Don Shula is arguably the greatest coach in NFL history.
He had a lasting influence on the sport.
But a Miami Dolphins legend made one shocking comment about Don Shula.
Don Shula achieved legend status with old-school coaching
Former Baltimore Colts and Miami Dolphins head coach Don Shula raised the bar for greatness during his long tenure in the NFL.
Shula holds the NFL record for career 347 wins as a head coach during the regular and the postseason.
He also led the 1972 Miami Dolphins to an undefeated 17-0 season that was accented with a 14-7 victory over the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl VII.
To this day, the 1972 Dolphins are still the only team in NFL history to complete the perfect season with a Super Bowl victory.
The 2007 Patriots finished the regular season 16-0, but lost to the New York Giants in the Super Bowl.
Don Shula was born near Cleveland, Ohio, and served in the Army National Guard during the Korean War.
His teams were known for being disciplined, and were always among the least penalized in the league.
Shula ran tough practices and focused on minimizing dumb mistakes that lose games.
The old axiom about mistakes in football is that “you’re either coaching it, or you’re allowing it.”
Shula personified the old-school coaching mentality of true grit and toughness.
However, coaching in the 21st century is almost like a different sport.
Modern football is a completely different game
Former Miami Dolphins fullback Larry Csonka was one of the standouts on the undefeated 1972 squad.
He appeared on The Ricky Cobb Show on Outkick where he was asked if Shula’s hard-nosed style would play well in today’s league.
Csonka explained, “He was a very demanding, perfection-seeking head coach that would not take no for an answer . . . So he was inescapable. He decided everything from when you were coming in, to what your weight was, to how you hiccup, to how you put your hand up on the sideline. He let no detail go astray. And until you realize that that formula works, when we started it made it more tolerable, but coach Shula first got there and started demanding all of that in coaching that way, there was a lot of people looking for the first bus out of Dodge.”
Before the NFL merger in 1970, the Dolphins were one of the worst teams in the American Football League (AFL).
Shula, however, led the team to a 10-4 record and a playoff appearance in his first season.
Csonka explained that the team bought into Shula’s demanding coaching style after it began to bear fruit.
He recalled, “We were the worst team in the NFL when he got here . . . In just one year, he started to turn us around. By the third year, we were headed for the Super Bowl. Think about that: the worst team in the NFL and then two to three years later you’re going to the Super Bowl. We didn’t win it, we lost it, but we went back.”
Csonka said that Shula’s style would not fly in today’s game.
He continued, “I don’t know if you could even do that today . . . I don’t even know if his type of coaching would even fit in the NFL today. It certainly would be a square peg in a round hole . . . When we started to win, it became easier to accept his demands, because when you start to win, and you start to win consistently to where you start to have faith in the team, and it starts to develop, it’s like a plant growing. Suddenly it starts to relish the sunlight, it starts to reach for it more and more.”
The old-school demanding coaching style would likely cause a mutiny in the modern NFL.
Informed American will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
