There are some people, including Dolphin players, who think the 1973 team was actually better than the perfect-record ’72 squad. While it lost two games during the regular season, the ’73 Dolphins won the Super Bowl impressively, beating Minnesota, 24-7. A few more championships appeared possible, but a league-wide player strike in 1974 disrupted the momentum established with back-to-back Super Bowl wins.
Worse yet, the World Football League came into existence and started signing some of Miami’s star players, including Csonka, Warfield, and Jim Kiick, to more lucrative “future contracts.” This meant they would remain with the Dolphins for one more year, but their pending departures did nothing for team cohesion. Even so, Miami reached the playoffs, but lost in the first game to Oakland, and didn’t reach the playoffs the next year.
