Skip to footer

17 stories from 'Undefeated: Inside the 1972 Miami Dolphins’ Perfect Season’

Writer Mike Freeman explores the undefeated season of the Florida team in his book.

2. Team's special character

Coach Don Shula (second from right) and 1972 Miami Dolphins players (left to right) Larry Little, Earl Morrall, and Mercury Morris Walt Disney Swan and Dolphin Hotel/PR Newswire

  • By Ross Atkin Staff Writer

The members of the ’72 Dolphins bristle at arguments that their perfect record really doesn’t make them the greatest team in NFL history. Some observers contend that they had an easy schedule or were just lucky. In 2007, the New England Patriots actually had a better 18-0 record heading into the Super Bowl but then lost to the New York Giants on a touchdown pass with 35 seconds left. And in 1985, one of the most dominant teams in recent memory, the Chicago Bears, won their first 12 games before that year’s Dolphins did the ’72 contingent a favor by ruining a perfect season.

The ’72 Dolphins had a special character that Mike Freeman summarizes this way:

“They were steady, precise, and relentless. Many players, fans, and media don’t always respect or understand the power of constancy. The Dolphins applied steady pressure on both sides of the ball, and while this wasn’t sexy, it was extremely effective. They didn’t have flash. They didn’t have Lawrence Taylor or Jerry Rice or Ray Lewis or Jim Brown. They didn’t have the Steel Curtain or the Doomsday Defense. The Dolphins weren’t lightning or nuclear, but they were something just as good: they were perpetual. That’s what it takes to be perfect. Not flash but relentlessness.”

2 of 17
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.