At 90, Don Shula Reveals The 5 Greatest NFL Players He Ever Saw
I just enjoyed my work. I enjoyed doing what I was asked to do. You know, the relationship with the players, the assistant coaches, [music] the fans, you know, everything that was thrown into the mix. I didn’t regret getting up in the morning and going to work. I looked forward to [music] it.
And when I got to work, I enjoyed it. I made sure that I enjoyed all the different facets of what I was doing. I broke my jaw once playing cornerback for the Baltimore Colts, and I didn’t even know it until I sat down to dinner that night and couldn’t chew my food. That’s the kind of thing that tells you something about how I was built.
You play through it, you figure it out later, and you don’t make excuses. I carried that same mentality into 33 years of coaching, and I’ll tell you, when your boss ever talked to me the wrong way, even if that boss owned the team, I I let him know exactly how I felt about it, too. That’s just who I’ve always been. People ask me all the time, “Coach, who were the greatest players you ever had the privilege of coaching?” And I want to be honest with you, that’s not an easy question for me, because I coached this game for 33 seasons, across two different franchises, in two
completely different eras of professional football. I saw the game when it was run first and defense won championships, and I saw it transform into a passing league right in front of my own eyes. I had a front row seat to that entire evolution, standing on the sideline calling the plays. Now, I’ll tell you something about putting a list like this together.
It’s not simple, because I never coached one style of football for 33 years straight. I adjusted to what I had. That’s what coaching is all about, analyzing the talent in front of you and putting men in a position to get the most out of what they’ve got. So, when I give you this list, understand I’m not ranking these five men by rings alone.
I’m ranking them by what they did with the role I gave them and how much of my own career is tied up in what they accomplished. Number five, >> [music] >> Nick Buoniconti. When people talk about my 1972 Miami team, the only team in NFL history to finish an entire season undefeated, 17 and 0, they talk about the offense first, but that team won because of the the defense standing behind it, and Nick was the captain of it.
He was my defensive captain, calling signals, making sure every single man on that side of the ball knew exactly what he was doing before the snap. [music] He wasn’t the biggest linebacker in the league. He never was. But he saw the game the way I needed a leader to see it, and that defense carried us through to a perfect season that nobody has matched since.
>> [music] >> Every time somebody brings up 17 and 0, I think of Nick standing in the middle of that huddle, making sure it actually happened. Number four, Larry Csonka. In the early years in Miami, before we ever had a passing attack worth talking about, we won with a power running game, and Larry was the center of it.
Handing the ball to that man felt like handing the game itself over to somebody who was going to get exactly what we needed, snap after snap, year after year. In those back-to-back Super Bowl wins, 7 and 8, we threw the football 18 times combined and ran it 92 times. 92 times. That’s not an accident.
That’s a coach trusting a fullback to be the entire identity of his offense, and Larry never let me down carrying that load. He was there for the whole perfect season, and I don’t think we get 17 and 0 without a fullback who could take that kind of pounding week after week and never complain about it once. Uh, that’s two names from that early Miami football, the kind of football I grew up coaching.
But, the next two names on this list, they represent something different for me. They represent two men who played the same position at the highest level this league has ever seen it played, and I got to coach both of them in completely different eras. >> [music] >> Uh, some people are going to wonder how I put two quarterbacks back-to-back on a list like this when most coaches only get one great one in a lifetime, if they’re lucky.
I got three Hall of Fame quarterbacks [music] across my career. That’s not bragging, that’s just the truth, and I’m not going to leave two of them off this list just to make it look more balanced. Number three, Bob Griese. Bob was a field general, a thinking man’s quarterback. If we threw the ball eight or 10 times in a game with Bob under center, that was a lot for him, and that was by design.
He’d hand it off to Csonka, to Mercury Morris, to Jim Kiick, and then he’d throw play action to Paul Warfield when the defense had completely forgotten we could even pass the football. That’s coaching working exactly the way it’s supposed to work, taking what a quarterback does best and building an entire system around it.
Bob took us to three straight Super Bowls, and I never once had to worry about him making the wrong decision when the game was on the line. That’s a rare kind of trust between a coach and a quarterback. Number two, Johnny Unitas. >> [music] >> Before I ever got to Miami, I was coaching the Baltimore Colts, and I had Johnny Unitas as my quarterback.
Now, I want you to understand something. When I was in Baltimore with Unitas, we ran a wide-open, explosive passing attack completely different from what people think of when they picture my football teams later in Miami. I’ve said this before, I never tried to jam one quarterback’s style down another quarterback’s throat.
I coached to what the man in front of me could do. And Johnny could do things with a football that nobody else in that era could touch. He took me to a championship game in 1964, [music] back before they even called it the Super Bowl, and he set the standard for what a quarterback was supposed to look like in this league for years afterward.
Every young quarterback who came into this game after him got compared to him, whether they liked it or not. Now, before I get to my last name, I want you to think about this for a second. I’ve told you I coached three Hall of Fame quarterbacks. I’ve given you two of them already. Go ahead and drop your guess for the last one down in the comments, and tell me if you think I’m right.
I’ve been asked plenty of times over the years if I have any regrets from my career, and I’ll be honest with you about this one, because I made a promise to myself a long time ago that I wasn’t going to hide from hard truths just because they’re uncomfortable to say out loud. My biggest regret in this entire game was never winning a Super Bowl with the man I’m about to tell you about, and that regret has stuck with me for the rest of my life. Number one, Dan Marino.
When I talk about Dan Marino, in my mind, I’m talking about the best pure passer that’s ever played this game. I drafted him in 1983 with the 27th pick, and I had to go against members of my own scouting department to take him that low, because I saw something in him nobody else wanted to bet on. Five games into that following season, I benched my starter and handed Dan the job for good.
And that man went out and threw for 5,084 yards and 48 touchdowns. A season no quarterback in this league had ever come close to before him. Unlike Bob, unlike the running football I built my early career on, Dan wanted to throw the ball on every single down. And I gave him that freedom because that’s exactly what coaching is supposed to be.
Putting a player in position to do what he does better than anybody else alive. We got to a Super Bowl together in his second season, 1984, and we lost it. And I never got back there with him again in 13 years of coaching him. That’s the one thing in this entire career I never got to finish the way I wanted to, and I think about it still. But I want to be clear about something.
Not winning that ring with him doesn’t change what I saw from that man every single Sunday for 13 years. He was the best pure passer I ever coached, and I don’t think that’s ever going to change in my mind. Ring or no ring. So, there it is. Nick Buoniconti, the defensive captain who made our perfect season possible from the middle of that huddle.
Larry Csonka, the fullback I trusted to be the entire identity of my early offenses. Bob Griese, >> [music] >> the field general who never made the wrong decision when a Super Bowl was on the line. Johnny Unitas, the the quarterback who set the standard for this position before most of these other men ever played a professional down.
And Dan Marino at the top, the best pure passer I ever had the privilege of coaching. And the one thing I never got to finish with him is something I still carry with me to this day. Now, I already know some of you are going to argue with me about this order. Maybe you think Unitus belongs above Marino. Maybe you’ve got a defensive player from my Miami years you think I left off entirely.
Go ahead and tell me down in the comments where you think I got it wrong. And if you don’t agree that Marino belongs at the very top of this list, you better bring a real argument cuz I coached that man for 13 years and I’ve never once doubted what I saw from him even without the ring to show for it.
