January 16, 1972: Birth of America's Team

NEW ORLEANS - There was a time when the Cowboys weren't known as America's team, but rather as the team that always seemed to be one season away from a championship. Led by quarterback Roger Staubach, that all changed in 1971.

During a cold, windy day at Tulane Stadium - the kickoff temperature of 39 degrees is the coldest in Super Bowl history - the Cowboys met the Dolphins for Super Bowl VI. It was the second straight Super Bowl appearance for the Cowboys, who had lost the previous year's game on a final-play field goal. This year's team was different in that Roger Staubach had finally been anointed as the team's starter halfway through the year. After naming Staubach as starter at the halfway point of the season, the Cowboys turned a 4-3 record into an 11-3 finish.

Meanwhile, the Dolphins were loaded, featuring many of the same players who would go undefeated the next season. Miami's defense wasn't well-known, but it was good; in fact, Dallas coach Tom Landry inadvertently gave the Dolphins their "No-Name Defense" name by saying before the game that he didn't know any of their defender's names, but they all scared him.

Landry didn't need to be worried. The Cowboys ran all over the Dolphins, outgaining them on the ground 252-80. Staubach threw two short touchdown passes, and the Cowboys scored in every quarter on their way to an easy 24-3 victory. In the 45-year history of the Super Bowl, this one was the closest the game has ever been to a shutout. In fact, it was the only Super Bowl where a team failed to score a touchdown.

The Dolphins were beaten, but they bounced back. It was their only loss in the 1972 calendear year, and Miami wouldn't lose again until September 23, 1973.

January 14, 1973: Perfect

LOS ANGELES - There's a reason there's only been one unbeaten and untied team in NFL history. It not only takes an incredible amount of talent, but also almost immeasurable luck to make it through the season without a slip-up.

The 1972 Dolphins are famous for being the NFL's only perfect team, and they certainly had a lot of luck along the way. For one thing, they had the easiest schedule in the NFL that season, with only two of their 14 regular-season opponents finishing with a winning record. The combined winning percentage of their opponents was .396, which was the second-easiest in team history. Still, though, they had to be good to win every game; a less talented team would have slipped up somewhere along the way.

The Dolphins trailed in the second half in both AFC playoff games, coming back to beat Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, the Washington Redskins cruised through the NFC playoffs, giving up only six points total in their two games to roll to the Super Bowl. The Redskins' domination might partially explain how the Dolphins, despite going into the Super Bowl undefeated, were actually underdogs for Super Bowl VII.

The game was played in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and in the first half, the Dolphins showed exactly why they went undefeated. Their "No-Name Defense" completely dominated the first two quarters, holding Washington to only 49 yards of offense. Miami's offense wasn't faring much better, though, but a Jim Kiick touchdown run with 18 seconds left in the half gave the Dolphins a 14-0 halftime lead.

In the second half, the Redskins put up the biggest challenge to the Dolphins perfect season. Using short passes, they were able to start moving downfield against Miami, starting with the first drive of the third quarter. The Redskins got as far as the Miami 17 yard line when quarterback Billy Kilmer saw running back Charley Taylor open at the 2-yard line. That's when the Dolphins got lucky again, as Taylor stumbled just as the pass was coming and he was unable to pull it in. After a sack, the Redskins missed a 32-yard field goal, keeping the score at 14-0.

After an interception ended the Dolphins next drive, the Redskins moved downfield again, moving 79 yards in 12 plays. On a second-down play from the Miami 10, Kilmer saw tight end Jerry Smith wide open in the end zone, but his pass hit the goalpost and fell incomplete - again, the Dolphins got lucky. The Redskins' next pass was intercepted in the end zone by Jake Scott, who returned it across midfield.

The biggest problem with the Redskins' failed scoring drive was how long it took. Though they were able to move down the field, it took them seven minutes to do so, so there were only five minutes left in the game when the Dolphins took over.

After getting one first down, the Dolphins lined up for the game-clinching field goal. Garo Yepremian's kick was blocked and bounced off toward the sideline. In one of the most famous mistakes in NFL history, Yepremian picked up the ball himself and tried to throw a pass, only to have the ball slip out of his hands. Making matters worse, Yepremian tried to bat the ball out of bounds, but succeeded only in knocking the ball up in the air again, and Washington's Mike Bass grabbed the ball out of mid air and returned it for the touchdown that made it 14-7.

The Dolphins were stunned, but they got another lucky break. Despite there being only 2:07 left in the game, the Redskins inexplicably chose to kick the ball away rather than try an onside kick. Washington forced the Dolphins to punt as they had hoped, but they had to use up the rest of their time outs while doing so. The Redskins got the ball back at the 30, needing to go 70 yards in 1:07 with no time outs.

Miami wasn't going to let that happen. After two incomplete passes and one pass completion that went for a loss, Miami's Vern Den Herder ended the game with a fourth-down sack as time expired.

The Dolphins lifted coach Don Shula on their shoulders and celebrated. They had become the first team in NFL history to go through a season without a loss or a tie. They remain the only team to have done so.

December 25, 1971: And they played on and on and on...

KANSAS CITY - Jan Stenerud lined up for the kick. With less than a minute to play, Kansas City's season was riding on his right foot. The Chiefs and Dolphins were tied 24-24 after a close, hard-fought first-round playoff game. Stenerud was trying to end it. The kick missed, sending the game into overtime. If only Stenerud knew what he had started.

It was controversial in the first place for the NFL to schedule games on Christmas Day. The league had never done so before. With Christmas falling on a Saturday, the league could have easily put all four first-round games on the next Sunday, but they didn't. Retaining their playoff format from the previous season, the NFL played that Saturday, holidays be damned.

Miami and Kansas City made the most of it, playing a tight game. The Chiefs led 10-0 after one quarter, only to see Miami tie it 10-10 at the half. The teams traded touchdowns in the third and fourth quarters, leading to a 24-24 tie when Stenerud lined up for his game-winning attempt.

Stenerud had a shot at redemption right away in overtime, as Kansas City drove to the Miami 35-yard line on the first possession before sending out the field goal team. This time, it wasn't a missed kick, but a blocked one, as Miami saved its season with a clutch special teams play. Later in the overtime period, Miami had a chance to win, but Garo Yepremian missed a 52-yard field goal.

So on they played, through the end of a first overtime and into a second. Then, deep into the second overtime, Miami finally broke through, with Yepremian making a 37-yard kick at the 7:40 mark to win it.

With a total game time of 82 minutes, 40 seconds, the Christmas Day game between Kansas City and Miami remains the longest NFL game ever played. It was also the last game the Chiefs played at Municipal Stadium, as they moved to Arrowhead Stadium the following season. After the win, Miami advanced as far as the Super Bowl, losing to the Cowboys 24-3.

December 20, 1980: The sound of silence

MIAMI - It sounds like a dream to people who hate bad football announcers, who think they just get in the way of enjoying a game. NBC tried an experiment for its final game of the year in 1980 by broadcasting the game with no announcers. There was no play-by-play, no color commentary, no sideline reporters. The only sounds were the sounds of the game.

While it was passed off as an experiment, one designed to challenge the long-standing belief of what made a successful broadcast, in reality, it was a ratings grab. Seeing a drab matchup between the 3-12 Jets and the 8-7 Dolphins, with both teams already eliminated from the playoffs, ABC executives came up with the announcer-less idea simply as a gimmick to draw a larger audience than would otherwise have been expected to tune in. In pushing the novelty of the game, they were hoping to overcome the perception that it was simply a boring, meaningless game.

The results were ... uh... underwhelming. While it seemed like announcers would get in the way, viewers and producers quickly realized how awkward the game was without the context provided by announcers. The game producers did what they could - adding graphics whenever possible, showing pre-recorded interviews, adding microphones throughout the stadium. But things still seemed missing. The interviews seemed forced and out of place when thrown up unexpectedly during the game. The NFL wouldn't relax some of its player-access restrictions, so the players weren't miked, making the quarterback signals inaudible throughout the game. Viewers complained about a low buzzing sound during parts of the game. What made it worse was that NBC had the technology to use the now-standard score "bug," showing the score and time remaining constantly, but nobody had thought to do it for this game.

While the overwhelming reaction to the game, in retrospect, seems to be negative, there is one surprising aspect: the switchboard in NBC recorded the viewer feed back as 831 pro, 518 con. So some people liked it. But people didn't like it enough to make it common. Every game since has had announcers.

But the announcerless game wasn't completely for naught. Because of the number of graphics necessary for producers to tell the story of that game, graphics started becoming more and more common in football broadcasts. NBC announcer Dick Enberg said that while he was relieved the experiment didn't work, he did learn that it was appropriate to let silence carry the broadcast in certain situations. So there was some good that came from it.

December 12, 1982: The Snow Plow Game

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. - In this game, the weather was winning. Playing in a heavy snowstorm, the Dolphins and the Patriots were scoreless deep into the fourth quarter. The snow and wind had made footing treacherous, if not impossible. At time outs, the Patriots officials had been sending out a snowplow onto the field to clear off the yard lines so game officials could have some kind of idea where the field boundaries were.

With the game looking like it was destined to end up as a scoreless tie, the Patriots found themselves in field goal position. New England called time out, giving a chance for kicker Matt Cavanaugh to try to clear a spot off the turf from which to kick. He even resorted to dropping to his knees to try to clear a spot with his hands.

During the time out, Mark Henderson, the snow plow driver, was clearing off the line of scrimmage so officials could mark the ball. At the last moment, Henderson unexpectedly swerved into the backfield, clearing off a spot right where Cavanaugh would be kicking from. The Patriots were stunned at first, but then started applauding Henderson after realizing he had done it on purpose.

Miami coach Don Shula was furious and immediately started protesting the move, but there was nothing in the rulebooks expressly forbidding it. Meanwhile, with a clean surface from which to kick from, Cavanaugh made the field goal to put the Patriots ahead 3-0. With the conditions as they were, that's how the score remained.

Shula eventually lodged an official protest, saying the kick shouldn't count. Commissioner Pete Rozelle agreed with Shula but informed him that without a specific rule to cite, he couldn't overturn the play. The kick stood, but the rules were changed after the season to forbid the use of snowplows on the field during a game. The change came too late for the Dolphins.

Henderson, meanwhile, became a part of Patriots lore. A convicted buglar who was at the game on work release, he later said that he didn't have a problem clearing off the spot, saying "what are they going to do, throw me in jail?" The snowplow he used currently hangs from the ceiling at the Patriots Hall of Fame.

December 8, 1980: Three words

MIAMI - New England kicker John Smith was warming up on the sideline, then started trotting out onto the field. There were two seconds left on the clock, and Smith was about to try a game-winning field goal when the announcers started talking about something else. How could they? It was a 13-13 game with two seconds left - this wasn't the time for any kind of breaking news.

It wasn't just any breaking news, though. It was so much more. It was one of those types of news reports that are impossible to believe as they're being reported, that people refuse to believe even as they realize the words they're hearing were true. The announcement became one of those generation-defining, where-were-you types of moments, something that made the game being shown become, in one instant, both instantly irrelevant and completely unforgettable.

Howard Cosell's words were measured, careful like they always were, but they still painted a surreal, hard-to-believe picture; John Lennon ... shot ... apartment building ... hospital ... what? It didn't make sense. What was happening? Then Cosell said the final three words, the words that hung in the air forever like a bold newspaper headline, the words that left a shockwave across America: "Dead On Arrival."

Dead on arrival. The three words that left an entire generation with the realization that their hero, their inspiration, was gone. The three words that had an effect across the country, across the world, and that would linger on in history far beyond anything that happened in that game. Cosell's three words have lived on as the three most famous ever uttered during a football game. Many millions of people first heard about Lennon's death while watching the game, putting Cosell in a similar place in American history as Walter Cronkite 17 years before.

John Lennon and the Beatles defined the musical landscape in the 1960s and beyond. Howard Cosell and Monday Night Football changed the sports television landscape forever. It's sad, but it's fitting that the two are now forever linked in American consciousness. Linked together by three words left hanging in the cold December air.

The announcement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gcdz1IRVoM

December 2, 1985: Fish slapped

MIAMI - It had been seven weeks since anybody had scored more than 10 points against them, four weeks since anybody had scored even a touchdown against them. The Chicago Bears didn't have to score a lot of points to win games in 1985 - their defense was doing just fine. As the season rolled around into December, though, the Bears' offense was picking up. The last two games of November, they had scored 44 and 36 points, pitching shutouts in both. They were on a historic roll

The "undefeated" talk had been building, getting stronger and louder as the Bears kept piling up lopsided victories week after week. It was obvious that they had no contemporary challengers, that the only goal remaining before their inevitable Super Bowl victory was then mark set by the 1972 Dolphins, the NFL's only unbeaten and untied team. That was the Bears' mission now.

As they rolled up their 12th consecutive victory, the Bears saw only one game left on their schedule that would be a real challenge: Week 13, Monday Night Football, at Miami. A season removed from a Super Bowl appearance, and with Dan Marino in the height of his career, the Dolphins were an offensive machine. Marino had set every possible passing record the year before, and while the Dolphins weren't quite as good as they had been the year before, they were still formidable. Plus, they had something to play for: protecting their franchise's legacy of being the only unbeaten team in the NFL.

So the stage was set on Monday Night Football: The 12-0 Bears at the 8-4 Dolphins, nothing short of NFL history on the line. With several members of the 1972 Dolphins in attendence, the current Dolphins set out to spoil perfection.

It didn't take the Dolphins long to establish themselves, as Marino found Nat Moore for a 33-yard touchdown pass to open the scoring. Shockingly, it was the first touchdown the Bears had allowed since November 3. The Bears responded, tying the score in the first when backup quarterback Steve Fuller ran in from a yard out. The Dolphins added a field goal to take a 10-7 lead going into the second.

The Bears' 46 Defense was predicated on the blitz - they wanted the opposing quarterbacks to be forced to make a deep downfield throw with a blitzing safety in his face. For most quarterbacks, this was too tall of an order. But Marino wasn't like most quarterbacks. Blessed with a lightning-quick release and one of the strongest arms in the game, Marino was able to stand in the pocket longer against the Bears than any other quarterback had before, resulting in an explosive second quarter that nobody saw coming.

A 22-yard pass to Moore helped set up a rushing touchdown for the Dolphins, giving them a 17-7 lead. The Bears responded with a field goal, but Marino struck back again, hitting Mark Duper on a 52-yard pass, followed by a 27-yard pass to Mark Clayton to set up another score. With 1:57 left in the half, the Dolphins were up 24-10, and they weren't done. They blocked a Bears punt on the next possession, recovering the ball at the 6 and punching in another touchdown before the half ended. The Dolphins had score more points in the second quarter alone than all but two teams had scored on the Bears all season long, taking a shocking 31-10 lead into the locker room at halftime.

There was still an entire half of football to play, but it was over. With starting quarterback Jim McMahon out with an injury, the Bears simply weren't going to be able to score enough to come back. Though the defense stiffened and only gave up one more touchdown, the Bears had no chance, falling 38-24. Their perfect season was ruined.

Counting postseason, the Bears played 76 quarters during the 1985 season. In only one of them did their vaunted defense fail them. In only one quarter did the Bears find an offense that didn't crumble in the face of the 46. And 15 minutes was all Dan Marino needed to shred the greatest defense the NFL has ever seen.