Whether coaching greatness is judged on championships, singular moments or a full body of work, Don Shula met the criteria.
Shula, who won a NFL record 347 games for the Baltimore Colts and Miami Dolphins over 33 seasons and presided over the league’s only undefeated season, died “peacefully at home” at age 90 on Monday. An outpouring of thoughts and prayers followed from across the sports world.
“If there were a Mt. Rushmore for the NFL,” Dolphins owner Stephen Ross said, “Don Shula certainly would be chiseled into the granite.”
Shula coached in six Super Bowls, including four of the first eight, and won two. He was on the losing end of the Joe Namath guarantee in Super Bowl III, but changed jobs and led the Dolphins to three straight Super Bowls, winning back-to-back titles in the 1972 and 1973 seasons.
The 1972 Dolphins are immortalized for their 17-0 record, capped with a Super Bowl XII victory. Hall of Famer Larry Csonka choked back tears Monday as he remembered Shula.
“The perfect season was the diamond in the rough that he honed out, where everything he learned how to sacrifice and orchestrate came together and worked,” Csonka said. “I never really knew how close that rascal had really gotten to me until he was gone. I felt a terrible loss.”
The 2007 Patriots were 18-0 before losing Super Bowl XLII to the Giants, with Shula on hand in Arizona. Six-time Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Belichick’s 273 regular-season victories trail just George Halas (318) and Shula (328). Combined with the playoffs, Belichick has 304 victories to Shula’s 347.
“Don Shula is one of the all-time great coaching figures and the standard for consistency and leadership in the NFL,” said Belichick, who grew up as a fan of Shula’s Colts.
Shula reluctantly retired after the 1995 season but remained a big part of the NFL. He opened a national chain of steakhouses, and “Shula’s” in Indianapolis became one of the preferred hangouts for personnel attending the NFL Scouting Combine — no doubt the familiar iconic name offered a certain comfort — until it closed in 2019.
“Coach Shula lived an unparalleled football life,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said. “As a player, Hall of Fame coach and longtime member and co-chair of the NFL Competition Committee, he was a remarkable teacher and mentor who for decades inspired excellence and exemplified integrity.”
Known as a taskmaster from the moment he arrived in 1963 as the NFL’s then-youngest head coach at 33 years old, Shula won with a power running attack, fierce defense and three Hall of Fame quarterbacks (Johnny Unitas, Bob Griese and Dan Marino). Shula put pressure on quarterbacks to be able to call their own plays – a “genius” move at the time, Marino says – and adapted his philosophy to throw the ball all over in the 1980s and 90s.
“Coaches today are amazed by what Coach Shula was able to do for so long at such a high level,” Marino said Monday. “He was willing to open up to other thoughts in football that he wasn’t used to. He was very demanding, but he would listen to your ideas. I think that is what a great coach like Coach Shula would do – evolve to the talent you have.”
Shula is survived by his second wife and five children, including two sons who became NFL coaches. He created the Don Shula Foundation for Breast Cancer Research in 1991, after his first wife, Dorothy, died of the disease earlier that year.
The Don Shula Sports Center is a stadium at his alma mater, John Carroll University, and the Don Shula Expressway runs through Miami.
“He was always looking for what he called ‘the winning edge,’ ” Csonka said, “but he had a sense of integrity to go with it. He wouldn’t have any part of bending any of the rules, let alone breaking them. That’s who he was — winning meant everything, but not at a cost to his principles.”