Pope: Warfield catches Giants in his web of moves as ’72 Dolphins go 13-0
Pass-catcher Paul Warfield hasn’t gone away. Nor has the zone defense finished him off, doomsayers to the contrary.
Pick up the action with 2:52 left in the first half on the slimy floor of half-century-old Yankee Stadium.
Dolphins lead the Giants, 10-6. It’s third-and-9 at the Giants’ 34 and the Dolphins still aren’t anything like a lock to tie the National Football League record of 13 straight victories set by Chicago in 1934.
Warfield glides through the mud of the Yankee baseball infield and into the Giants’ double-zone defense,
Right safety Spider Lockhart is supposed to cover Warfield deep. Right cornerback Willie Williams’ job is to hold Warfield short and on the outside.
“I slipped under Williams and straightened up Lockhart,” Warfield says. “But Spider stayed back. He wasn’t biting.”
Warfield puts his first move on Lockhart. No action. A second move. Still no reaction. Then a third move.
The last, said quarterback Earl Morrall who was flinging the ball toward Warfield, “was such a fantastic move that Paul almost faked me out.”
It got Lockhart, too. “I had Paul covered the first two moves,” Lockhart says. “But his third was the greatest I’ve ever seen.”
Thus free, Warfield gathered in the ball for a touchdown, only his second in a season which despite its unblemished team success has had some wondering about the continuing deadliness of the 30-year-old pro from Ohio State.
Warfield’s TD catch — and three more for 98 yards — lit up the murky sky for the Dolphins, although the Giants’ 23-13 defeat ultimately had to be pinned on four lost fumbles and two interceptions.
If you were a teed-off Giant rooter, you’d say (and they did, in great numbers) the Giants blew it.
If you were a Dolphin positivist, you’d say the Dolphins were right there to gobble up Giant mistakes like tykes turned loose in Santa’s sack.
New York’s offense made it tough on the Dolphin offense. “They ran real good at us,” tackle Manny Fernandez said. “They had time to do that, most of the game, instead of throwing a lot of passes, and they used it. The Giants are strong. Ron Johnson is as good a runner as there is. I can see why they were contenders in their division.”
But the Giants’ offense couldn’t find enough stickum under what Fernandez described as “the worst field we’ve played on since the 1970 playoff in Oakland.”
Overall the game resembled one of those old-time pictures in a football history book. All they needed was a couple guys playing without helmets.
Players were caked with mud. “But the worse part wasn’t the slipping,” safety Dick Anderson said. “It was the caking up of the mud in your shoes.”
Anderson had a special problem. Besides his defensive job, he was drafted as a punter in the absence of injured Larry Seiple and deactivated Billy Lothridge.
Mud didn’t seem to bother Dandy Dick. He dropped his first punt dead at the Giants’ 14, a 45-yarder with no return in the second quarter. His next kick, in the third quarter, went only 31 yards, but was fair caught at the Giants’ 19.
Anderson’s third and last kick was a beaut — “a sand wedge shot that hit the pin,” Anderson chortled. Actually it bounced off Giant John Mendenhall and was recovered by Larry Ball at the Giants’ 16, setting up Garo Yepremian’s third field goal (16 yards) for the final score.
“Sure I was nervous,” Anderson said. “People just take Seiple for granted. There’s a lot of pressure on you out there punting. Thank goodness I’d punted all through college at Colorado.”
If it seemed peculiar that fullback Larry Csonka ran only nine times for 30 yards on what is considered his kind of field, Mercury Morris with 19 rushes for 98 yards and Jim Kiick with 10 for 69 furnished sufficient reason.
Csonka increased his season total to 1,406 yards. Morris still has a chance to give the Dolphins an NFL tandem of 1,000-yard rushers. Mercury darted and skidded his total to 905. He needs 95 against the Colts in Miami on Saturday afternoon to put the record on the board.
Morris might have had a 100-yard day if Morrall had chosen to hurry a bit more and send Mercury across from the Giants’ 2-yard-line as time ran out. Obviously Morrall was not out to run up the score. And Morris said, “It didn’t matter because the team didn’t need it.”
Besides, Morris had scored the Dolphins’ first touchdown on a 12-yard sweep. That gave him the team’s one-season record of a dozen TDs, topping the 11 rolled by Warfield and Karl Noonan in other seasons.
“You can believe it or not,” Morris grinned, “but I like this field more than the Poly-Turf in the Orange Bowl. Yeah, I was slipping a lot but that was my fault. I was trying to make a lot of cuts I shouldn’t have.”
Kiick was equally fond of the footing. “Old Heavy-Head,” as ex-Buffalo coach Harvey Johnson called Kiick for his efficiency on uncertain turf, said, “This kind of field equalizes everybody’s speed. That helps me because I’m not that fast.”
Shula concluded that Sunday was a perfect example of having Morris and Kiick as alternating runners. “You’ve got two fresh guys going at ‘em all the time,” Shula said. “You saw it.”