Pope: Shula, ’72 Dolphins lost their poise, but not the game against the Bills
I don’t care what the scoreboard said. That couldn’t have been a real professional football game Sunday in the Orange Bowl. It was portions of the Marx Brothers and a demolition derby and a drop-the-handkerchief skit baked up into a giant fruitcake with the final candle-count coming out Dolphins 24, Buffalo Bills 23.
If you like precision football, better you should have saved your money. If your thing is chaos compounded by poor officiating and some bad manners by fans, you could have had a ball.
The officials did. They blew one call that could have cost Miami its unbeaten record when they ruled an Earl Morrall forward pass a lateral and awarded Buffalo a fumble-recovery resulting in a field goal that put the Bills ahead, 13-7.
Then, uncharacteristically, Coach Don Shula made it worse by grabbing an official. “I was trying to get his attention to tell him that Morrall’s forward pass had been tipped back,” Shula said. “But in my eagerness I pulled him toward me and we were penalized 15 yards for unsportsmanlike conduct. I had no right to do it. The official had every right to penalize me.”
Shula was genuinely ashamed of his brief loss of poise. Which is more than could be said for a part of the crowd that made an ass of itself by booing the officials’ call on Morrall so long and loudly that Buffalo quarterback Dennis Shaw refused to call signals at the line six straight times.
The hard truth, however, was that often the officials acted like road lizards: You never knew which way they’d go next.
Fullback Larry Csonka never had been called for holding in his career. Sunday, when he wasn’t busy stomping to his ninth 100-yards-plus rushing performance, he was penalized twice for holding.
Offensive tackle Norm Evans absorbed a cheap shot under the chin from a Buffalo defensive back, refused to retaliate, and was ruled guilty of a personal foul. “The first rule in such a situation is not to hit back, because the officials always catch the guy striking the second blow,” Evans said. “But I never even struck back.”
All they needed was Charlie Chaplin out there in NFL stripes.
Another fifth-down incident like the one in the Miami-Tulane game a week ago almost popped up in Buffalo’s last touchdown drive. The scoreboard showed second down when it was third, with Shula yelling at officials to straighten things out. Then it showed third down when it was fourth. The clock was corrected just before the Bills got a first down on their own.
“But visions were dancing in my head of another Miami-Tulane thing,” Shula said. “A game like this, you don’t know what’s going to happen.”
WHEN Shula reviews films today, he can do it in three sections:
(A) Offense.
(B) Defense
(C) And what-the-heck-is-this?
Here’s how wacky the Dolphins’ sixth straight victory was.
Miami gained 198 yards to Buffalo’s 30 in the first half and still trailed, 13-7. The Bills didn’t get a first down the first 33 minutes except the one awarded Buffalo when Shula put his hands on the official.
Jim Kiick seemed well over goal on one play during Buffalo’s successful stand in the first quarter. “Definitely over,” said Morrall.
In one second-quarter series, the Dolphins gained 69 yards on two plays (Kiick, 11, run, and Morrall to Howard Twilley, 58, pass). Yet because of two holding penalties they wound up with first-and- 34.
That was when Morrall threw another perfect pass — which kept the game in character by bouncing right out of Mercury Morris’ hands and into those of Ken Lee who went 16 yards for the 10-7 lead.
“Morris got his hands on the ball a little above his head, just about perfect position to catch it,” Lee said. “But it bounced off and I was just in the right place.”
Was Shula relieved, someone asked, because the Dolphins had gotten “a bad one out of their system” and still remained undefeated?
“I wouldn’t call it a bad one when you beat a pretty good football team despite so many frustrations,” he said.
“Our offense gave our defense some rest by holding the ball nearly eight minutes at the start. That was especially significant when we had defensive people hurting like Manny Fernandez (severe cold) and Jim Dunaway back injury).
“Morrall played an excellent game throughout. And in the third quarter we rammed one in there on an 80-yard drive with big plays of several kinds, and our defense kept hanging on.”
Earlier in the second half that defense gave the Dolphins a critical quickie when Fernandez stole the ball from Shaw. It took one play for Csonka to blast 10 yards and put the Dolphins ahead at 14-13.
“I think it was a delayed counter play,” Fernandez said, “Shaw was just holding the ball out and I grabbed it. Somebody had to take it, didn’t they?”
Sunday, yes.
This story was originally published October 19, 2022 at 8:15 AM.