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Mercury Morris was undefeated in more ways than one

Vaseline September 23, 2024

First, a history lesson. It’s a lesson about a good man. A unique man. In some ways, a remarkable man. You may not know anything about the life of Mercury Morris. But you should.

It was the year before the Miami Dolphins’ undefeated season, and the team had just been embarrassed by Dallas in Super Bowl 6. Morris barely played in the game, which the Cowboys won 24-3, and told reporters afterward that he wasn’t happy about it. “The only time I came off the bench,” Morris said, “was for kickoff and the national anthem.”

Coach Don Shula was furious that Morris had gone public with his complaint, but the truth was: Morris was right.

“Our whole game was to stop the running game and stop Paul Warfield,” Dallas defensive back Cornell Green said at the time. “If they were going to beat us, they were going to beat us with Howard Twilley and Marv Fleming. They weren’t going to beat us with (Paul) Warfield, Jim Kiick or (Larry) Csonka. We were ready for Mercury, and Mercury Morris didn’t play in that whole game, and that was a blessing. (Because) Chuck Howley was able to catch Kiick. If Mercury got in the game, it was going to be tough. I don’t know why Shula didn’t play Mercury more. I don’t know what Mercury did to finish Shula. I wish I knew.”

After that awkward moment after the Super Bowl, two things happened.

The following year, the Dolphins would go undefeated at 17-0. No achievement in the history of American team sports has been as impactful or enduring.

But Shula would not only forgive Morris, but later admit that Morris was right. Shula and Morris would eventually become close, and like many Dolphins from that team, they would become lifelong friends. And despite Morris’s later legal troubles, he had become something almost larger than life, and in recent decades, when teams like the New England Patriots have challenged his legacy, Morris has been their greatest public defender.

That’s because Morris loved the Dolphins and all the Dolphins on that team loved him. They appreciated him. Respected him. Admired his fighting spirit and humanity. His decency. His kindness.

When I wrote a book about the undefeated team, Csonka spoke of Morris with such reverence that Csonka’s words really touched him. me emotionally listening to them. Csonka posted on X on Sunday: “It’s a very sad day for me and our Dolphin family.”

You may not know about the life of Mercury Morris. But you should.

Morris was a protector of the Dolphins’ undefeated legacy. Teams would approach the Dolphins’ goal and Morris would make his move. He would be interviewed and would not use that time to mock teams or hope they would lose, but to educate people about those Dolphins players and that era of football.

If there was one thing Morris and the Dolphins hated (and still hate), it was the lack of respect many of them felt for that era. Morris wanted to be a teacher who told people that the NFL of the 1970s was just as formidable as any other decade.

Morris often did this with a sense of humor. “And for the record, we do NOT TOAST every time an undefeated team loses,” Morris posted on social media in 2015, when the Carolina Panthers were off to a 14-0 start. “There’s no champagne in my glass, only Canada Dry Ginger Ale! Ha!”

When Morris was asked about the Dolphins’ 0-8 start to the 2007 season, he joked, “The Dolphins don’t embarrass me because our record is top of the league. That’s not my team. People say, ‘Your team is doing badly.’ I say, ‘My team all has AARP cards.'”

Morris had a serious side, too. He was convicted of cocaine trafficking in 1982 and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Morris said he used the drug to numb the pain of permanent injuries from his playing days, but he never sold it. The Florida Supreme Court overturned his conviction.

“Was I bitter? Not really,” Morris wrote in his book “Against The Grain,” published in 1998. “I wouldn’t recommend three days in jail to anyone, let alone three years. But I have to be honest: I had to endure what I did to develop the character I had when I became a free man.”

Morris would become an activist, encouraging people to stay off drugs, and he turned his life around as he became a staunch defender of that undefeated team.

Which brings us back to this. You may not know anything about the life of Mercury Morris. But you should.