As it must, history will record this as the week in the 2022 NFL season when the league's last unbeaten team fell, and whether you regard that as definitional history or something much closer to trivia, it still gets written.
The Eagles face-planted at home in prime time by turning the ball over as many times in 60 minutes against the Washington Commanders (thrice) as they had while stretching their pristine autumn to 8-0. While the lasting significance of all that is dubious, it did extend the apparently indestructible legacy of another franchise to a monumental 50 years.
A half century has now passed since an NFL team went undefeated and untied, that being your 1972 Miami Dolphins, who many say were on their way to losing in Pittsburgh that New Year's Eve save for, well, a couple of things.
"The interesting thing about that game, I think, was the punt," said Steelers icon Rocky Bleier, plowing backward through five decades of football memories of varying clarity. "They had studied their film, and they saw something."
The soon-to-be 17-0 Dolphins won that AFC championship game, 21-17, the closest they came to losing in that postseason. Bleier played in every Steelers game that year but almost exclusively as a special teams player. His stat line for 1972 included exactly one carry for 17 yards. So it could be said that the AFC title game was lost because Hall of Fame coach Chuck Noll had on his roster a running back who averaged 17 yards per carry, but didn't start him.
"I like to think so," Bleier laughed. "But I don't talk about it."
In the moment, the Dolphins did most of the chuckling, particularly in the moment Bleier cites, the punt, which never happened, and is frequently misremembered by even eyewitnesses, including some people in uniform.
So this might be a good time for some actual clarity.
The Dolphins lined up to punt from the Steelers 49, which meant Miami punter Larry Seiple was standing at his own 37. He caught the long snap, looked for what Hall of Fame coach Don Shula and assistant Carl Taseff told him to look for relative to a specific Steelers habit, and just took off with it.
But even Seiple, years later, wasn't entirely clear on what happened. "All I saw was green grass," he said, which is curious because there wasn't a blade of grass within 1/4 mile of Three Rivers Stadium's artificial surface, and "I ran it down to the 7-yard line, or the 5, whatever it was."
The 12 it was. He ran 51 yards with it (officially 37 from scrimmage). Seiple had executed this same type of ghastly surprise previously. In college, he had run a fake punt 70 yards to a touchdown on 4th-and-41.
"I was on the punt return team," Bleier said. "My responsibility was to cover one of the up-backs behind the line as he released and tried to get downfield. My whole focus was not letting him get downfield. To the extent that the punter was running with the ball, I didn't even know that. The punter ran by a lot of us with our backs turned."
The Dolphins scored two plays later. Noll said the Seiple fake changed everything. The play took its place at No. 5 in one compilation of the greatest plays in Miami Dolphins history. Without it, you might conclude, we wouldn't be talking about the 1972 Dolphins 50 years later.
And that might be wrong, as well.
"There are a lot of misconceptions about that fake punt," said longtime Steelers front office ace Joe Gordon. "That happened in the second quarter. The Steelers took a lead in the third quarter, and that's when Shula brought in Griese to relieve Earl Morrall. But everybody thinks that Seiple thing turned the game around."
Seiple's brilliant cadenza came on the fourth play of the second quarter, and though it helped erase a 7-0 Pittsburgh lead, there was too much football to play for it to stand as decisive 50 years later. Maybe it turned the game around (and so said Noll and Bleier and many an eyewitness), and maybe Shula's second-half quarterback switch turned the game around, but I suspect the two interceptions Terry Bradshaw threw in the game's final three minutes were somewhat critical.
Terry had thrown a touchdown pass to backup receiver Al Young with 9:39 left in the game, according to a play-by-play excavated for me this week by Steelers exec Burt Lauten. Young's catch pulled Pittsburgh to within four, but both of its subsequent possessions ended with picks by Dolphins linebackers, first Nick Buoniconti, then Mike Kolen.
Miami beat Washington in the Super Bowl, 14-7, to finish 17-0. The Steelers and the city were seriously deflated after riding an Immaculate Reception high for all of eight days. But that particular deflation was nothing.
As the Dolphins left the field as AFC champions, a plane was being overloaded in Puerto Rico.
