“Over the years, people have asked what made
our team special, and I can’t offer a secret or a magic pill or a motivational
catchphrase. I return to the same themes: we had Hall of Fame talent and
coaching, and we had forty players on the roster in proper roles, who accepted
those roles and who made winning plays from those roles every week.”
“[Shula] demanded that he we be the team we thought
we were.”
Flash
back some 30-(ahem)-plus years, and I’m 8 years old, told I have to start
wearing glasses and none too happy about it. I’m told the story of one Bob
Griese, who not only wears glasses, but played quarterback in the NFL for the
freaking Miami Dolphins while wearing
glasses, and even better, was one of the league’s very best. Suddenly,
wearing glasses is OK. Suddenly, Bob Griese is my hero. Suddenly, the Miami
Dolphins are my team.
Not
so suddenly, I’m in for a lifetime of fandom heartache. But that’s a story for
another day.
My
Dad had attended grad school at Purdue, the alma mater of one Bob Griese, so
there was already a connection there. Throw in the fact that he wore glasses
and looked like a scientist out there using his mind to bend 300-pounders to
his will, and I was on board. Then a “Cool ‘N’ Easy Bob Griese” shirt was
presented to me, which I proceeded to wear roughly 629 days in a row.
By
way of prelude, this is not a fast segue into the fact that I recently read
Griese’s book, “Perfection: The Inside Story of the 1972 Miami Dolphins’
Perfect Season.” The quarterback-turned-announcer wrote it with my favorite
sportswriters, Dave Hyde of the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, making this work a
marriage of a few of my favorite things.
Forty
years later, Griese took us back to a time when players actually had offseason
jobs, when coach “The” Don Shula essentially invented situational substitution,
when quarterbacks were seasoned on the vine and painstakingly developed, when
drafts were afterthoughts, and when a lack of media obsession allowed teams to create rosters chock full of insane personalities and crazed characters.
“What did everyone say about Shula? That he
had a high tolerance for another man’s pain?”
Before
Griese and Shula arrived, the Dolphins were a bumbling expansion team, operating
in the equivalent of an NFL outpost, largely ignored by its hometown. Within a
few short years, Griese was being propositioned by actresses in his role as an
offseason realtor (an anecdote that started the book on a rip-roaring note) and
the Orange Bowl had become arguably the biggest home-field advantage in the
league.
“In my first few years in Miami, pro
football was background music in a resort town ... Then Don Shula arrived as
coach, and everything changed overnight. He showed how one person can change the
entire dynamic of a team.”
“By 1973, we had that many season-ticket
holders—the most ever for a pro sports franchise—and the publisher of Sports
Illustrated wrote, ‘Possibly no city in
the United States is as maniacal about one team as is Miami about the
Dolphins.’”
From
there, Griese goes on to share harrowing, oft-hard-to-read tales of the utter
disregard players had for their own health (players referred to the local hospital
as the “Mercy Hilton,” they spent so much time there), how that disregard has
destroyed quality of life for so many of his ex-teammates, the prevalent usage
of uppers and stimulants, and the evolution of race relations within the team
and league dynamic.
“There was this locker-room culture that
pain was negotiable but victory was everlasting.”
On a
personal level, Griese explained the scientific approach he took to quarterbacking,
a tact he took primarily due to the lack of coaching he received early in his
Dolphins tenure. He wrote about going to each member of the offense for input
into the gameplan (rare at that time), and how his always-underrated
athleticism allowed him to survive the disastrous early years. He touched on
how much scouting has evolved, how offensive and defensive coaches actually
used to work together, how Steve Spurrier’s off-putting personality played a
role in Griese landing in Miami, how mercurial GM Joe Thomas put his stamp on
the Dolphins, and how Bill Arnsparger helped to change the entire landscape of
defensive football by creating the launch point for zone-blitz schemes out of
necessity.
“In Arnsparger’s eleven Dolphins seasons
with Don Shula, the Dolphins’ defense ranked first or second in the league nine
times.”
“Every bit as close to a genius in his field
as Einstein was in his,” Buoniconti added.
He
told incredible tales of the drunken visionary, owner Joe Robbie, who was once found passed out in the closet of the owner’s box; the lawyerly linebacker,
Nick “Boo” Buoniconti; and the detailed offensive line coach Monte Clark, who
painstakingly put together a great line from scratch and unheralded, overlooked
players, then entertained everyone with colorful one-liners:
“Sympathy,” he’d tell anyone making an
excuse, “could be found in the dictionary between ‘shit’ and ‘syphilis.’”
“‘The Mushroom,’ Monte Clark began calling this
rebuilt offensive line, because its players ‘sat in the dark and ate shit,’ as
he said.”
He
also wrote extensively about offensive coordinator Howard Schellenberger, who
essentially took a hands-off approach, allowing Griese to run the entire
offense by himself; quiet-yet-spectacular wideout Paul Warfield, with whom
Griese had an uncanny synchronicity; and the unlikely tandem of Larry Csonka (who
once knocked three New York Jets defenders out of a single game by himself) and
Jim Kiick, bruising running backs who were as punishing off the field as on (“Kiick and Csonka,” an anonymous AFC coach
told Sports Illustrated before the
1972 season. “You can’t spell ‘em and you can’t stop ‘em.”).
“Players sat in film sessions each week,
watched him purposely run into opposing defenders, and joked, ‘Way to find the
safety, Zonk!’”
“When he goes on a safari,” line coach Monte
Clark said, “the lions roll up their windows.”
The
signal-caller also offered insights into the cheap pursuit of individual records
by O.J. Simpson and the Buffalo Bills:
“Down 17-0 in the fourth quarter, Buffalo
kept handing the ball to Simpson. He was committing the team sin of lifting one
player’s goals above the day’s mission statement of winning. The Bills, after
all, discussed openly the hope of Simpson breaking the NFL’s single-season
rushing record. He would that season, too. He gained 2,003 yards. But at what
expense?
“You assholes!” Buoniconti yelled across the
line.
“When Simpson crossed the 100-yard barrier,
the Bills actually began to celebrate on the field.
“You stupid bastard,” Fernandez shouted to
guard Reggie McKenzie. “Look at the scoreboard!”
Griese
also wrote openly and bravely about the broken leg he suffered during the course
of the season, an injury that resulted in lineman Norm Evans—who mistakenly
thought he missed the block that got Griese hurt—standing along a highway in
tears, saying, “I cost us the season.” That emotion demonstrated the bond on
the team and what they felt they owed one another, paving the way for vastly
underrated quarterback Earl Morrall to carry the torch in Griese’s lengthy absence.
The
understated Griese even shared the inevitably that came along with the Super
Bowl against a vastly overmatched Washington Redskins team: “As I reviewed the plays, there was no doubt
in my mind that we would win this game. And win it easily ... I said little
reporters all week. But inside, I swaggered.”
“In the locker room ... no one talked of the
undefeated season. It was the title we cherished. The ring. This moment when we
were the best.”
Griese
and Hyde set the story against the backdrop of each game of the 1972 season,
crafting a compelling narrative that allows the freedom to tie a number of
issues into the storyline. The format works, putting the actual games well into
the background while allowing the inside view of life on the best team in the
NFL to carry the day. There were a few grammatical errors along the way, but
the clean writing, natural flow and engrossing tales combined to create one of
the best sports books I have ever read. Well, I guess the subject matter didn’t
hurt for an admitted Miami Dolphins fan (which is much harder to admit to these
days than it was 40 years ago).
For a
kid who didn’t want to wear glasses and then found a role model in Bob Griese,
this was a book that transported me back quite a few years. “Four decades later,
I still hear those cheers,” wrote Griese.
And
so many years later, I’m still grateful for the privilege of being among those cheering.
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