All he did was win. Don Shula, who passed away Monday at 90, defined the role of the winning professional football coach over four decades and a record 347 wins. In his 33 years as a NFL head coach, his teams had a total of two losing seasons while reaching the postseason eighteen times. His Baltimore Colts played in the NFL championship game in 1964, his second season; in 1995, his last, his Miami Dolphins qualified for the AFC playoffs.
Don Shula's 1972 Miami Dolphins remain the only undefeated championship team in pro football history. While some are always ready to downgrade that achievement, the fact remains that no other team, whether playing a 10- or 12- or 14- or 16-game schedule, whether facing weak or stiff conference competition, regardless of rule changes or prevailing style of play, has done it. One team, well aware of its chance to make history or fail in the attempt, did it. Don Shula's team.
He wasn't an innovator, a revolutionary, or a game-changing trail-blazer. What he was was a football coach: a man who, year after year, took the best players he could find and made them into a winning team. In a hundred years of professional football, no one has done it better.
