How ‘72 Dolphins reacted to Bills loss, Dolphins’ struggles. And Wilson returns
Larry Little and Manny Fernandez stayed up late Sunday night, flipping the television off only after Patriots rookie and former UM standout Andy Borregales kicked the game-winning 52-yard field to hand Buffalo its first loss and ensure that the 1972 Dolphins, for yet another year, would remain the only undefeated team in NFL history.
Their reaction?
“Oh well,” said Little, a Hall of Fame guard on that 17-0 Dolphins team. “Another year gone by and we’re still the only ones.”
“My reaction was to turn off the television and go to sleep,” Fernandez said Tuesday, from a dirt road near his home in Ellaville, Georgia.
But seriously… “I stayed up and watched the whole thing,” Fernandez said. “I was glad to see the record still hold up after 53 years. It’s something we accomplished and reflects on all my teammates, the ones that are still here and the ones that are gone.”
The champagne toasts, the calls and text messages among teammates, ended in recent years, as several of the players who participated in those rituals (Nick Buoniconti, Mercury Morris) passed away. Others have experienced physical setbacks or memory loss.
Twenty players and every coach from the ‘72 team are deceased.
That has created a melancholy element to a day that sadness once skipped. For most of three decades, Dick Anderson and Buoniconti shared champagne the day after the final undefeated team lost. That ended with Buoniconti’s death in 2019.
Fernandez and Little, two of the 25 living players from the undefeated team, said they did not communicate with any ‘72 teammates after the Bills lost.
“There aren’t that many of us still around,” Little said.
When former ‘72 Dolphins player Larry Ball received a text message Monday, it was from a friend, not from a former teammate:
“I had one text at 7 a.m., a friend who said, ‘No undefeateds [remaining] already. We’re good again.’”
Ball said he’s “always happy” when the last of the unbeatens falls and he doubts any team will ever go undefeated again.
“The way everything is set up and competition is so close, I don’t expect anybody else to do it,” Ball said. “It’s an amazingly difficult thing to do.”
While the joy of seeing the last undefeated team lose is now somewhat muted, Little noted “there are still a lot of haters out there for some reason, [critics] who don’t think we deserve it because [some of] the teams we played weren’t that good. But we did it and no one else has done it since.”
He said there was less anticipation this year because every team had a loss by the end of Week 5. The unbeaten Eagles lost to Denver earlier in the day.
“Normally it would be exciting when a team would go 10, 11, 12 straight weeks undefeated,” Little said.
The former players lamented the Dolphins’ 1-4 start and the team’s inability to build a winner.
“I’m very disappointed,” Little said. “I thought they were going to be a better football team. It’s not too late for them to turn it around. I don’t like throwing blame on anyone. I’m not going to do that. [But] I thought they would be better…. It all starts up front offensively and defensively. There’s a lot of room for improvement on both sides of the ball.”
Ball, who appeared in 10 games off the bench in the 1972 season and previously coached at North Miami High, said Dolphins “fans haven’t been given anything to stay steadfast cheering for them. The [Dolphins] get the [fans’] hopes up and they go down, get hopes up again and things go down…
“You can’t blame one individual. Both our offensive and defensive lines have to improve. We need to stop the run and force them to throw; what we talked about all offseason just hasn’t happened.”
Fernandez, 79, is circumspect: “They’ll win sooner or later. It’s just a question of when. I hope I’m still alive to see it.”
Wilson returns
Receiver Cedrick Wilson Jr. practiced with the team for the first time since the Dolphins poached him from New Orleans’ practice squad last week to replace injured Tyreek Hill on the 53-man roster.
Wilson said he was sidelined last week by a knee “clean up” procedure, which the Dolphins said they were aware of.
He caught 34 passes for 432 yards and three touchdowns in two seasons (2022 and 2023) for the Dolphins, playing less than anticipated in part because Miami acquired Tyreek Hill shortly after signing Wilson.
What made him want to come back?
“The job was on the p-squad over there,” he said. “It was an opportunity to play. I don’t think many guys turn that down....I’m happy definitely to be back in South Florida. The team is completely different from when I was here.”
▪ Cornerback Storm Duck, who has been sidelined since sustaining an ankle injury in the opener, returned to practice and said he feels fine.
▪ Safety Jordan Colbert, promoted to the 53-man roster from the practice squad, called it “a blessing, every kid’s dream.” The team is short on nickel corners, but Colbert said he hasn’t been used there.
Colbert previously spent 24 hours on the Dolphins’ 53-man roster, in late August, before moving to the practice squad.
▪ Juju Brents, one of the team’s backup boundary cornerbacks, said he hasn’t played nickel corner since college but said there was “some discussion” with the team about him potentially starting to practice in the slot.
“We will see what happens,” he said.
Here’s my Wednesday piece with news from Mike McDaniel’s media briefing.
This story was originally published October 8, 2025 at 5:08 PM.
