Will Bob Keuchenberg, Manny Fernandez, Larry Little and the rest toast a Miami Dolphins victory, in the same manner in which they toast the loss that eliminates the last remaining undefeated NFL team every fall?
You’ve probably heard of this annual ritual. Some members of the 1972 Dolphins – the first and only team to go undefeated and untied in the modern NFL era – gather for a champagne toast and party whenever the league is cleared of unbeaten teams. Sometimes the party occurs as early as October. Sometimes, not until December. But it’s a party that’s been a staple every year, ever since the bulk of the team retired in the late-1970s.
Those Dolphins have made it abundantly clear that they take their unbeaten status very seriously, and are open in their disdain for any team that dares challenge it. Hence the corks popping whenever the final unbeaten team has its record blemished with a loss.
The Dolphins have now come full circle. They were an expansion team in 1966, in the old American Football League. Their first coach was George Wilson, who had led the Lions to their last world’s championship in 1957. Wilson’s son, also named George, was a quarterback. And befitting expansion teams, the ’66 Dolphins engaged in the usual stumbling, bumbling, self-inflictingly damaging nonsense every week. They managed to win three games in their first season, out of 14 contests.
Today’s Dolphins, if they win three games, will be considered a miracle team.
They’re 0-9 this year, and I had said it kiddingly a month or so ago, but now I’m not as full of levity: the 2007 Dolphins, in their 42nd year of professional football, could very well be a worse team than the 1966 version that was in its first.
A couple of weeks ago, the NFL staged a regular season game outside the continental United States for the first time in history. The game was played in London. The UK is becoming more and more smitten with American football, it appears. One of the teams dispatched to play in Wembley Stadium was the New York Giants. A sensible choice – representing the most famous city in the country, and not a bad team, either.
The other team was the Miami Dolphins.
Maybe it didn’t matter to the Brits that we sent one-half of a football match to their country. Maybe they couldn’t have cared less that the NFL fed them a football version of the Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals. The joint was packed, and the enthusiasm unbridled, according to those who were there.
The Giants handled the Dolphins, of course, and Miami’s team reminded me of an old line from beleaguered coach John McKay of the expansion Tampa Bay Bucs.
After losing at home – which followed a road loss – McKay said, “We’ve now proven we can’t win on the road OR in front of our home crowd. So we’d like to have a neutral site.”
The Dolphins are now 0-8 in the United States and 0-1 in Europe.
There are seven games remaining, and chatter is gaining momentum that says the Miami Dolphins will be the first 0-16 team in NFL history.
It’s a lot easier, I think, to put the kibosh on thoughts of an unbeaten team than to suggest that a winless bunch after nine games has a chance to be victorious. How can you make such a claim – that the Dolphins can win a football game – when they haven’t been able to do so by the time Thanksgiving Day beckons?
Parity? Luck? I suppose those could be used in defense of the notion that Miami can beat someone in 2007. But unlike the unbeaten teams, who are sometimes riding the crest of good luck destined to turn, the winless squads’ challenge gets harder and harder the longer their drought continues. It must be impossible for Dolphins players to not think that sooner or later, something bad will happen and that they’ll lose once again. Certainly that feeling must be
stronger as November wanes.
Last Sunday, the Dolphins hosted Buffalo – a middle-of-the-road, so-so team that the NFL is so fond of. The Bills struggled with their 0-8 hosts. The score was 10-10, the final minutes ticking away. Naturally, the Bills maneuvered into field goal range in the closing seconds. And naturally, the kick was good.
Jason Taylor, a defensive end and one of the few Miami players worth watching, sat on the bench for several minutes after Buffalo’s winning kick, trying to process things. I saw video of Taylor, and you needed words to describe his thoughts the same way you need a parka in Hades.
The ’72 Dolphins alumni are no doubt too busy worrying about the New England Patriots and their “16-0 or bust” mentality (the Pats are 9-0 and about as invincible as a team has ever been in the NFL) to concern themselves with their professional alma mater. But I wouldn’t bet against this scenario: a final regular weekend featuring a 15-0 Patriots team and an 0-15 Dolphins platoon.
So what will Keuchenberg, et al be rooting for more – a Patriots loss or a Dolphins win?
Clearly, a Patriots loss. They enjoy too much their status as the lone wolves. The ’72 Dolphins accomplished something that no other team has in the NFL’s 80+ years of existence, so why wouldn’t they think that they’re pretty cool?
And what of the 2007 Dolphins? What will their alumni toast, in the future, should they go winless?
Surviving it, I suppose, would be on top of the list.
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