Don Shula, the Hall of Fame coach of the National Football League's Baltimore Colts and Miami Dolphins, died yesterday at the age of 90. During the late 1960s my mother was a big Colts fan...I think mainly because she was an even bigger Johnny Unitas fan...and I found myself from 1967 through 1969 rooting for Baltimore along with her. But my number one team, starting with the 1968 season when they were in their third year of existence as an expansion American Football League franchise, was the Miami Dolphins...the fact that I suffered along with them during a couple of their early losing seasons only intensified my pleasure when Baltimore's head coach Don Shula jumped ship to join the Dolphins in 1970. Shula always tailored his coaching emphasis to his players' strengths...with the Colts it was the wide open passing attack of Unitas, while with Miami he used their excellent offensive line to develop a ball control running attack with stars like Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick and Mercury Morris while Bob Griese did an excellent job as a game managing quarterback, mixing up short passes and occasional bombs. It was interesting that under Shula during the 1968 regular season, Unitas was injured early on and backup QB Earl Morrall brought the team to an unprecedented (for them) 13-1 regular season and into their first Super Bowl, against the New York Jets. Living at the time near Miami where the Super Bowl was being held, although the stadium was completely sold out the NFL still imposed a television blackout on the area, preventing me from watching the game. Since I was rooting for the Colts, it was probably just as well as the Jets, always Miami's divisional rival, pulled off one of the biggest upsets in football history. As for Morrall, Shula later brought him over to Miami as Griese's backup, and like in '68, in early 1972 the starter got injured and Morrall stepped in, this time leading the team to its glorious undefeated regular season. Griese returned to the helm against the Steelers in the playoffs and the team won its first of two straight Super Bowls...
Because Don Shula always presented a competitive team...in his 33 years as an NFL head coach his teams experienced only two losing seasons (winning a respectable six games in each of them)...this noble refusal to ever tank in order to get a high draft pick always placed the Dolphins at a disadvantage. But although they wouldn't win another Super Bowl under Shula after their two wins in the early 70s, I was always very proud of this team as they usually put on very entertaining performances with many of the great games in NFL history involving them...sometimes they won these classics and sometimes not. My favorite memory was seeing them knock off the dominant, thoroughly arrogant Chicago Bears 38-24 in 1985, preventing them from going undefeated...to me that was almost as good as winning the Super Bowl! Unfortunately (depending on how you look at it), in the early 1980s the Dolphins had a tenacious defense and questionable offense while after Dan Marino took over at quarterback the offense took off while the defense slid. Oh, if only they had the defense that got them into the Super Bowl during the '82 season AND the offense that carried them there two years later! All this took place under the leadership of a great coach, Don Shula...I'll miss him as will many of my fellow South Floridians from that era, whether we still live down there or not...
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