Don Shula: The Coach Who Gave Miami the Only Perfect Season in NFL History

In 1972, the Miami Dolphins won every single game they played. Seventeen in a row, including the Super Bowl. No team in NFL history had ever done it before, and more than fifty years later, no team has done it since. The man on the sideline was Don Shula, and he made Miami a football town.

From Ohio Steel Town to Miami Sunshine

Donald Francis Shula grew up in a Hungarian immigrant family in Painesville, Ohio, played college football at John Carroll University, and spent seven seasons as an NFL defensive back before moving to coaching. He took over the Baltimore Colts in 1963 at age 33, making him the youngest head coach in the league. But his career really started when he arrived in Miami in 1970. South Florida wasn’t exactly football country at the time. The Dolphins were just four years old and had never made the playoffs. Shula changed that immediately, reaching the Super Bowl in his second season. By his third, he delivered perfection.

The Perfect Season and Beyond

The 1972 Dolphins went 14-0 in the regular season, then won three playoff games to finish 17-0, the only undefeated and untied season in NFL history. Shula built that team on a bruising running game (Larry Csonka and Mercury Morris), a stingy defense called the “No-Name Defense,” and a relentless attention to preparation. He won a second Super Bowl two years later and kept the Dolphins competitive for three decades, retiring after the 1995 season with 347 career wins, the most in NFL history at the time. He coached the Dolphins for 26 seasons, a loyalty to one city that’s almost unheard of in professional sports.

A Miami Institution

Shula became as much a part of Miami as the palm trees. He opened a chain of Shula’s Steak Houses, raised his family in Miami Lakes, and stayed involved in the community long after retirement. The Dolphins’ home stadium bore his name for years. When he passed away in 2020 at age 90, every undefeated team in America knew exactly whose record they were chasing. Every year when the last unbeaten NFL team finally loses, the surviving members of the ’72 Dolphins pop champagne. That tradition started with Shula, and so did Miami’s identity as a city that wins.