One player lost 18 pounds. Another was so weary he fell asleep in the shower. A small group of others stood silent, either hugging by their lockers or holding each other up for support.
That was the winning locker room.
“What a Christmas,” Miami Dolphins guard Larry Little remembers.
What a riveting, exhausting, preposterously historic Christmas Day game. For 82 minutes and 40 seconds, a playoff game involving 14 future Hall of Famers — including both coaches and quarterbacks — ended with the Dolphins’ Garo Yepremian running on the field to kick a winning field goal and being stopped by a muddied and battered teammate.
“If you miss this,’ said fullback Larry Csonka, the player who lost 18 pounds that day, “I’ll kill you.”
Fifty years ago on Dec. 25, 1971, the Dolphins won, “The Longest Game Ever,” as it was immediately called, a title that still stands. It was a double-overtime game of such consequence and forever drama it’s considered the start of everything great about the Dolphins. Coach Don Shula’s star. Owner Joe Robbie’s design. The Super Bowl runs of the 1970s. The portfolio that remains today.
“The magic carpet ride began that day,” said the late Dolphins tight end, Jim Mandich.
What ingredients mix for epic sports event? They were all there that day. Playoff consequence. Historic length. Rosters studded with great talent. A defending Super Bowl champion in Kansas City and an ascending one in Miami.
There were heroics on the losing side, too, like Ed Podolak having 350 all-purpose yards, including an answering 78-yard kickoff return in the final minutes just after the Dolphins went ahead.
There was an unlikely goat, too, as Kansas City’s Hall of Fame kicker Jan Stenerud missed two field goals, including a 31-yarder with 36 seconds left in regulation. Another attempt was blocked in overtime.
It was all such twisted drama and unscripted surprises that, years afterward, apropos of nothing, Kansas City Coach Hank Stram would blurt out, “I can’t believe we lost that game.”
“Everyone knew he was talking about that Christmas Day game,” longtime friend Danny More said.
That’s how the Dolphins remember it, too. They can’t believe they won. They were cramped. They were tired. Most were stretched beyond any game in their careers. Kansas City was a perennial contender, having been to two of the first five Super Bowls and won in 1970. The Dolphins franchise had never won a playoff game.
Even now, all these years later, quarterback Bob Griese remembers looking down at the play chart on the sideline that Christmas Day and seeing a favorite play he hadn’t called that day. He didn’t want to call it early and forgot about it until this moment.
When the Dolphins got the ball, he went in the huddle and said, “We’ve played 5 1/2 quarters against the best team in the NFL and they don’t want to win this. Let’s go win this.”
That drive he called the play they all remember: “Roll Right, Trap Left.”
He saw the linemen’s eyes lit up. They liked that intricate play. In the split backfield, running back Mercury Morris went to the right. Griese turned as if to toss the ball to him, but then deftly handed back to Csonka moving inside to the left.
“I pulled from right guard to the left ahead of Zonk,” Little said. “When I got to the hole, I ran through it real easy. No one was there. And down field, I moved into position to take a guy’s head off … well, I’m not sure you can say that in today’s football. Their guy ducked as I went to hit him and I ran over top of him.”
Csonka ran 29 yards to the Kansas City 36-yard line. The goal posts were at the front of the end zone in those days, meaning the yard line equaled the field-goal length.
In came Yepremian. He was a Cypriot whose family fled war to London, who then came to America after his older brother got a college soccer scholarship. The NCAA ruled Yepremian couldn’t play in college as he’d played semi-pro soccer.
He wrote every NFL team for a job. The first pro game he saw was as the Detroit Lions kicker. He ran to the wrong sideline after a kickoff. He had no idea what a field goal was. “I kick you a touchdown,” he famously said.
Five years later, Yepremian kicked that field goal in Kansas City, saw it start through the goal posts and did his routine of turning his back on the ball before its arc completed and jogged to midfield. That’s when something eerie hit him.
“The stadium went silence,” he once told me. “I had a panic attack. I thought I missed it. Then I realized we were in Kansas City and everyone was silent because I made it. Their season was over.”
The Dolphins party started. When they arrived at Miami airport, 30,000 fans greeted them. It was chaos. Cordons were set up for the players to walk through. Yepremian, his bald head already covered with lipstick from flight attendants’ congratulatory kisses, needed a police escort from fans rubbing his pate.
He was tucked in a room for safety. The president of National Airlines entered with champagne and everyone toasted Yepremian and the Dolphins win. He and his wife, Mariza, left the airport at 4:30 a.m.
Yepremian died in 2015. So many in that game are gone. Shula, who passed in 2020, had his own airport exit story. His car didn’t start. He and his 12-year-old son, Dave, stuck their thumbs out by the road. A fan picked up the hitchhikers and drove them to their Miami Lakes home. The Shulas invited him in for a drink.
The longest day was finally done.
“That’s the day we grew up as men,” Little said.
They lost the Super Bowl that year, then won two others, including in the 1972 Perfect Season. Griese, now 76, says he still hears from fans about how their Christmas Day plans were delayed by the game that went on and on and in some ways has never really ended.
Source: Berkshire mont