Nobody's perfect. We've all heard that. Even a "perfect season" isn't perfect. But one man built a perfect season in the National Football League.
Donald Francis Shula was born on January 4, 1930 in Grand River, Ohio, outside Cleveland. A son of Hungarian immigrants, he grew up in nearby Painesville. When he was 11, his mother noticed that he'd cut his face from playing tackle football, and forbade him to play it, ever again.
In 1945, at Harvey High School in Painesville, a gym teacher noticed that he looked strong enough to play football, and suggested he go out for the football team. But his mother had forbidden it. No one had any idea at the time, but the very history of the sport hung in the balance. On the signup sheet, he forged his parents' signatures. In his senior year, 1947, he led Harvey to a 7-3 record, its best in 18 years.
But college football scholarships were hard to come by, since the boys who had gone off to World War II were now grown men, and older than college football players would normally be. A former Harvey coach recommended John Carroll University, a private Catholic school in the Cleveland suburbs, coached by Herb Eisele.
While there, Shula considered training for the priesthood. Again, the history of football hung in the balance. But big wins over Youngstown State and Syracuse convinced him to stick with football. Today, the football facility at Carroll is named Don Shula Stadium. That would not have been the case had he become Father, Monsignor, Bishop, or even Cardinal Shula. (Maybe the school would have been renamed for him, or a school somewhere, but not a stadium.)
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He graduated in 1951, with a sociology degree. Again, the history of football was up for grabs, because he was offered a teaching and coaching job at Lincoln High School in nearby Canton -- the city where the National Football League was founded in 1920, but not yet home to the as-yet-nonexistent Pro Football Hall of Fame.
But Paul Brown, head coach and general manager of his hometown team, the Cleveland Browns, defending NFL Champions, had selected him in the 9th round of the NFL Draft. In the 22nd round -- today, the Draft has only 7 rounds -- Brown had selected Shula's roommate at Carroll, Carl Taseff. Brown liked looking at Carroll players because Eisele had attended Brown's clinics and used similar tactics, thus making Eisele's players adaptable to Brown's system. The teaching job offered him $3,750 a year. Brown offered him $5,000. Shula signed with the Browns.
This was the time when single-platoon football, where players played on both offense and defense, was giving way to two-platoon football, where they went only one way and not the other. Two of the defining coaches of my youth were among the first players to be only defensive backs and really good at it: Tom Landry of the New York Giants, and Don Shula.
Shula played in all 12 Browns games in 1951, becoming a starter midway through the season, and intercepted 4 passes. The Browns had beaten the Los Angeles Rams in an epic NFL Championship Game the season before, but, in 1951, the Rams won a rematch. This began an unfortunate trend for him: So often close to glory, but not quite getting it.
He had enlisted in the Ohio National Guard, and, with the Korean War on, was soon called up to serve. He remained stationed Stateside, and was deactivated in time to play half of the 1952 season. Again, the Browns reached the NFL Championship Game, but lost again, this time to the Detroit Lions.
Before the 1953 season, Shula and Taseff -- apparently, Brown had become less enamored with them, or maybe he got a trade deal he decided he couldn't pass up -- were traded to the Baltimore Colts. They went 3-9 despite leading the NFL in defensive takeaways, including 3 interceptions by Shula. Wilbur "Weeb" Ewbank, a former Brown assistant, became their head coach in 1954, and the team got better. In spite of a broken jaw, Shula finished the 1955 season with 5 interceptions.
Yes, he played. Yes, the Colts once wore blue helmets.
No, facemasks were not yet common, but soon would be.
Ewbank waived Shula at the end of training camp in 1957, and so he missed their 1958 and 1959 NFL Championships. He played a season with the Washington Redskins, and retired as a player, with 21 career interceptions and 4 fumble recoveries.
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In 2012, I did a sport-by-sport series on whether "mediocre players" make the best coaches. It would be unfair to say that Don Shula was a "mediocre player," but he wasn't an especially successful one. But, like a lot of athletes who weren't great players, he took his love for, and knowledge of, his sport, and made himself a good coach.
Shula went right into coaching after retiring, first as an assistant at the University of Virginia under head coach Blanton Collier, then at Iowa State, then the University of Kentucky. While at Virginia, he married Dorothy Bartish. They had 5 children: Sons Dave and Mike, both of whom also became NFL players and coaches; and daughters Donna, Sharon and Anne.
In 1960, he got his 1st NFL job, coaching the defensive backfield for the Detroit Lions. He convinced head coach George Wilson to take Taseff with him. By 1962, he was the defensive coordinator, and 5 members of his defense have made the Hall of Fame: Joe Schmidt, Alex Karras, Yale Lary, Dick LeBeau and Dick "Night Train" Lane. It also featured such luminaries as Roger Brown, Darris McCord, Sam Williams, Carl Brettschneider and Wayne Walker. The front four of Karras, Brown, McCord and Williams was one of several pro football defensive lines to be known as "The Fearsome Foursome."
In a game known as the Thanksgiving Day Massacre, they handed the Green Bay Packers what turned out to be their only defeat of the season, sacking Hall of Fame quarterback Bart Starr 11 times. But with only the 1st place team in each Division making the Playoffs at the time, the Lions' 11-3 record was still behind the Packers' 13-1, and so they didn't make the NFL Championship Game.
Still, it got Shula noticed, and in 1963, with Ewbank having left for the AFL's New York Jets, the Colts welcomed him back, as head coach. His 1st game was a 37-28 loss to the Giants at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, but he got them to rebound to finish 8-6.
He got them to the 1964 NFL Championship Game, and lost to the Browns. Paul Brown had been fired by new owner Art Modell, and their new head coach was Collier. Collier remains the last head coach to lead the Browns to an NFL Championship, and, until the 2016 Cavaliers, the last man to lead a Cleveland team to a World Championship in any sport.
In 1965, Shula led the Colts to a tie with the Packers for the Western Division title. (What Baltimore, a Northeastern city, was doing in the Western Division, I don't know.) But they lost a Playoff to the Packers in controversial fashion.
In 1967, they were undefeated going into the last game of the season, their only blemishes being ties against the Los Angeles Rams and the Minnesota Vikings. But they went out to L.A., and the Rams clobbered them, 34-10. Thus, the Colts and Rams both finished 11-1-2, and since head-to-head play was then the tiebreaker, the Rams made the Playoffs, while the Colts didn't.
Don Shula and Johnny Unitas
In 1968, Johnny Unitas, perhaps the greatest quarterback football had yet seen, was injured during the preseason. Earl Morrall stepped in as quarterback, and the Colts went 13-1, and avenged their only regular-season loss by going to Cleveland and beating the Browns in the NFL Championship Game. (Under the rules of the time, hosting the title game was rotated, not decided by record. This also explains why the Dolphins played the 1972 AFC Championship Game on the road.)
But this NFL Championship did not make the Colts "World Champions." They had to play the AFL Champions in Super Bowl III, and it was Ewbank's Jets. The Colts were favored by 18 points, but Jet quarterback Joe Namath said, "We're gonna win, I guarantee it."
The Colts played as poorly as any team has ever played in a major league sports final, blowing several chances. It was only 7-0 Jets at the half. Unitas had missed the whole season, but he said he was ready to go back in. Shula later said if he'd put Unitas in to start the 2nd half, the Colts would have won. Instead, he waited until the Colts were 16-0 down, and the Jets won 16-7.
Super Bowl III was played on neutral ground, at the Orange Bowl in Miami. If Shula only knew how much he would come to "own" that stadium, and that city and its metropolitan area...
Shula was on the wrong side of the biggest upset in pro football history. In 2 years, he had guided his team to a regular-season record of 24-2-2, but did not have a World Championship to show for it. He was fired after the 1969 season, and his record as Colts coach was 71-23-4, including 3 Playoff berths in 7 seasons, and an NFL Championship -- but not a World Championship. To make matters worse, just 2 years later, his successor, Don McCafferty, led the Colts to win Super Bowl V -- with Unitas getting hurt in midgame, and Morrall stepping in and leading them to victory.
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The Miami Dolphins had entered the AFL in 1966, and, like most expansion teams, had struggled. Original coach George Wilson, who had coached the Lions to the 1957 NFL Championship and had hired Wilson for his staff in 1960, was fired, and Shula was named to replace him in 1970. He hired Taseff as an assistant, and they would remain together through the 1993 season.
Over the next 6 seasons, he would take the Dolphins to a 67-16-1 regular-season record. In a 16-season stretch from 1970 to 1985, the Dolphins would utterly dominate the newly-created American Football Conference Eastern Division, going 168-63-2, winning the Division 10 times.
In 1970, he got the Dolphins to the AFC Wild Card (only 1 Wild Card per Conference at the time), and lost a Divisional Playoff to the Oakland Raiders. In 1971, he won the AFC East, and on Christmas Day, beat the Kansas City Chiefs in what remains the longest game in NFL history, a double-overtime 24-21 away win.
Shula got some measure of revenge by beating the Colts, who had won the AFC East the year before, in the AFC Championship Game. But they lost Super Bowl VI to the Dallas Cowboys, 24-3. Until 2019, they were the only team ever to play in a Super Bowl and fail to score a touchdown.
In 1920, the 1st NFL season, the Akron Pros won the title, going 8-0-3. In 1922, the Canton Bulldogs went 10-0-2. In 1923, the Bulldogs went 11-0-1. In 1948, the Browns went 14-0 and won the league title, but that league was the All-America Football Conference, not the NFL. None of those teams, from Shula's native Northern Ohio, had to play an NFL Championship Game.
In 1934, and again in 1942, under head coach and NFL founder George Halas, the Chicago Bears went through the regular season undefeated, but lost the NFL Championship Game. Going into the 1972 season, no NFL team had gone undefeated and untied and then won the NFL Championship Game, under that name or under that of the Super Bowl.
The Dolphins began the season by beating the Chiefs. (Just as their Playoff game the preceding season was the last football game at Kansas City Municipal Stadium, this was the 1st regular-season game at Arrowhead Stadium.) They won at home to the Houston Oilers, away to the Minnesota Vikings, away to the Jets, home to the San Diego Chargers, home to the Buffalo Bills, away to the Colts, away to the Bills, home to the Patriots, home to the Jets, home to the St. Louis Cardinals, away to the Patriots, home to the Giants, and home to the Colts.
How close were these games? Their win home to the Bills was 24-23. Their win away to the Vikings was 16-14. Their win home to the Jets was 28-24. Every other win was by at least 10 points, including home to the Patriots, 52-0.
Like the '68 Colts, Shula had to do without his starting quarterback for a while, although for not nearly as long. He had been satisfied with Morrall as a substitute for Unitas, and had acquired him as a backup for Bob Griese, and he played from the 5th game onward, until Griese returned for the AFC Championship Game.
In addition to Shula himself, 6 members of the '72 Dolphins are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame: Griese, running back Larry Csonka, receiver Paul Warfield, center Jim Langer, guard Larry Little, and linebacker Nick Buoniconti. Good cases can also be made for tight end Jim Mandich, guard Bob Kuechenberg, defensive tackle Manny Fernandez, defensive end Bill Stanfill, and safety Jake Scott.
Between Buoniconti, Fernandez, Stanfill, Scott, and All-Pros defensive end Vern Den Herder, cornerback Tim Foley and safety Dick Anderson (not to be confused with the later Rutgers head coach of the same name), it was hardly what the media called it, a "No-Name Defense.")
Running backs Jim Kiick and Csonka (in that order) were nicknamed "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," after the 1969 Western movie starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. The backfield also featured Eugene "Mercury" Morris, who, as his nickname (for the Roman messenger of the gods, known as Hermes in ancient Greece), was pretty fast.
Also noteworthy is Marlin Briscoe: In 1968, with the Denver Broncos, he had become the 1st black man to start at quarterback under the NFL banner. (It was still the AFL, but the merger process was already underway.) But, like so many black quarterbacks at that time, he was moved to receiver, and it was at that position that he had his greatest success on a team level.
On Christmas Eve, they hosted the Wild Card winners, the Browns, at the Orange Bowl, and won 20-14. On New Year's Eve, they went to Three Rivers Stadium. Just 8 days earlier, the Pittsburgh Steelers had played their 1st official Playoff game (their 1947 Eastern Division Playoff is usually not counted), and won on the Terry Bradshaw to Franco Harris "Immaculate Reception." But the "Steel Curtain" was not quite ready, and the Dolphins won 21-17.
So the Dolphins qualified for Super Bowl VII, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the stadium where Shula's hopes for the 1967 Colts died. They would be playing the Washington Redskins, whose coach, George Allen, had also been a great defensive coordinator -- and had coached that Rams team that knocked Shula's '67 Colts out. His veteran squad, nicknamed "The Over-the-Hill Gang," was 11-3, 13-3 counting the Playoffs. These 'Skins were good, mean, and ready for battle. And the oddsmakers actually made the undefeated Dolphins 3-point underdogs. And Namath thought his Jets were being shown disrespect?
It was January 14, 1973. Richard Nixon was 6 days away from being sworn in for a 2nd term as President. The Vietnam War was coming to an end. The Cold War had thawed a little. Hardly anybody was talking about Watergate just yet. Music was dominated by hard rock and soul. "Muscle cars" were the popular automobiles. Arcades were still full of pinball machines and games of chance, with video games on the horizon.
It was 84 degrees at kickoff, and that remains the warmest temperature in Super Bowl history. That would seem to have favored a team from Miami a lot more than a team from Washington, although the Redskins had plenty of Southerners on their roster.
The Dolphins broke an early deadlock by scoring a touchdown late in the 1st quarter. They scored another touchdown in the 2nd quarter, and were up 14-0 at the half, having limited to the Redskins to 4 1st downs and just 72 yards from scrimmage. But there was a warning sign, noticeable mostly in retrospect: Both times, when Garo Yepremian, the Dolphins' Cyprus-born left-footed placekicker, attempted the extra point, it was good, but a low kick.
In the 3rd quarter, the Redskins nearly scored a touchdown, but Charley Taylor, eventually to become the NFL's all-time leader in receptions, just missed catching a Billy Kilmer pass and taking it in for a touchdown. Curtis Knight ended that drive with a 32-yard field goal attempt that went wide right, and it looked like Washington's best chance was gone.
They got close again early in the 4th quarter, when Kilmer threw to Jerry Smith, wide open in the end zone. But the pass hit the crossbar of the goalpost, and Scott intercepted a Kilmer pass on the next play. (Before the 1974 season, the NFL changed the rule, and goalposts were moved from the goal line to the end line.)
With a little over 2 minutes left, it was still 14-0 Miami, and the Dolphins had 4th and 4 on the Redskin 34. Shula ordered a field goal, which would have made it 17-0, forging a 17-0 record. He would later say he thought, "What a hell of a way to remember this game."
As I said, the goalposts were on the goal line, so, with the 7-yard backup, this was a 41-yard attempt. It was on natural grass, but there was no wind. A good kicker like Yepremian should have been able to make it. But, again, he kicked it low, and it was blocked by the Redskins' Bill Brundige.
That was bad enough. But the ball was still live, and it rebounded, and Yepremian, rather than kick-holder Morrall, got to it. Yepremian should have just fallen on it: It would have kept the gap at 2 scores, and the Redskins wouldn't have had time.
Instead, he saw Brundige coming to tackle him, and he decided to get rid of it. For whatever reason, this left-footed kicker threw it with his right hand, and it went almost straight up. He reached for it again, and it glanced off his fingers and into the hands of Mike Bass, who took it 49 yards for a touchdown -- the 1st fumble recovery touchdown in Super Bowl history.
With 2:07 to go, it was Miami 14, Washington 7. The Redskins had life: If they could hold the Dolphins on the next possession, they could tie the game and send it to overtime. (The NFL did not yet have the 2-point conversion.)
The Redskins held the Dolphins to a 3-and-out, and almost blocked Larry Seiple's punt. They had 1:14, although they'd used up all their timeouts. The "No-Name Defense" held, with Den Herder sacking Kilmer on 4th down to end the game.
The Dolphins had their undefeated season. Miami had its 1st World Championship in any sport. Scott was named the game's Most Valuable Player, the 1st defensive back, and only the 2nd defensive player, so honored. Shula had his redemption.
The Dolphins did, indeed, go 17-0. The NFL expanded to a 16-game regular-season schedule in 1978. In the 1984 season, the San Francisco 49ers went 18-1, losing only at home to Pittsburgh. In 1985, the Bears went 18-1, losing only, with great pride for Dolphin fans, away to Miami. In 2007, the Patriots went 18-0 before losing the Super Bowl to the Giants.
The 1972-73 Miami Dolphins remain the only undefeated and untied NFL Champions. For that season, as he had previously been in 1964, 1967 and 1968, the Associated Press named Shula their NFL Coach of the Year.
Is there a reason the '72 Dolphins
can't be called the greatest single-season team in NFL history? Their regular-season opponents had an aggregate winning percentage of .397. The Giants and Chiefs both went 8-6, and that was the best of their opponents.
However, due to the aforementioned scheduling rotation, they did have to go on the road to face the rising Steelers for the AFC title, and they won; and, of course, the Super Bowl was at a neutral site. (Miami has hosted 11 Super Bowls, a record that New Orleans is set to tie in 2024, but the Dolphins haven't played in any of those.)
Legend has it that, in every NFL season, when the last undefeated team loses for the 1st time, the surviving members of the '72 Dolphins get together for a champagne toast. In reality, this is an exaggeration, as only a few of them do it. Shula himself has never participated in it.
The Dolphins would win their opener in 1973, before losing their 2nd game, away to Oakland, ending a 16-game regular-season winning streak. They went 12-2, their only other loss coming away to Baltimore. They hosted the Cincinnati Bengals, coached by Shula's old mentor Paul Brown, in the Playoffs, and beat them. Then they avenged their defeat to the Raiders, beating them for the AFC title. And they won Super Bowl VIII, beating the Minnesota Vikings 24-7 at Rice Stadium in Houston.
It looked like the dynasty would continue in 1974, as they went 11-3. They went to Oakland for the Divisional Playoff, and it looked like they had the game wrapped up on a late touchdown, Griese passing to Benny Malone. But Ken Stabler threw to a well-covered Clarence Davis for the winning touchdown, in what became known as the "Sea of Hands" play and game.
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The Dolphins missed the Playoffs the next 3 seasons, despite going 10-4 in 2 of them. Shula rebuilt, but these Dolphin teams wouldn't quite be good enough. They lost to the Houston Oilers in the 1978 AFC Wild Card Game, lost to the Steelers in a 1979 Divisional Playoff, missed the Playoffs in 1980, and lost to the San Diego Chargers in a 1981 Divisional Playoff that became known as "The Epic in Miami" and "The Kellen Winslow Game."
The 1982 would be shortened to 9 games by a players' strike, but the Dolphins won the AFC Championship again. The Redskins got some revenge, beating them in Super Bowl XVII at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, 27-17.
The Dolphins drafted quarterback Dan Marino, and lost to the Seattle Seahawks in a 1983 Divisional Playoff. But Marino put together perhaps the best passing season anybody had yet seen in 1984, and the Dolphins cruised to another AFC Championship, their 5th, and Shula was in his 8th NFL championship game. But Joe Montana showed Marino, Shula, and everyone else the difference between a passer and a quarterback, and the 49ers beat the Dolphins, 38-16.
To the surprise of most football fans, neither Shula nor Marino never got into another Super Bowl. The Dolphins lost the 1985 AFC Championship Game, at home, to the Patriots. They missed the Playoffs the next 4 seasons, and it began to look like Shula, now 60 years old, should retire. They then got stuck behind the Buffalo Bills in the AFC East, losing to the Bills in the 1990 Divisional round and the 1992 AFC Championship Game, at the Dolphins' new home of Joe Robbie Stadium in the Miami suburbs.
In 1991, after 32 years of marriage, Dorothy Shula died. Don soon founded the Don Shula Foundation for Breast Cancer Research. In 1993, he married Mary Anne Stephens, and he lived the rest of his life at her home in the Miami suburb of Indian Creek, Florida. In 2007, they joined his former quarterback, Dan Marino, in doing TV commercials for NutriSystem weight loss products.
In spite of his struggles, on the field and off, Shula wasn't done as a coach. He got off to a 9-2 start in 1993, in spite of Marino suffering a season-ending injury, and Scott Mitchell having to play quarterback. But Mitchell got hurt, too, and he was down to a 3rd-string quarterback.
On November 14, the Dolphins beat the Philadelphia Eagles 19-14 at Veterans Stadium. This was the 325th win of Shula's head coaching career, surpassing Halas as the NFL's all-time leader. To this day, Shula and Halas have been joined only by Bill Belichick * as head coaches who are winners of 300 or more NFL games.
That 3rd string quarterback who beat the Eagles that day? It was Doug Pederson, who would coach the Eagles to win Super Bowl LII, over Belichick's Patriots.
At the end of the year,
Sports Illustrated named him their Sportsman of the Year, although that was pretty much a lifetime achievement award, rather than a reflection of his doing anything particularly noteworthy that year. (In 1972, they split the award between UCLA basketball coach John Wooden and tennis star Billie Jean King. In 1973, they gave it to Jackie Stewart. Stewart had a great year, but auto racing is not a sport.)
But a true "last stand" wouldn't come that year. Under Pederson and veteran Steve DeBerg, the Dolphins collapsed, losing their last 5 games. They remain the only NFL team to start a season 9-2 or better and miss the Playoffs. They won the AFC East in 1994, Shula's 15th 1st place finish as an NFL head coach, but lost a Divisional Playoff to the Chargers. They made the Playoffs in 1995, but lost a Wild Card Game to the Bills, 37-22. Shula then retired.
He coached his 1st NFL game on September 15, 1963. He coached his last on December 30, 1995. In between, he coached a record 526 games, went 328-156-6 in regular-season play, and 19-17 in the Playoffs, for a total of 347-173-6, for an overall winning percentage of .665.
In 33 seasons, he reached the Playoffs 19 times, won 15 Division titles, on 10 occasions reached the AFC Championship Game or its previous equivalent, won 6 of those, won 3 NFL Championships, and won 2 Super Bowls. It's also worth pointing out that Shula's teams were consistently among the least penalized teams in the NFL: They were not only efficient, but played cleanly.
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Don Shula was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1997, in his 1st year of eligibility. (Coaches need to sit out only 1 season before they're eligible. They can then coach again without losing their Hall-of-Famer status.) He was named the head coach on the NFL's 1970s All-Decade Team, and to the staff of the NFL's 100th Anniversary All-Time Team.
He was the 1st inductee to the Miami Dolphins Honor Roll, and the address of Hard Rock Stadium (formerly Joe Robbie Stadium, among other names) is 347 Don Shula Drive, in honor of the man and the number of games he won as a head coach. In 2010, a statue of him was unveiled outside that stadium. In 1983, while he was still coaching, the Florida legislature renamed the South Dade Expressway, near which the stadium was built, the Don Shula Expressway.
John Carroll University named its new football ground Don Shula Stadium. The annual game between Florida International University in Miami and Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton is named the Shula Bowl, and the winner receives a trophy named the Don Shula Award.
Don Shula Stadium, John Carroll University,
University Heights, Ohio
In 1999, the Vince Lombardi Cancer Foundation gave him the Lombardi Award of Excellence, which they define as going to "an individual who exemplifies the spirit of the coach" (Lombardi). In 2003, 30 years after completing his perfect season, Shula was invited to toss the coin before Super Bowl XXXVII at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego. (The Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Raiders.)
Shula co-wrote 3 books:
The Winning Edge in 1973, with Lou Sahadi;
Everyone's a Coach in 1995, with Ken Blanchard; and
The Little Black Book of Coaching: Motivating People to Be Winners in 2001, also with Blanchard.
He also lent his name to Don Shula's Steakhouse. The original opened in Miami Lakes, at a hotel that he also owned. One was in New York, near Port Authority Bus Terminal. I considered going there once, but the menu was posted in the front window, and the prices were ridiculously high, so I didn't go in. That one is now closed, but they are still open in Florida in Miami Lakes, Tampa, Gainesville and Walt Disney World; and in Chicago, Houston, and the Phoenix suburb of Chandler, Arizona.
In 2013, noting that they'd never been invited to the White House for a ceremony honoring them, President Barack Obama invited the '72 Dolphins to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of their win in Super Bowl VII. Shula gave him a period-specific Dolphins jersey, with the Number 72 on it, and "UNDEFEATED" as the "name," signed by all the surviving players.
Griese, Obama and Shula hold up the jersey.
Warfield and Csonka behind them.
Langer, Kuechenberg and Fernandez were still alive, but refused to attend, because of their opposition to Obama. Yepremian, however, was a Republican, and known to be a friend of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who lives near Miami on the very exclusive Fisher Island, but attended anyway.
Dave Shula became a lefthanded quarterback. played at Ivy League school Dartmouth, and, like his father, played for the Baltimore Colts, in 1981. He coached under Don with the Dolphins from 1982 to 1988, then under Jimmy Johnson with the Cowboys until 1990.
In 1991, in one of his last hires before he died, Paul Brown hired Dave as the receivers coach for the Bengals. Paul's son and successor as Bengals owner, Mike Brown, hired Dave as head coach in 1992, but his 5 seasons at the helm were unsuccessful. Dave left coaching to run the steakhouse franchise, and in 2018 went back at Dartmouth, where he remains receivers coach. He is married with 3 sons.
Dave and Don, after a Dolphins-Bengals game
at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati
Mike Shula was a better player and a better coach than his older brother Dave. He quarterbacked the University of Alabama to 9-2-1 and a win in the Aloha Bowl in the 1985 season, and 10-3 and a win in the Sun Bowl in the 1986 season. He was drafted by the Buccaneers, but only played the 1987 season. He remained with them as an assistant coach for the next 3 years.
In 1991, he joined his father's Dolphins staff. In 1993, he was lured away by the Chicago Bears, became the Bucs' offensive coordinator in 1996, and the Dolphins' quarterbacks coach in 2000. In 2003, he was named head coach at Alabama. He got them to the 2004 Music City Bowl (but lost), and a 10-2 record and a win in the Cotton Bowl in the 2005 season, before a scandal forced his firing in midseason in 2006. What responsibility Mike bore for the scandal is debatable.
He has never been a head coach again, but he was immediately hired as the quarterbacks coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars, and has since served on the staffs of the Carolina Panthers, the Giants, and now the Denver Broncos. He is married with 4 daughters.
Don and Mike, after a Dolphins-Buccaneers game
at the new Dolphins stadium
It was announced this morning, May 4, 2020, that Don Shula had died in Miami Lakes at the age of 90. No cause has been publicly released, and there is no indication that he had a long-term illness. I suspect that if the Coronavirus had been the cause, that would have been mentioned. He was survived by his 2nd wife, his 5 children, 16 grandchildren, and 5 great-grandchildren.
I note that Shula had served in the Ohio National Guard, and he died 50 years to the day after Ohio National Guardsmen had been deployed to Kent State University outside Cleveland, and shot at antiwar demonstrators, killing 4 of them and wounding many others. Somehow, I doubt that, if Shula had stayed with the ONG, and had been their commanding officer at Kent, they would have fired.
The NFL office, the NFL Network, NFL Films and the Pro Football Hall of Fame have tweeted condolences. So have the other major league teams in South Florida: MLB's Marlins, the NBA's Heat, the NHL's Florida Panthers, and MLS' Inter Miami. So have the University of Miami, Florida International and Florida Atlantic.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell: "Don Shula will always be remembered as one of the greatest coaches and contributors in the history of our game. He made an extraordinarily positive impact on so many lives. The winningest coach in NFL history and the only one to lead a team to a perfect season, Coach Shula lived an unparalleled football life. As a player, Hall of Fame coach, and long-time member and co-chair of the NFL Competition Committee, he was a remarkable teacher and mentor who for decades inspired excellence and exemplified integrity."
Brian Flores, current Dolphins head coach: "Don Shula is a legend who had an incredible impact on the game of football."
Larry Csonka: "Hard to believe he’s gone. He was such a dominant force. I fully expected he'd live to see 100. Winning was critical to him but winning WITHIN THE RULES was more important. There was only 1 perfect team in the first 100 yrs of the NFL and Coach Shula is the reason! #FinsUp"
Bill Belichick, Patriots head coach, who has actually admitted to going beyond the rules to win: "Don Shula is one of the all-time great coaching figures and the standard for consistency and leadership in the NFL, I was fortunate to grow up in Maryland as a fan of the Baltimore Colts who, under Coach Shula, were one of the outstanding teams of that era. My first connection to Coach Shula was through my father, whose friendship with Coach Shula went back to their days in northeast Ohio. I extend my deepest condolences to the Shula family and the Dolphins organization."
Jimmy Johnson of Fox, who coached the Cowboys to win Super Bowls XXVII and XXVIII, and succeeded Shula as head coach of the Dolphins: "He set the standard."
Bill Cowher of CBS, who coached the Steelers to win Super Bowl XL: "His leadership and wisdom helped to guide me and many others who have made a life in coaching football. Thank you Coach Shula. May your spirit and legacy live on forever."
Phil Simms of CBS, who quarterbacked the Giants to win Super Bowl XXI: "He was gracious, humorous & gave real game insight. Office was impressive as he was; museum to football, a sport which is forever grateful to him."
Bruce Arians, head coach of the Buccaneers: "We lost the greatest coach of all time."
Frank Martin, Miami native, now head men's basketball coach at the University of South Carolina: "Thank u for showing us Miamians how 2 b fans & 4 the class u always showed. Your leadership made us all young bucks from the Orange Bowl Neighborhood want 2 b educators." (The head women's basketball coach at South Carolina is Dawn Staley, legendary player from Philadelphia, who turns 50 today, born the day of the Kent State shooting.)
Jim Palmer, Baseball Hall-of-Famer: "First met Don in the 60’s in Baltimore , then the O’s minor leagues shared St Thomas U with the Dolphins. Always cordial but had an aura that demanded respect. What a man, what a coach!"
Chris Mortensen of ESPN: "Don Shula was as fierce a competitor as I have met and covered in the
@NFL. He also exuded a fierce love for his family and players. There was so much I learned from him and I imagine there are countless people who can share the same or even more."
Peter King, longtime football writer at Sports Illustrated: "As honorable and principled a coach as the NFL has had. Thought a big strength of his was empowering coaches to do+think for themselves."
Ron DeSantis, current Governor of Florida, now mired in controversy over reopening the State despite the Coronavirus still raging, but he gets it about Shula: "Coach Don Shula leaves behind an incomparable legacy as the NFL's winningest coach and as the one who put Miami sports on the map."
Perhaps the best reaction, and the one most telling of the man's character, comes from Jeff Darlington of ESPN: "My most treasured day as a sports reporter: On the day before Don Shula's 80th birthday, he invited me to his house. We spent hours on his veranda, overlooking Biscayne Bay, as he told story after story, treating me not like a reporter but like a grandson. I will never forget it."
Don Shula was once asked what he wanted his obituary to say. He said, "I want them to say he won within the rules."
He did. A lot. He not only won, but he set an example in so doing. He didn't win as much as he could have, but he won more than most, and in the right way.
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