With the Super Bowl matchup now set, it’s time for national media outlets to start revisiting NFL history, and for Sports Illustrated that meant ranking the 50 most memorable games.
The Miami Dolphins not surprisingly were featured prominently on the list put together by a panel of former and current media members and former NFL executives, but it also shouldn’t be a surprise their six games in the two-part countdown took place a long time ago.
Keeping in mind that the ranking was about the “most memorable” games and not necessarily the greatest games, the highest Dolphins game on the list was the 1981 season playoff classic against the San Diego Chargers at the Orange Bowl.
That game, which saw the Dolphins come back from a 24-0 first-quarter deficit to take a 38-31 lead before losing in overtime, came in at number 12.
In explaining what made it memorable, SI writer Matt Verderame began simply with this: “This has a case as the greatest game of all time.”
The 1985 Monday night victory against the 13-0 Chicago Bears was ranked 17th, the 1971 playoff classic against the Kansas City Chiefs (the longest game in NFL history) came in at 23. In the first half of the rankings, the 1974 playoff loss at Oakland (dubbed the “Sea of Hands” game) was 30th, the Super Bowl VII victory against Washington to cap the perfect season came in 34, and the 1978 Monday night game against the Houston Oilers when Earl Campbell ran roughshod over the Miami defense was 49th.
The article included comments from one of the panel members and one of the players involved in the game.
This is what Nat Moore said about the 38-24 victory against the Bears on that memorable December night in 1985.
“Because of their defense, nobody gave us a chance,” said Moore, a wide receiver on the 1985 team and a longtime executive with the Dolphins. “We were not good enough to beat the Bears at home on a Monday night with, at that time, the most explosive offense in football. Everybody looked at the 46 Defense, and Buddy Ryan, and all the weapons they had on defense. But what they forgot was it wasn’t the Bears coming off the Super Bowl. We had been to two of the last three Super Bowls. It was an insult to us that people thought we didn’t have a chance.”
And this is what Hall of Famer Larry Csonka said about the 14-7 victory against Washington in Super Bowl VI: “After the game, when Jake Scott was awarded the MVP trophy, he took it and laid it down, and stood back up on the bench. He put the ball to the side, that was secondary. He stood up on the bench, looked at us all and said ‘I don’t think any of us realize what we just did.’”
For those wondering, the number 1 game in the ranking was the 1967 NFL championship game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers, famously known as the “Ice Bowl.”
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