Remembering Don Shula
DON SHULA 1930-2020
Don Shula, getting a victory ride after his Dolphins capped an unbeaten season with a win over Washington in Super Bowl VII, died Monday at 90. He has the most career wins of any NFL head coach with 347.
MIAMI — Measuring Don Shula by wins and losses, no NFL head coach had a better year. Or career.
He led the Miami Dolphins to the only perfect season in NFL history, set a league record with 347 victories and coached in six Super Bowls.
Shula died Monday at his home across Biscayne Bay from downtown Miami, the team said. He was 90.
“If there were a Mount Rushmore for the NFL, Don Shula certainly would be chiseled into the granite,” Dolphins owner Stephen Ross said in a statement.
Shula surpassed George Halas’ leaguerecord 324 victories in 1993 and retired following the 1995 season, his 33rd as an NFL head coach. Shula entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1997, and the induction ceremony took place at Canton, Ohio, 70 miles from his native Grand River.
Shula became the only head coach to guide an NFL team through a perfect season when the Dolphins went 170 in 1972.
They also won the Super Bowl the following season, going 152.
When asked in 1997 if he was the greatest coach in NFL history, Shula said he didn’t know how to measure that, but added, “I always thought that’s why they keep statistics and wins and losses.”
Shula reached the playoffs in four decades and coached three Hall of Fame quarterbacks: Johnny Unitas, Bob Griese and Dan Marino. But because the Dolphins last reached the Super Bowl after the 1984 season (a 3816 loss to the 49ers), Shula came under increasing criticism from fans and the media. He was replaced in January 1996 by Jimmy Johnson, and Shula later said the adjustment to retirement was difficult.
“There’s such a letdown,” he said in 2010. “There’s no way you can fill the time you spent as a coach. Life is great after football, but you don’t have those emotional ups and downs you had on game day.”
Shula was born Jan. 4, 1930, and raised in Painesville, Ohio. He played running back at John Carroll University in Cleveland and cornerback in the pros for seven seasons with Cleveland, Baltimore and Washington. He entered coaching as an assistant at Virginia in 1958.
Before his 1970s triumphs with Miami, Shula had a reputation as a coach who thrived during the regular season but couldn’t win the big game.
The Baltimore Colts hired him as a head coach in 1963 at age 33. The Colts finished 122 the following season and were seen as the league’s dominant team. But they lost 270 to Cleveland in the title game, and they continued to come up short for the next few years.
The humiliation was greatest in the Super Bowl to end the 1968 season. The Colts steamrolled through the NFL, finishing 131 and outscoring opponents by a nearly 31 margin. After crushing the Browns 340 in the title game, they were overwhelming favorites to defeat the Jets of the upstart AFL, which had lost the first two Super Bowls.
The Colts lost 167. The result is still regarded by many as the biggest upset in pro football history, and it contributed to Shula’s departure after the 1969 season. In 1970, after the NFLAFL merger, Shula joined the Dolphins, a fourthyear AFL expansion team that had gone 3101 the previous year.
Miami improved to 104 in his first season and made the playoffs for the first time, and the 1971 Dolphins reached the Super Bowl before losing to Dallas. The following season, when Miami took a 160 record into the Super Bowl against Washington, Shula considered his legacy on the line.
“If we had won 16 games in a row and lost the Super Bowl, it would have been a disaster, especially for me,” he said in a 2007 interview. “I was 02 in Super Bowls and people always seemed to bring that up: ‘You can’t win the big one.’ ”
Miami beat Washington 147, then repeated as champion the following year by beating Minnesota in the title game.
The Don Shula Foundation, formed primarily to assist breast cancer research, was established as a tribute to his late wife, Dorothy. They were married for 32 years and raised five children. She died in 1991. Shula married Mary Anne Stephens in 1993.
Shula’s oldest son, David, coached the Cincinnati Bengals from 1992 through ’96. When Cincinnati played Miami in 1994, it marked the first time in professional sports that a father and son faced each other as head coaches. The Dolphins won 237. Another son, Mike, is a longtime NFL assistant coach and was head coach at Alabama for four seasons (200306).
Don Shula’s career record, including the postseason, was 3471736.