Every Super Bowl champion will get celebrated and remembered for its achievement.
But the 1972 Miami Dolphins are immortalized as a result of they’re the one staff to have an ideal season — undefeated and untied for a full NFL common season and postseason.
“We’ve been often imitated but never duplicated,” mentioned guard Larry Little, one among 4 Hall of Famers who spoke to reporters through net convention on Tuesday forward of the 1972 staff being honored for its fiftieth anniversary throughout Sunday night time’s prime-time sport between the present Dolphins and the Pittsburgh Steelers at Hard Rock Stadium.
Fifty years later, these 1972 Dolphins nonetheless stand alone. Some got here shut — just like the 1985 Chicago Bears that solely misplaced a Monday night time sport to the Dolphins or the 2007 New England Patriots, which had been undefeated getting into the Super Bowl however misplaced to the New York Giants — however no different staff since has been in a position to accomplish that very same feat.
“I felt some other teams would come along and at least tie us — not that no team will ever surpass us,” Little continued.
Those ‘72 Dolphins can be acknowledged by way of pregame and halftime ceremonies on the “Sunday Night Football” sport in opposition to the Steelers. Little, fullback Larry Csonka, quarterback Bob Briese and broad receiver Paul Warfield will take part in a ceremonial coin toss pregame. At halftime, dwelling members of the 1972 staff will collect with the households of deceased members for an on-field presentation. The Dolphins can even put on throwback jerseys with a commemorative patch honoring the 1972 staff as they tackle Pittsburgh.
“There’s a unity that goes on with the ‘72 team that goes on every year that it’s the most alive team that I’ve ever been affiliated with — I think anyone has ever been affiliated with — because it’s still competing,” Csonka mentioned.
That’s as a result of, yearly, those who participated in that perfection actively root for the final remaining unbeaten NFL staff to fall. Each season, when it occurs, it preserves them because the lone ones to realize the feat.
“We’re dusty old guys,” Csonka mentioned. “We’ve been retired 50 years, it’s nearly about — clearly, 50 years since we went undefeated — however annually, we come again to life. It’s just like the mud blows off and we’re up and we’re speaking, ‘it’s us in opposition to them,’ type of factor. But it’s not likely us in opposition to them. It’s our status in opposition to them.
“It makes you feel alive. It makes you feel like you’re part of it again.”
This yr, it’s the Philadelphia Eagles which might be the one remaining undefeated staff. The messages and telephone calls among the many 1972 Dolphins have been circulating with a give attention to these 6-0 Eagles, who will stay undefeated by way of the weekend as they’re on their bye week.
“Once a team is getting close to going undefeated, they bring us all back from the dead, they start talking about us again,” Little mentioned. “Because, other than that, they forget about us. I’m happy that we’re still being recognized because that is a tremendous accomplishment that we had.”
Over the years, members of the 1972 Dolphins really feel there’s a higher outdoors respect that has include how the achievement is perceived.
“I think back then, ‘So what? So you go undefeated, win the Super Bowl. Somebody is going to do it in five years,’ ” Griese mentioned. “Nobody did it. ‘In 10 years, they’ll do it quickly.’ Fifteen years, no one has achieved it. Twenty years? No, no one. Thirty, then the great groups come by, the [Tom] Brady yr, the New York Giants with Eli Manning beating the Patriots in that Super Bowl sport. And everyone says, ‘Geez, that must be pretty hard to do, go undefeated.’
“As time has gone by, I think more people realize that that was something special. We didn’t realize it was something special.”
The key to going undefeated? For the ‘72 Dolphins, it was simply not essentially making an attempt to go undefeated.
“I did not think that that was an objective or that was what we were attempting to do for the most part,” Warfield mentioned. “I think that we were attempting to show the football world that we were a better team than the team that was defeated previously the year before by an outstanding Dallas Cowboys football team in Super Bowl 6.”
What makes this celebration totally different from previous big-number reunions for the proper staff is the gamers now not have their coach, Don Shula, with them. Shula, the NFL’s winningest coach, died at 90 on May 4, 2020.
“You don’t realize how fast you’re getting old until your teammates, your friends, acquaintances, family start to disappear,” Csonka mentioned. “And I don’t think anything brought it more drastically to mind than when coach Shula passed. He was such a strong and prominent figure in so many of our lives, that you just assume that he’s always going to be there, and then suddenly, to be talking about him in the past tense, was a really bitter pill.”
“He is South Florida,” Little mentioned of Shula. “His legacy will always be around South Florida, no matter how many years to come. People want to know who Don Shula was and what he meant to — not only Miami — South Florida.”
Practice squad transfer
The Dolphins, on Tuesday, signed former New York Jets and Florida Gators working again La’Mical Perine to their follow squad. The transfer comes a day after releasing ZaQuandre White from the follow squad.
Perine, in 14 profession video games with the Jets, has 72 carries for 263 yards (a 3.7 common) and two touchdowns. He additionally has made11 receptions for 63 yards and returned two kickoffs for 22 yards. Perine, a fourth-round decide of New York within the 2020 draft, spent a part of the 2022 season on Philadelphia’s follow squad.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com
