Chasing A 60s Dream: The Winston Shadolia Story (FOF 2K7)
 

You've heard the stories about the '60s. The movies and the books talking about the drugs, the free love, the peace movement... I never got involved in any of that. Hell, by 1960, I was 24 years old, a year removed from college and entering my dream job, a job that I went on to hold for a very long time after that.

You see, before the days of Theo Epstein, even before the years of the great Gabriel Arcadia, there was me, the youngest GM ever in the history of professional sports at 24 years old. That's what a rich, blue-blooded family and an Ivy League education will get you (Princeton if you insist on knowing).

Of course, it wasn't all so wonderful as it sounds. The modern NFL was just starting up at that time, formed out of the old NFL and AFL merging together with players from semi-pro leagues that nobody but the most dedicated football historians care to remember. All the records were wiped clean, but the teams that were dominant were still the powerhouses.

I, on the other hand, moved down the coast to South Florida.

To Miami.

To take over the expansion Dolphins franchise.

I really looked forward to putting a staff and a team together, but when I arrived in Miami, I discovered that Baxter Winters, the owner who only got the team thanks to my father's help (which is how I got the GM position, incidentially) had already hired a staff and cobbled together a rpster of 60 low-talent guys on one-year deals.

Not the start I wanted, but I had to deal with the hand I'd been given.

Jamie Boggs was our lead scout, 56 years old and signed to a three-year contract. The old man had a good eye overall, and was especially adept at sniffing out running backs. His weak areas were receiver, where he was run of the mill, and offensive line, where he was below average. Still, I liked him and he was pretty good at draft scouting, something that'd be key to my long-term building plans. Whether or not he'd stay on after our inaugural season depended largely on who else was out there.

Mark Barthwell, our offensive coordinator, was pretty young at 41 and already a damn fine man to have aboard. Primarily interested in a passing offense, he was very good at working with quarterbacks and receivers, particularly developing young players, and was good in all other areas. At the time, he didn't look like much in terms of head coach material, but for at least the next three years, he'd be our OC and if things went well, I planned to make him a Dolphins assistant for life.

Joey Kleman had no business being a defensive coordinator. Yeah, the old man could develop young defensive linemen, but he was pisspoor at everything else. He and Boggs went to school together, which is how he got the job. I intended on replacing him at the very first chance I got, three year contract be damned.

Kurt Boyd was our first head coach, having agreed to coach the team on a trial basis of a one year deal. 51 years old, he was a former offensive coordinator and a good coach all-around, exceptionally talented at calling the plays on offense. The only knock was that he was middling at keeping discipline on the team. Like Boggs, whether or not I tried to retain him depended on what else was out there, since I knew we weren't likely to have a prayer of having a respectable season in our first year.

I spent the first several days on the job meeting with the staff and going through the team Winters'd put together. On the whole, it was a young, not very talented squad. I felt we'd be lucky to win more than a handful of games in that first year.

I've kept my notes even after all this time, so here they are.


None of these boys are the answer. Briggs supposedly has potential, but he's not the signal caller I picked, so he won't get the start. Murphy looks like the best of this bad lot and gets the start.


Kournikova just graduated from Northwestern and is a very elusive back whose ability to ferret out the holes makes up for his lack of blazing speed or power running. If he can develop, he might be our first bona fide star. For now, he'll be the starting option.


Towne caused a big argument. Barthwell wanted to start him to take advantage of his considerable raw talent, but Boyd over-ruled him, saying that Cook's the much more accomplished player and he'll take first string. Towne will backup and try to earn his way.

Cancilliere is an intriguing rookie and the receivers overall aren't too terrible for a team of our calibre. We still need a legitimate QB though, before we can get anywhere.


A couple of really raw, but high-ceiling rookies start on the line. Manningham sparked another fight. Boyd wanted to put him on the inactive list, Barthwell said to start him. I sided with the OC this time, as Williams doesn't look better enough than Manningham to justify the head coach's suggestion. The line as a whole is a concern, but if Shapiro, Manningham, and Hannegraf all start developing, that's 3/5ths of the line we don't need to worry about.


Serviceable, though easily replaced.


I overrode my idiot DC's decision to start Diaz over Campbell for much the same reasoning as I did the Foley-Cook debate. Not sure that Trujillo should be starting, but the 3 LDTs are so close together that one's just as good as the other, I suppose.


We've got two very good MLBs, a pleasant surprise. Pruitt is younger and just a shade better than Garrett in my opinion. Meyer has potential but won't crack the lineup in Miami if the two ahead of him get re-signed. Very underwhelmed with our OLB situation, particularly on the weak side.


Williamson and Fortune very nearly took the starting corner jobs from Shields and Machado respectively. Fortune in particular is breathing heavily down Machado's neck and is already prominently featured as our nickel and goal-line cornerback. Despite some of their poor attributes, we've got some real playmakers at the corners, particularly Fortune. Safety needs better players, period.

Forget about the preseason. It didn't matter then. We cut some scrubs before the regular season and proceeded into our first year. I knew we were in for some real rough times.

Our first game was in Pittsburgh against the Steelers. They were favored by 9, but we beat the spread in losing 17-12. All our points came from Eric Cottrell, who was 4 for 4, including a 50 yarder. Our defense played pretty well, forcing four fumbles, but it wasn't enough. No real standouts on offense, though Volney Murphy did complete 21 of 32 passes for 196 yards.

We picked up our first ever franchise victory in Week 2, beating our AFC East rivals, the Buffalo Bills 21-13. Volney Murphy was an amazingly accurate 19 of 25 for 166 yards and 2 TDs. Ralph Fortune, our nickelback playmaker, got the first ever Dolphins interception, returning it 30 yards. Mark Schau had a pretty nice game at DE too, recording a sack and forcing 2 fumbles to go with his 3 tackles.

Any hope we might have had that we would be surprise playoff contenders seemed to get nipped in the bud in the third week as the Tennessee Titans shredded us 45-23. Volney Murphy continued to be extremely accurate and threw for another 2 TDs, but he really didn't have the arm strength to stretch the offense out. RB continued to be problematic as well, as our offensive coordinator insisted on splitting the carries between Horace Kournikova and Zach Roaches, since neither one was establishing himself as the go-to guy. I told Barthwell we'd have to make a decision by midseason and he agreed.

The winless Houston Texans got their first victory against us in the next game, 27-14. Volney Murphy threw his first interception of the year, but Horace Kournikova showed signs of pulling away in the RB race.

That put us at 1-3 on the year to close out the first quarter of games. I've kept the quarterly reports all through these years, and here's the first one.


The reason Danny Garrett had all those tackles was because he was in our nickel and dime defensive packages, which saw a lot of action. As I felt Ken Pruitt was the better option, I told our jackass DC that if he wanted to have any hope of saving his job, Pruitt had damned well better be in the nickel and dime sets. He complied and to make up for it, I allowed him to put his boy Garrett in the goal-line set. Garrett was a better run defender anyway.

Volney Murphy was nobody's idea of a franchise quarterback, but I liked him because he didn't throw interceptions. While I certainly intended to upgrade our signal caller when I got the chance, Murphy was the perfect backup to have around.

Courtney Cancillere's problem with drops really ticked me off and they ticked me off to the point where I planned to replace him in the starting lineup with Chuck Bullard once Chuckie recovered sufficiently from the hip pointer that set him on the inactive list after getting injured against the Texans.

I ordered Idiot DC to replace Christian Machado in the starting lineup with Ralph Fortune and since he wanted to save his job, he complied with my demands.

We caught the 4-0 New England Patriots napping and ambushed them 34-21 to hand them their first loss of the year. Zach Roaches continued the RB controversy by running 10 times for 94 yards but the real hero of the game was Volney Murphy, who passed for 300 yards on the button and 3 TDs, adding a fourth touchdown on his own two feet.

The jubiliation turned to disappointment when we dropped one 23-17 to the New Jersey Jets in our next game. No real standouts there and honestly the game was nowhere as close as the score suggests. What did happen was that Tony Profit, our starting split end, tore up his quadriceps bad enough to be out an estimated 7 weeks, so we moved Jack Russell into his spot.

Green Bay showed us what a good team looked like when they came and walloped us 30-7. Our MLBs, Ken Pruitt and Danny Garrett each broke the 10 tackle mark, but Horace Kournikova continued to show signs of fumbleitis and Volney Murphy looked quite mortal.

Chuck Bullard took over the starting flanker spot the next game and got the first 100 yard receiving game in Dolphins history with just that many as we damn near beat the other NFC North giant, the Chicago Bears before falling 14-13.

So there we were, 2-6 at the halfway point. Tell you the truth, it's about what I expected in our first year. It was becoming more and more apparent to me that we had a dearth of talent virtually everywhere on the team and it was going to be tough deciding how much of the crap we had was worth keeping after this year.


To be honest with you I was a little puzzled how Garrett and Pruitt managed to keep hogging the tackles as they both weren't on the field all the time, but I couldn't be too bothered with it at that point. The only thing I knew for certain was that Murphy would be getting a contract renewal and so would Mark Schau, the LDE who was the lone legitimate pass rusher we had.

The Chiefs came to town and hammered us 35-6. Our already poor season was continuing to leak. I'd like to tell you that we had a bright spot somewhere, but there wasn't really one. We were just out and out bad. What we weren't however, was the worst team recordwise in the league after nine games. That distinction belonged to the Dallas Cowboys and Seattle Seahawks, twin holders of 1-8 records.

There were two undefeated teams left in the league at that point, 9-0 Cleveland and Pittsburgh, both in the AFC North. Obviously one of them wasn't going to make it out of the regular season undefeated.

Chicago and Green Bay both trounced us and now it was Minnesota's turn, the Vikings dismantling us 28-3.TE Darrell Cook had a 100 yard receiving game, exactly, but that was it for highlights.

As if that wasn't bad enough, we had the 9-1 Detroit Lions next and they mauled us by the score of 35-3. Our offense was absolutely pitiful and nothing Barthwell and Boyd did could fix it.

Fortunately we were able to get the equally pathetic Jacksonville Jaguars next and we shredded them 31-16 as Zach Roaches and Horace Kournikova combined for 3 rushing TDs and Volney Murphy was a near-perfect 25 of 27 for 265 yards and a TD. Unfortunately Kournikova also fumbled twice, Roaches once, much to my annoyance. Ralph Fortune and Christian Machado each picked off a pass, but just as he did in everything that season, Fortune ran it back better than his counterpart.

You know what? Forget the third quarter report. You already know how this season was headed and it didn't get any better from here on out, so I'll just tell you how the remaining four games went.

I really felt sorry in a way for the New England Patriots. After starting 4-0, they lost all their confidence when we beat them and went on an eight game losing streak that stretched to 9 after we swept them 27-10. 4-0 to 4-9. It's still unbelievable, but it happened. Our keys to success were a split rushing attack between Zach Roaches and Horace Kournikova, the latter with his best showing of the year at 17 rushes for 80 yards and a TD and the usual efficient passing from Volney Murphy, who had 2 TDs to go with his 213 yards. Our pass rush also hammered the Patriots quarterback for 8 sacks, 1.5 a piece of which went to Mark Schau and DT Frank Campbell.

Buffalo assured us of a double-digit loss in our inaugural season by shutting us out 27-0. That score tells you everything you need to know. One thing I haven't mentioned that I probably should is that Volney Murphy, for all his efficiency, was also terribly fumble-prone. Part of that was our terrible offensive line, but a large piece of it was that he simply wasn't comfortable with hanging on to the football.

The 13-0 Cleveland Browns fell to the Pittsburgh Steelers that week, thus becoming the last undefeated team to lose perfection.

Hungry to try and clinch the AFC East title, the Jets came to Miami and took off with a 38-11 demolition that put them at 9-6 and guaranteed our division champion would at least have a winning record. MLB [b]Ken Pruitt/b] recorded 11 tackles and 4 assists, a franchise record and starting flanker Chuck Bullard picked up his second big injury of the year, this one finishing him fro the season. His injury-proneness had me awful wary about signing him back on next year.

We closed out the year with a 41-3 obliteration at the hands of the Indianapolis Colts, proud owners of a 15-1 mark after their overwhelming victory and I have nothing good to say about that loss.

Here are the final standings from that season, along with our final team statistics:



Long story short, as I said before, we needed help everywhere. DE Mark Schau remained the only surefire guy I'd resign. Everyone else was going to be debatable.

Super Bowl I
Green Bay Packers 30 Cleveland Browns 17

Needless to say, we didn't have any award winners.

Here's the list in case you wanted it, though.

At the offseason meetings that year, I decided to keep Mark Barthwell as the offensive coordinator. Yes, our offense had been pretty bad that first year but we'd had little in the way of talent and he'd gotten more out of Volney Murphy than anyone could've reasonably expected him to.

My initial attempt to hire a better scout than Jamie Boggs failed, as the man I targeted re-signed with his old organization, so Boggs was allowed back as well, especially since we needed someone who had the talent to scout the upcoming draftees and Jamie was the man for that.

I found a real steal at defensive coordinator in the form of Tony Dillon, previously the head coach at William & Mary, who had a reputation for being one of the best in the country at developing defensive linemen, very good at honing kickers and good at linebackers. As one might expect from a college coach, he was also very good at handling young men, something that'd be key for our team. He was only average at secondaries, but even in that, he was a significant upgrade over his predecessor.

For a new head coach, I gambled in signing 40 year old Vernon Schwartz. Schwartz was a good motivator and playcaller on both sides of the ball, though he was better on defense than offense. Discipline and avoiding injury he was average at, but still, I felt he could grow into the role, so I signed him to a four year contract, whereas Dillon got a three year deal.

Our old head coach, Kurt Boyd, stayed in the NFL, signing with the St. Louis Rams as their defensive coordinator.

Free agency hit and we had nobody under contract because rather than try and lock people up, I decided to rebuild the roster entirely from scratch. I'll be the first to admit that it cost me in that I wasn't able to send anybody to the European Football League they started up that offseason for projects, but I was still quite green to the job.

I soon discovered that everyone wanted bonus money for more than a one-year deal and a lot of guys wanted guaranteed cash just for a one year deal. To make things worse, almost nobody came to us with an initial offer for more than one year. In fact, the only guy who wanted a multi-year contract was LDE Mark Schau, our team's star. It took some effort, but I signed him to a five-year deal worth $2.55 million. He'd wanted $2.4 mill, but with a $590k bonus. For a little extra total value, I talked him down to a $300k bonus in case I needed the flexibility further on down the road.

Oh wait, there was one other one. LT Duke Reeberg was interested in staying for a number of years, but he wanted far too much money for what he was actually worth.

I very gradually re-signed players, mostly to two year deals, though a few were willing to take three. By the time I decided to look at the market, we had 12 Dolphins signed. Yep, the team was that horrible that I deemed just 12 original players worthy of being held over. 7 players from the draft would give us 19, meaning we had, at bare minimum, 26 more bodies to find.

The players re-signed:
RB Horace Kournikova (2 years)
RB Malcom Stills (1 year)
FL Courtney Cancillere (2 years)
LG Maurice Hannegraf (2 years)
RG Luke Manningham (2 years)
P Craig Van Horn (3 years)
LDE Mark Schau (5 years)
LDT Cliff Breeden (2 years)
LDT Earnest Trujillo (2 years)
RDT Frank Campbell (2 years)
LCB Van Williamson (2 years)
RCB Ralph Fortune (2 years)

Free Agent Signings
TE Jack McClairen (3 years) (Pittsburgh Steelers)
SLB Joe Clark (2 years) (Jacksonsville Jaguars)
SS Charlie Sumner (3 years) (Chicago Bears)
RG John Dittrich (2 years) (Oakland Raiders)
MLB Tom Louderback (1 year) (Oakland Raiders)
SE Clyde Conner (3 years) (San Francisco 49ers)
RDT Pete Von Oelhoffen (3 years) (Baltimore Ravens)
C Ed Beatty (3 years) (Pittsburgh Steelers)
WLB Ronnie Loudo (3 years) (San Diego Chargers)
FB Bubba Robison (2 years) (Seattle Seahawks)
LT Jack Klotz (1 year) (St. Louis Rams)
LDE John Brown (3 years) (Carolina Panthers)
RDE Joe Ryan (1 year) (New Jersey Jets)
MLB Adonis David (1 year) (Houston Texans)
LCB Johnny Bookman (1 year) (Dallas Cowboys)
FS Ed Kelley (1 year) (St. Louis Rams)
FL Jim Dooley (1 year) (Chicago Bears)
SE Ronnie Commiskey (1 year) (Carolina Panthers)

Former Dolphins Signing Elsewhere
MLB Danny Garrett - 1 year Carolina Panthers
RDE Scott Hazeltine - 1 year Oakland Raiders
C Lenny Dorsch - 1 year Indianapolis Colts
RDT Reggie Hardy - 1 year Indianapolis Colts

Stolen Free Agents
FB Alan Ameche - Oakland Raiders
RDE Sid Youngelman - New York Giants
RT Ollie Spencer - Green Bay Packers

I'm still pissed at Ameche after all these years. The Raiders were crap like us back then and he would've been a star on our team. But those are the breaks in the business.

When the draft began, we had 30 players under contract, 15 shy of a fully active team. I didn't care much that we were under; I knew we'd get at least 7 guys from the draft and then the others we'd pick up in late free agency.

I found out too late, since my staff was new at this too, that we were supposed to interview players before the draft. Another opportunity blown, one I resolved to rectify in the future.

Anyway, the kid on everyone's lips that year was a quarterback by the name of Fran Tarkenton and he was the guy I hoped would fall to us at #5 in the first round. He probably wasn't going to drop that far, but there was a chance since Fran skipped the combine.

Turns out the Seahawks didn't care about the combine, either. They took him #1 overall.

By the time we got to our pick, the two quarterbacks worth taking that high were gone. Billy Kilmer got taken right before us by the Houston Texans.

So what'd I do?

Took Deacon Jones, a tall, fast, smart kid out of Mississippi Valley State. He played LDE like Mark Schau did, but Mark had no problems moving over to the right side.

Here's the rest of the draft and my notes.

1960 Draft
1.5 LDE Deacon Jones
-Tall, fast, smart, the perfect DE. Likely Day One Starter
2.4 RB Amos Marsh
-Bruising power back with some pass receiving skills. Another likely Day One starter.
3.3 RT Riley Mattson
-Dropped out of the second round due to rawness. Good all-around potential who has the potential to start as a rookie on our crappy line.
4.6 SLB Nelson Toburen
-Special teams demon from a small college. Immediate contributor because of that.
5.5 FL Glynn Gregory
-Extremely raw receiver with some kick return ability and another hard-going STer. Worth a flyer given our need for bodies at WR this late in the draft.
6.4 QB Winston Mitchell
-Besides a great name, the best of the rest at a position where we need bodies.
7.3 FL Brennan Bjornson
-A warm body.

All but Mattson and Mitchell signed on the dotted line right away.

I'm tired now, so I'll tell you about late free-agency and our first true training camp tomorrow.

Late Free Agency Signings
C Darryl Dromeshauser (2 years) (Denver Broncos)
SS Glenn McCoy (2 years) (Jacksonville Jaguars)
QB Reggie Ireland (2 years) (Jacksonville Jaguars)
LT Proverb Jacobs (1 year) (New England Patriots)
QB Frank Tripucka (1 year) (Denver Broncos)
TE Jim Greer (3 years) (Denver Broncos)
K Cedric Greer (1 year) (Oakland Raiders)

Former Dolphins Signing Elsewhere
LT Duke Reeberg - 5 years Detroit Lions
K Eric Cottrell - 1 year Buffalo Bills
SE Tony Profit - 1 year Tennessee Titans
MLB Ken Pruitt - 1 year Cleveland Browns
WLB Ray Freeman - 1 year Carolina Panthers

Stolen Free Agents
FS Deion Hutchins - Indianapolis Colts
QB Bobby Layne - Philadelphia Eagles
TE Rod Davis - New York Giants
K Vincent Gay - Arizona Cardinals

Pre-Camp Signees
SE Bill Terrell (3 years) (Tampa Bay Buccaneers)
WLB Frank Hamilton (1 year) (Baltimore Ravens)
RCB Tony Thompson (1 year) (Houston Texans)
FS Fred Bruney (1 year) (New England Patriots)

All told, we had 48 players signed going into camp, a number I didn't think was too bad considering we'd started with basically nothing. I was thankful I wouldn't ever have to deal with putting together a roster wholly from scratch again.

Here's how the rookies turned out.


If we'd had to make any cuts, Bjornson would've been the first to go. As it was, he was the first player I put on the inactive list. Jones looked like a beast, and between him and Mark Schau, we had the bookends to have a fearsome pass rush for years to come. Marsh's improvement had me hopeful that he'd turn into something as well. Mattson and Toburen looked about what we thought they were.

The roster after the staff and I went over it:


Tripucka was on board solely to mentor Mitchell and, as it turned out, Ireland, who had a surprisingly good training camp and won the starting job. We knew Mitchell wasn't the answer, but Ireland could stopgap us if he had to.


There was big-time competition between Kournikova and Marsh for the starting job in training camp. I wanted Marsh to be the man, but Schwartz wanted them to battle it out in preseason. He did concede that Marsh should tenatively be awarded first string, though. Robison made a respectable all-around fullback.


McClairen locked up the starting TE early, but FL featured a fierce battle between Dooley and Cancilliere that was still unresolved as camp broke. Conner made the choice at SE easy, with Gregory penciled in as the fifth receiver. Terrell was signed for his mentor and kick return abilities.


Center was unsettled after training camp as well. Hannegraf, Dittrich, and Mattson were set at the two guard spots and RT, but Klotz and Jacobs still had a ways to go in determining the winner of their battle.


No questions here. Van Horn'd won himself the right to stay our punter for the length of his contract. Greer would be gone by next year.


Easily the strength of the team. Jones and Schau were the unquestioned starters at the ends and Breeden's lack of endurace gave Trujillo the nod at LDT. VO looked to have the inside track against Campbell at RDT, though the job wasn't his for certain.



Clark-Louderback-Loudo were guaranteed starters, with Toburen hoping to develop enough over the next couple years to push for the starting job.


Nobody had LCB as theirs, but Fortune fought off Thompson to retain his starting spot at RCB. Sumner beat out McCoy at SS and Kelley became the starting FS by surprising ease over Bruney.