The ’72 Dolphins 50th anniversary celebration: Five questions with punter Larry Seiple
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 punter/tight end/H-back Larry Seiple, who punted for 11 years with the Dolphins, while also catching 73 passes, and then moved on to work as an assistant coach with the University of Miami, Dolphins, Buccaneers, Lions and Florida Atlantic University:
▪ What’s your most enduring visual memory from that season?
“The thing I did in Pittsburgh in the [AFC championship] game, the 37-yard run [on a fake punt]. That helped to get us down [to the Steelers 12-yard line], which helped us score. Don Shula always said I had the right to do it as long as I make it. If I didn’t make it that day, I’d still be walking home.
“Coach Shula and Carl Tasseff did the special teams stuff and we had to sit in the film meetings and watch the opponent’s special teams. We noticed that Pittsburgh sent only one guy to rush the punter and everyone else turned away from that guy and built a wall.
“Shula said he would make the call if he wanted me to run it that day. I said, ‘OK.’ But I got antsy. I didn’t listen to him as usual. It was fourth and five and we weren’t doing much offensively and I took off. Bob Matheson blocked the guy that came to block the punter. Everyone else on Pittsburgh went the other way. I went left. They went right. It worked, thank God.”
▪ You live now at The Villages, about 45 miles northwest of Orlando. Are you a mini-celebrity there? Do people write to you?
“I tried to stay incognito when I moved here in 2009, but it was hard to do. I joined a club here — the Kentucky connection — which is a group of people from Kentucky, and it got around after that [that I was a member of the ‘72 Dolphins]. But the people at The Villages have not asked for autographs.
“But I have gotten several hundred letters asking for autographs over the years. You would be surprised how many of my football cards I get mailed — three or four a week. I sign them and send them back and people sell them on eBay. I saw once on eBay that my signed card is worth 28 cents.”
So why do you sign and return them?
“It affects you when they don’t remember. It’s a way to keep the ‘72 team alive and me alive. They promise they are autograph collectors but I know they’re lying like hell.”
▪ How did Shula treat special teams players?
“Shula with special teams players was supportive and demanding. He thought special teams was the important third part of the team that you have to be good at. You didn’t want to be in the same zone with him when he got pissed off with something like that.”
▪ Are you surprised no team has gone undefeated in half a century since you guys did it?
“I am and I’m not because they’ve added some extra games. I don’t believe it will ever happen again. The ball bounced our way. Everything we did came up smelling like roses. And we had a pretty good team. I thought our ‘73 team was better than our ‘72 team. We didn’t realize what we were doing until we got past the halfway mark and all of sudden we’re 8-0, 9-0 and got nervous.”
▪ What was kicker Garo Yepremian like? You guys spent a lot of time together.
“He was funny, a good person. He had a heart of gold. Couldn’t throw a football to save his rear end. We had a lot of fun with him, did a lot of things together.
“Once a month during the season, he set up cooking sessions for a bunch of us. We cooked meals with a chef, and the wives would sit around drinking wine. After cooking the meal, we would eat it. Things like veal francese and pasta.
“I remember he had a hard time gripping the ball with one hand. His hands were so small, but he had a good foot and always wanted laces away from him when we were holding for him. Earl Morrall was his holder until Earl retired and then I took over that job for three, four years.”
This story was originally published September 21, 2022 at 8:00 AM.
