The Perfect Season at the Orange Bowl
Near Miami, Florida
In nineteen seventy two, the Miami Dolphins did something no team in National Football League history has ever matched. They won every single game they played, seventeen in a row, finishing with a victory in Super Bowl Seven and a record of seventeen and zero. The perfect season was engineered by the demanding head coach Don Shula.
When star quarterback Bob Griese broke his ankle midway through the year, the thirty eight year old backup Earl Morrall stepped in and kept winning. The offense leaned on bruising running backs Larry Csonka and Mercury Morris, the first pair of teammates ever to each rush for a thousand yards in the same season. The defense, dismissed by a rival coach as the No Name Defense, embraced the insult and shut opponents down.
The Dolphins played at the Orange Bowl in Little Havana, a raucous open air stadium that shook with noise. That old ballpark was later torn down, and today a baseball park stands on the site. But the perfect record endures.
Every year, when the last unbeaten team finally loses, the surviving members of that Dolphins team quietly raise a toast.
