Fish story is getting old

December 21, 2007|Dan Shaughnessy, Globe Columnist

FOXBOROUGH - Harry Truman was dying. Landslide winner Richard Nixon was awaiting his second inauguration. American astronauts were getting ready to leave the moon after a three-day stay. Bill Belichick was a sophomore at Wesleyan and Tiaina Baul Seau Jr. was 3 years old, living in American Samoa.

It was December 1972 and Rodney Harrison was born one day before Don Shula's Miami Dolphins beat the Baltimore Colts, 16-0, to complete a perfect regular season (14-0).

Fast-forward 35 years and we have the New England Patriots sitting on a 14-0 record, preparing to play the no-longer-great Dolphins (1-13) in a quest to supersede the perfection of 1972. The NFL regular season has expanded to 16 games and the Patriots have a chance to vault past the '72 flippers this weekend at Gillette. (Wonder if Bill Parcells can make the Dolphins a threat between now and Sunday afternoon.)

There's great symmetry here. The Patriots are stalking history and they have a chance to replace the '72 Dolphins in part by beating the pathetic progeny of Shula's supermen.

It's been hard to get anyone in the New England locker room to talk about the quest for perfection. Belichick's success is owed to playing one game at a time. Patriot players are trained to believe that looking ahead can only bring trouble. But the game in front of them now is the game that will break the Dolphins' regular-season record.

Belichick knows more football history than the assembled talking heads of ESPN, HBO, CBS, and Fox, but he's usually reluctant to admit the obvious when his current team is part of the discussion. Yesterday, he allowed some questions about the 1972 Dolphins.

"I think everybody that followed football saw that," said Belichick. "I was a big fan of Coach Shula from when he was at Baltimore and his association with my dad, going all the way back to when they were in Ohio . . . The team they had was an awesome team and they were fun to watch. They had a great style of play that I think we all remember with Csonka and Kiick and Griese and Warfield and what they did on defense. I think everybody that watched football . . . I think you're aware of watching that team and Coach Shula."

Shula got our attention after Spygate when he said the Patriots should have an asterisk attached to their record if they ran the table. The old coach has since retreated from the remark, but he was clearly rooting against New England when he visited ESPN's booth during the Monday night game in Baltimore. Belichick said the two had dinner during the offseason, but have not spoken this season.