were a very dynamic team,” Kendle said. “Very complete. They had a great rushing attack, really a three-pronged attack with [Larry] Csonka and Mercury Morris and Jim Kiick.”

Both Csonka and Morris rushed for 1,000 yards that season and combined for 18 touchdowns behind a offensive line that had a combined 20 Pro Bowl appearances and two Hall of Famers in center Jim Langer and guard Larry Little.

“They played with so much precision,” said Dungy, who now works as an analyst on NBC’s “Football Night in America.”

The Dolphins led the NFL in scoring but also allowed the fewest points that season with their “No-Name Defense,” a moniker given to the unit by Hall of Fame Cowboys coach Tom Landry. Only one defensive player from that team — middle linebacker Nick Buoniconti — is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The defense had talent at every level but “they were very strong up the middle,” Berman said, noting players such as Buoniconti and Jake Scott and Dick Anderson, whom he called “two outstanding safeties.”

Said Dungy: “They had a defense that was versatile and multiple. They played a lot of different kinds of zones.”

‘You don’t go undefeated without adversity’

The path to 17-0 wasn’t as rosy as it seems. Six of their games were decided by one score.

“This was not a team that you left the ballpark saying other than, ‘Miami won’ most games, ‘Oh, they’re a steamroller,’” Berman said. “But yet, in the end, they won all the games without being a loud rock and roll band. They were more of a symphony. Although, any team with Larry Csonka running up the middle, I hesitate to call a symphony.”

A broken ankle in Week 5 for Griese, who entered the season as the starting quarterback, presented an obstacle that could have derailed their championship aspirations. He was a trusted passer who didn’t make many mistakes.

“Everybody kind of stepped up around the team,” Kendle said. “Earl Morrall comes in and he was a veteran player that Don Shula had a lot of faith in, going all the way back to his days in Baltimore. Earl Morrall really came in and held down the ship.”

The team’s talent and depth also allowed them to do “little things that a lot of teams aren’t able to do,” Berman said.

Dungy recalled the many times his Peyton Manning-led Colts team began the season with a handful of wins before getting tripped at some point during the regular season.

“When you get out 8-0, 9-0, then you become the circled game on everybody’s [schedule],” he said. “Everybody wants to knock you off. So, you get the best of everybody. And you’ve got to be at your best week in and week out. And I think that is the thing that really differentiated those guys. I don’t know that they were that much better than maybe the class of the league, but they never had an off week. They didn’t have the down game. They didn’t have the game where you threw three interceptions or you fumble a couple times or you had a couple mistakes and gave up big plays. They played to their level ... 17 weeks in a row. That’s not easy to do.”

By December, Dungy started to notice local and national media discussing the possibility of the Dolphins going undefeated. Miami defeated the Browns, 20-14, in the divisional round and the Steelers’ Immaculate Reception set up a clash between the two teams in the AFC Championship Game, which the Dolphins won, 21-17.

Though the then-Washington Redskins were favored by a field goal, Miami won Super Bowl 7 in a 14-7 game that would have been a shutout if not for a late special teams gaffe.

“By the time you got to the Super Bowl, you kind of just assumed they were going to win because they had done it all year,” Dungy said. “And they rolled and looked so good doing it.”

‘It was a beautiful team’

The Eagles’ loss to Washington in mid-November once again allowed the 1972 team to celebrate their unmatched achievement. Keeping up with an annual tradition, Berman did a celebratory champagne cork pop for the squad on “NFL Primetime.”

“In a way, we’re honoring the past every year,” Berman said.

In an era of salary cap restrictions and great quarterbacks across the NFL, Dungy still believes one day, a team will join the ‘72 Dolphins with a perfect season.

“It’s so hard, though,” Dungy said, “because now you’re talking about 17 games and three more times that you’ve got to do it and a little bit longer regular season and more rounds in the playoffs. It’s definitely harder, no doubt about it. I don’t know that there’s necessarily more parity because there were some great teams there. But to win 17 games in a row is harder than to win 14 in a row.”

Csonka and other players have said that the 1973 team that repeated as champions might have been even better despite losing two games.

But when Dungy and Kendle think of the ‘72 Dolphins, they remember the selflessness of players who could have shined more on other teams. It was perhaps fitting the Scott, one of the members of the No-Name Defense, was named Super Bowl MVP after recording two interceptions.

“They were egoless,” Kendle said.

Instead, they all bought into Shula’s vision and clearly-defined roles to achieve the ultimate team accomplishment in the ultimate team sport.

“It was a beautiful team if you appreciated the finer points of football,” Dungy said.