Miami Dolphins cap week of tributes with festivities honoring the 1972 Perfect Season
Mercury Morris energized crowds at the old Orange Bowl with his electric running style for years during his Miami Dolphins career.
On Sunday night, one of the greatest ball carriers in team history was back on the field bringing fans to their feet in a different way.
“Let’s Go Dolphins!” shouted Morris into the microphone.
Morris was back on Miami’s home field as were other Dolphins legends such as Bob Griese, Larry Csonka, Paul Warfield and Larry Little.
It was all a culmination of a week of events honoring the 50th anniversary of Miami’s Perfect Season.
The four aforementioned Pro Football Hall of Famers took part ceremonially in the coin toss before the present-day Dolphins took on the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday night at Hard Rock Stadium.
“Getting together as a group is very nice and it’s nice for the Dolphins to do that to where we’re actually looking at each other, pressing flesh and able to talk, lean on each other, smile, smoke cigars and all of that,” Csonka said earlier this week during a media session with reporters. “But there’s a unity that goes on with the ’72 team that goes on every year that it’s the most alive team that I’ve ever been affiliated with — I think anyone has ever been affiliated with — because it’s still competing.”
Csonka was referring to the Dolphins’ 17-0 record which still has not been matched half a century later by any other team. The Philadelphia Eagles are the only remaining unbeaten team this season at 6-0. If and when the Eagles lose, Csonka and the 28 other surviving members of the 1972 team plan to toast as they do every season to one more year as the lone team in NFL history to accomplish the feat.
And how fitting that the ceremony came on a night the Dolphins played the Steelers in a matchup of two franchises which won a combined six Super Bowls in the 1970s and the team Miami rallied to beat in the AFC Championship Game of that ‘72 season.
The Dolphins also sold concessions to fans during the game at “1972 prices” with several items costing less than a dollar.
The Dolphins’ past also met their present during pregame.
On the night Tua Tagovailoa — the quarterback the Dolphins hope will lead them back to prominence — returned to action, he and linebacker Elandon Roberts got the chance to meet Griese, Warfield, Little and Csonka during the coin toss.
The Dolphins have been commemorating the 1972 team on a weekly basis throughout the season. But on Sunday night, Griese, Csonka, Little and Warfield were then joined once the game reached halftime by 21 other living members of the Dolphins’ 1972 undefeated Super Bowl championship season in a special ceremony honoring the team.
After a tribute video showing a montage of highlights from that season played on the large screens at each corner of the stadium, the members of the 1972 team who were present rode golf carts in groups of three or four. The name of every player from that 1972 team was mentioned on the loudspeakers.
Those players present later stood along the sideline side-by-side with 40 Dolphins season-ticket holders. Six of them have owned season tickets since the 1972 season. Each presented one of the players from the 1972 team with a commemorative watch to mark the occasion.
The late legendary former Dolphins coach Don Shula’s widow, Mary Ann Stephens, was on hand and stood by Dolphins owner Stephen Ross during the halftime presentation.
Little lamented earlier in the week not being able to share the ceremony with Shula as well as other members of the team who have passed away in recent years.
“It will be a joyous occasion for us and still is going to be a kind of sad occasion for us,” Little said. “Because, you know, we lost our last one this year, who was one of my closest teammates, Marlin Briscoe. It will be sad not having Marlin there, just like all other 15 guys that left us. But it will be a sad occasion with Coach [Shula] not being there because he was there for the last one.”
This story was originally published October 23, 2022 at 11:01 PM.
