A ’72 Dolphins 50th anniversary celebration: Five questions with Hall of Fame WR Warfield
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Dolphins’ Perfect Season, The Miami Herald is running weekly conversations with members of the 1972 team that went 17-0.
Five questions with Hall of Fame wide receiver Paul Warfield, who caught 156 passes and 33 touchdowns and averaged an incredible 21.5 yards per reception in 60 games for the Dolphins before leaving for the World League and then finishing his career, where he started it – with the Cleveland Browns.
▪ What’s the memory that will always stick with you from the perfect season?
“What I recall was the fact that going into that season, the Dolphins football team felt like we really needed to prove something. We had failed to accomplish our objective the year before, which was to win a Super Bowl.”
Miami lost Super Bowl 6, 24-3 to Dallas, in January 1972 in New Orleans.
“People were saying this is just another AFL team and expansion team. People were saying not-very-nice things, that we were not up to the task of playing quality teams like the Dallas Cowboys. We felt like we needed to prove all of the naysayers wrong and prove that those who misjudged us were totally wrong.
“That was our inspiration. I sincerely believe in my heart that we were so focused on proving to the rest of the football world that we were not a rinky-dink team from out of the old American Football League. We had players who were tired of being a laughingstock.
“We had obstacles to overcome. You lose a Hall of Fame quarterback in Bob Griese as early in the season as we did [Week 5]. We had the best relief pitcher, Earl Morrall, who took us all the way to Pittsburgh until Griese returned.
“It was the second undefeated team I played for, after the First Street elementary touch football team in Warren, Ohio. I never thought I would be on another undefeated team. It was very special.”
▪ After a Pro Bowl season in 1969, the Browns traded you to the Dolphins for the third pick in the 1970 draft. It was one of the worst trades in Cleveland history; they used the pick on a quarterback, Mike Phipps, who had a 52.6 career passer rating.
You said years later: “I have to admit going to Miami was not a place I desired to go.” Why was that the case?
“My hometown is 50 miles east of Cleveland. I was educated at Ohio State. I never dreamed I would be drafted in 1964 as a first-round pick of the Cleveland Browns, my very favorite team. It was unbelievable to play in Cleveland with Paul Brown, a dream come true. We won the NFL title.
“Then one day in 1969 I get a phone call and I’m told I’m going to a fledgling AFL team that has never won more than [five] games. I was devastated. But 10 days later, an uplifting occurred for me when I learned that Don Shula, who was the next-best coach in that period of time to Vince Lombardi, was going to be the head coach of the Dolphins.
“I never dreamed that would happen. So now the picture is at least starting to improve. I had to have a number of conversations [pep talks] with myself. I was going from a winning team to a fledgling team, trying to identify if they could win more than four games. Now my fate was going to be with the Dolphins, and I owed it to the Dolphins to play as hard as I could and give the same kind of effort I did in the past. A lot of things came together almost overnight.”
▪ What made Shula so special?
“He is a person of immense integrity and honesty. He believed in old-fashioned ideals. He could communicate with his players. His formula was simplistic: hard work, sacrifice, dedication and we’ll get there. We did work hard. We did make sacrifices.
“We were practicing twice a day through the entire training camp. I had never heard of that. Most teams of that era would have two a days for the first two weeks and one a day the rest of camp. Not only in the first year did we have two a days throughout the entire training camp, but the entire time I was there, we did that. We were highly disciplined, well trained, well coached. That’s why we were a successful team.
“Things changed [from going 3-10-1 under George Wilson in 1969] because of a great head coach that the Dolphins were very fortunate to get. Overnight Don Shula changed the image of that organization from an expansion team that never won [six] games in a short period of existence to a 10-4 record in his first year.
“Then [10-3-1] and he takes them to the Super Bowl his second year. Then the third year we establish a mark [17-0] that is historic in every sense of the word. It’s an amazing experience I never thought I would have. It epitomizes the concept of team and people coming together and believing in one another.”
▪ Before that 24-3 loss to Dallas in the Super Bowl months before the perfect season, President Richard Nixon famously called Shula to suggest a particular passing play to you. The Dolphins ran the play — a down-and-in pattern — but it was incomplete. Do you remember much about Nixon calling in that play? How weird was that?
“To receive acknowledgement from the President of the United States, Richard Milhous Nixon, suggesting to a head coach that one of the ways we could be successful is to run a play that we diagrammed — one that was printed in most of the newspapers across the country — let’s just say the Dallas Cowboys were well informed about that play because they saw me run it numerous times when I ran it twice a year when I played for the Browns. That was one play they wanted to make sure they stopped. That Dallas team was a championship ball club. They proved that.”
▪ How difficult a decision was it to leave the Dolphins (joining Larry Csonka and Jim Kiick) after the 1974 season and sign a lucrative deal with the Toronto team in the World Football League. And did it damage your relationship with Shula?
“It was a difficult decision. We wanted to stay but things did not work out. The three of us didn’t go as a team; we each made our own decisions. Unfortunately we couldn’t work things out and my career ended with Miami.
“I don’t want to comment on [why I left], but Don was a coach I greatly respected and enjoyed playing for. He was not in charge of negotiations. We had a great relationship after my playing days. And the numerous times I saw him, he never expressed anything negative” about leaving for the WFL.
The team never played a game in Toronto, and relocated to Memphis, where Warfield caught 25 passes for 422 yards and three touchdowns. He rejoined the Browns the following season after the WFL folded.
He has spent the past 18 years living in Beaumont, California, after moving from Palm Springs.
“I’m totally retired and playing golf here and there and vacationing and doing things that my wife and I enjoy doing,” he said. “We travel and swing back east for summers in the Cleveland area and go to my home town. My health has been good for the most part. We’re trying to enjoy ourselves.”
This story was originally published November 23, 2022 at 8:00 AM.
