This story, by John Crittenden, first appeared in the Jan. 22, 1972, issue of The Sporting News under the headline “Griese Routs Rivals as AFC Player of Year”, just before the Miami icon’s Dolphins were routed by the Cowboys in the Super Bowl. Later that year (and into 1973), however, the Dolphins would finish 17-0, the only team in the Super Bowl era to go undefeated.
MIAMI — Bob Griese finished the regular season at the top of the American Football Conference's statistical quarterback ratings. In the first two rounds of the championship playoffs, he completed 24 of his 43 passes for 421 yards, each category an improvement on his regular season averages. He's No. 1 and getting better.
By vote of the 13 correspondents in the American Football Conference cities, Griese, the 26-year-old quarterback of the Miami Dolphins, has been chosen AFC Player of the Year by The Sporting News.
Griese won by a wide margin, with eight of the 13 votes, the only player to get more than one vote. Other players receiving votes were Griese's teammate, Larry Csonka, Denver's Floyd Little, John Hadl of San Diego and Kansas City's Len Dawson and Otis Taylor.
"I'm flattered," said Griese, "and thankful. A lot of hard work has gone into it. Awards like this are part of what you're out there for, to do the best you can.”
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As AFC Player of the Year, Griese will receive a Bulova Accutron Mark II wristwatch and an impressive trophy, presented by Marlboro cigarettes and The Sporting News.
Griese finished the season on top of the AFC's statistical ratings for quarterbacks — but that's just part of his excellence, maybe no more than half of it.
The Dolphins have the most versatile attack in pro football. Paul Warfield, Larry Csonka and Jim Kiick each gained more than 1,000 yards in 1971 on running and receiving. No team in pro football can match that. Griese is responsible not only for the passes to Warfield, but also for picking the spots for Csonka and Kiick.
Bob Knows the System
"The big difference with Bob this year is that he is so thoroughly familiar with our system and what we want done," said Don Shula, who has won 20 regular season games in his first two years as Miami's coach.
"Passing is about 50 percent of my job,” said Griese. "I study as much on the running game as I do on the passing game. I talk to the offensive line coach as much as I do the receiver coach. A quarterback had better have an understanding of the passing game, but he also has to understand the running game. When to call it is the thing."
The Dolphins have developed a passing attack which does not rely on quantity. Miami threw fewer passes than any team qualifying for the post-season playoffs, yet the Dolphins had more touchdown passes than any team in the playoffs, with the exception of Dallas.
"The important thing is yardage, not completions," said Griese.
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The best example of this might have been Miami's victory over Pittsburgh, in which the Dolphins overcame a 21-3 deficit. Nine Griese completions produced 232 yards. Griese didn't do badly in the AFC championship game, either — with 158 yards on four completions.
The 1971 Dolphins got away from the pressure early — winning eight in a row after a tie, a victory and a loss.
"In 1970," said Griese, "we lost three in a row in the middle of the season, so we had to win our last six to make the playoffs. That's the way it is — you either have to work early or fight late."
The Dolphins had only two periods of crisis all season, Shula said. The first crisis included the opening three games, which involved a wave of turnovers. Once that was righted, the Dolphins made it look easy.
"The second crisis came when Griese's shoulder was hurt against Chicago (In game No. 11)," said Shula. "For two games he was in a lot of pain. You could tell that against New England and Baltimore. We were very worried about that injury."
Griese put an ice pack on his shoulder after Miami's longest-game playoff victory over Kansas City and following the 21-0 rout of Baltimore in the AFC championship game. But the tender shoulder didn't hurt his passing percentage. He threw only eight times against Baltimore, partly because his vision was blurred for about 20 game minutes following a sideline whack in the head from Mike Curtis.
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"The thing Griese has done so much better this year," said Shula, "which goes along with his understanding the system, is that he's not putting the ball up for grabs at all. If he doesn't have a receiver open, he's very reluctant to throw it into a crowd. It's very evident in the decline of his rate of interceptions."
Griese was intercepted on 6.9 percent of his passes in 1970. This season that dropped to 3.4 percent.
Griese's goals for the season involved trying to get more passes to Warfield — instead of giving up on Warfield every time he drew double coverage — and trying to get more passes to Csonka and tight end Marv Fleming as well.
Two Were Shortchanged
"I don't think I accomplished getting the ball to Csonka and Fleming enough," Griese said.
Csonka and Fleming caught only 13 passes each, but Fleming made two regular season touchdown catches and caught a third in the opening playoff game.
"I've got to spread the passes around more to keep the defense honest," said Griese.
Miami got to the Super Bowl because of "hard work and that rotten feeling in our stomachs after the Oakland game last year," said Griese. Like so many of the Dolphins — the team was in its first post-season game — Griese says he really wasn't aware of how close the team was to the jackpot before Miami was eliminated by Oakland in the first round of the 1970 playoff.
"We had to work all season in '71 to get back where we were going into the Oakland game in 1970," said Griese.
Griese, in his fifth professional year after coming to the Dolphins from Purdue as the team's top draft choice in 1967, gets Shula's unqualified vote on the All-Star ballot.
"In understanding and knowing the situation," said Shula, "he's certainly the equal of any quarterback playing right now."
Shula is not noted for overstatement. Griese is one of 19 holdovers still left from the 40-man squad which was in Miami when Shula arrived in 1970.
They Needed a Leader
"We needed someone to mold the whole thing, to gather the loose ends together and eliminate the bad Ingredients," said Griese. "The club was ready to go. We were looking for someone to take us."
The Dallas Cowboys had won nine straight games going into the Super Bowl. Griese knows what a streak like that can mean to a football team.
"When we won eight in a row in the middle of the season this year," he said, "it was a great thing, a great feeling. We really had momentum.
"But we have more momentum right now," he added. "We are more solid, more together right now — after winning two big playoff games — than we ever have been."
Perhaps the biggest change in the 1971 Dolphins was the team's ability to come from behind to win. The two most striking efforts in this category were against Pittsburgh, in which Griese and Warfield produced three touchdowns to win, 24-21, after Miami had trailed by 18 points, and against Kansas City in the opening playoff round, won by the Dolphins after they trailed three times.
"A championship team," said The Sporting News' AFC Player of the Year, "should be able to overcome any deficit."