From My Greatest Day in Football: As Told to Bob McCullough, copyright 2001

Bob Griese had two careers as a pro quarterback. In his early years he was a scrambling, gambling dart thrower whose heroics often allowed some mediocre Miami Dolphin teams to win games they had no business being in. But when Don Shula came on board and put together the juggernaut that would go unbeaten a few years later, Griese became a methodical precision passer who orchestrated a devastating ball-control offense. In his two greatest days, Griese recalled both of those incarnations, the first when the Dolphins won the Super Bowl against the Redskins to put an exclamation mark on their undefeated campaign, the second near the end of his career when he once again filled the air with touchdown passes during a memorable Thanksgiving game.

Individually or as a team? I'd have to say that teamwise, the greatest day would have to be Super Bowl VII, the 1972 season, when the Dolphins—I think it was the 1973 Super Bowl by the time they played it in January—where we beat the Washington Redskins in the LA. Coliseum to finish the season undefeated, 17-0, after we had lost the Super Bowl the year before. I would say teamwise, that would be the greatest day.

And I think individually, it would have to be a day where I threw—it was back in 1977, it was a Thursday in St. Louis. We had been in Cincinnati the week before, and we lost that game and were supposed to win. We were supposed to beat Cincinnati. It was a time when I was, I think—I just started wearing glasses when I played, and it was raining during the game at Cincinnati, and I didn't have a very good game, and we ended up losing.

We went home with that thought in mind, and the thought that we had to turn around and go to St. Louis to play a game on Thursday, which was Thanksgiving. So we were off on Monday, Tuesday we went in and got a little work done, Wednesday we traveled to St. Louis, and Thursday was the game.

Now I normally do a lot of preparation and film watching and a lot of note taking, and I take a lot of stuff—well, for this one, obviously, I couldn't do much. I remember in my hotel room on the night before the game, watching some tape of St. Louis, and I said, “Well, this is silly, I ain't getting anything done.” So I just stopped, and I said I'm just gonna go by my instincts, and I'm just gonna go out and play the next day. I knew what they were doing a little bit, and I said, we're just gonna go out and play. I've been in this league for probably eleven years at that point, so I said, I'm just gonna go out and play.

So the next day we went out. Thanksgiving, and away from home, and everybody was lined up defensively where I thought they were gonna line up. You know, you hear the old cliche, the game slows down. Well, that day, it was like the game really slowed down. I mean, they were doing everything I thought they were gonna do. I checked off, everything worked properly, the guys got open, the ball was there, the protection was there. I ended up throwing six touchdown passes in a period of just over three quarters. This was back when they were calling them the "Cardiac Cards." Their offense was lighting it up— the offense like it is right now in St. Louis. That was the [Jim] Hart years, they scored a lot of points. Gray was the wide receiver—I mean, I can remember being on the sideline and having, I think, scored two or three touchdowns in the first quarter, and we were up like 21 points. And I was thinking, boy, that's not enough points, these guys score at will, we just better keep scoring while we can.

And like I said, every time I saw something defensively, I said to myself, gee, this might not work, I better check to this. And every time I checked everybody heard it, the protection was there, I threw it, and I think we ended up beating them something like 54-13 or something. That was one of those days where you didn't have a lot of time to prepare, you weren't coming off of a good week the game before, and you just go in and you just go with your instincts, and everything clicked.

I spread it around. I threw it around. I threw it to everybody. Nat Moore was a receiver then. I don't even know who the other guys were—I don't think Warfield was there any longer, I think he had moved on. I think Jim Mandich was there. I think he may have caught a pass for a touchdown, but I don't know—you can look it up.

The thing that stands out about the Super Bowl was that we were 16-0, going to the Super Bowl against the Washington Redskins, the only team that has ever gotten that far. We were underdogs—16-0, and we were underdogs in the Super Bowl. That just told us that we'd won all these games, but we weren't getting any respect from somebody. So we went out and won the game, and that's the game that Garo went to kick the field goal and he batted it up in the air—if he would have kicked the field goal, we would have won 17-0, which would have been a fitting end to a game that ended a 17-0 season.