Larry Csonka – October 18, 2022
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Tuesday, October 18, 2022
Hall of Fame FB Larry Csonka
(Can you kind of paint the picture of what it’s like every time this team gets together and you guys are reunited? Also, can you speak to how much Don Shula will be missed for this reunion?) – “Well, getting together as a group is very nice and it’s nice for the Dolphins to do that to where we’re actually looking at each other, pressing flesh and able to talk, lean on each other, smile, smoke cigars and all of that. But there’s a unity that goes on with the ’72 team that goes on every year that it’s the most alive team that I’ve ever been affiliated with – I think anyone has ever been affiliated with – because it’s still competing. You guys know what I’m about to say. As soon as we get five games in, just like right now, I’m starting to get calls from Manny Fernandez and different guys going, ‘What do you think of Philadelphia? What do you think their odds are of (going undefeated)?’ Right away. See what that does is we’re dusty old guys. We’ve been retired 50 years. It’s been obviously 50 years since we went undefeated. But each year, we come back to life. It’s like the dust blows off and we’re up and we’re talking, ‘it’s us against them,’ kind of thing. But it’s not really us against them. It’s our reputation against them. I don’t know how to explain it other than to say it gives you the feeling, as you reach antiquity, that you’re still in there. There’s still a competition going on. The great thing about it is we don’t have to listen to (Don) Shula and we’re not having two-a-days. (laughter) But we’re still competing in a very minor capacity. It’s still there and it goes on. And it reaches a peak. The year that New England went so far, clear to the Super Bowl, Tom Coughlin, my old teammate from Syracuse, bailed us out. That was a sweat and right down to the wire. I don’t like that. (laughter) That year wasn’t a very pleasant one, although we were together and talked a lot during the course of that. I like when it all ends about midseason or two-thirds of the way through because whatever team is going undefeated or shows signs of going undefeated drops a game by that time.”
(I have to follow up. What are those internal conversations about Philadelphia this year? You’ve got a lot of teams that suffered their first loss early but then the Eagles kind of stood pat for a few weeks now. So what are you guys saying about this year’s Eagles?) – “Well, we’re all starting to growl in our beards about it. You’re glad that there’s one or two teams that are still undefeated when you reach about the sixth or seventh game mark. But then around the 10-game mark, you start to want to see them disappearing faster because you’re very guarded about it. It’s a jealousy thing. In one capacity, it’s fun. In another capacity, it’s still a competition thing and it’s a little frustrating, particularly when you get to the Super Bowl, and you know it’s coming right down to the wire. Nobody can better us but they can certainly tie us. So you’re pulling very heavily against them to do that. It makes you feel alive. It makes you feel like you’re part of it again, and that’s a very good thing.”
(You mentioned Tom Coughlin and in your book, you spoke on your time with him at Syracuse. I wanted to know, going back to that 2007 season, do you still thank him for preserving your undefeated record when he was a coach with the Giants?) – “Absolutely. I’ve thanked him many times. We talked through the years – Tom and I go way back to August of 1964 when we both met in an elevator at Booth Hall at Syracuse University. Remarkably, you look at coaches in the capacity that Tom was there, he’s a very detail-oriented guy and he and Coach (Don) Shula are very similar personalities. Great attention to detail. Very dedicated people, I guess, are the words that I want to say. They are dedicated to what they do. A lot of us, me included, tend to take things half-hearted and sign on to do things. They’re a little more detail-oriented and Tom is a very sincere competitor. If he’s going up against you – Shula used to call it the winning edge. What that means, and it’s applicable to Tom Coughlin as well – it’s something they have in common – it’s the attention to detail. Shula flew out and went to a Super Bowl game, before we went to the stadium that we were going to play in in a couple of weeks, on a Sunday and documented where the sun was every hour in the afternoon. Those kind of details give you an insight into how serious they are about all of the details adding up to a win. It’s not a thing where we’re just going to practice and they do this, we’ll do that. It’s much more intense than that, I guess is what I’m looking for. I think that’s the common denominator between Shula and Coughlin. To answer your question about him being the coach in the Super Bowl, I felt confident because they both – Shula and Coughlin – were very similar in their attention to detail. I thought if anybody can beat the Patriots, it would be the Giants because Tom Coughlin will not miss a detail. And he did not. And it came down to a thread. But that’s the great thing is you’re either on top of that mountain and undefeated or you’re not. There’s no – almost doesn’t count for much. You’re either there or you’re not. In those closing moments, who was the guy that caught the ball on the side of his head – David Tyree – at the end of the game and won it for the Giants. What a moment. I jumped up out of my chair and almost stuck my head into an overhead fan, I was so excited. But that – knowing people like that, you talk about Tom Coughlin and what he means in my life or how close we were, we were close when we played together, we were close when we were in professional football at the same time, and then he coached the team that defended our perfect season. So how much closer can you get in football than that?”
(You said you jumped out of your seat. Can you take us through a little bit how it’s gone over the years? Do you remember any other stories from watching the teams? How do you watch the Eagles right now? Is it a pretty rollercoaster ride for you right now? What’s that experience like?) – “What’s funny about that is when you start out and there’s a new team like Philly that’s showing signs of doing things and you turn your attention to them, it pleased me to see how well-balanced Philly is. Everyone is acting surprised but when you look at what they’re doing and how they control the ball, they’re reminiscent of – football has obviously changed a great deal in 50 years. A lot of folks sitting in the stands – back in the day, when I played, I think most of the fans had played football and had some understanding of it. More of the base of the fans today, I don’t think that’s necessarily true. There’s many people sitting in those seats that have never played, never been on the field and just like the whole scenario – the competition and the excitement. And when they look out there and see a ball thrown, they see a man throw a football, they see another man run and catch it, and they understand that. When they see the power running game operate and four yards is gained, they probably don’t know what they just saw. But the ingredients that go into a ball-control offense are so finite that if you have an understanding of what’s happening out there, it enables that team to do that repeatedly and have that, and you have a greater appreciation of what you’re looking at. I’m not going to say one is good and one is bad. It’s just the difference over the decades. And when you talk about the intensity that we get excited about, when one of the other players calls me – Larry Little, Manny Fernandez or one of them calls me – they start talking about like Philly. And I say it looks like they’ve got ball control, which is something you don’t see very often anymore, where they can actually say it’s third-and-2 and we’re going to run right here and you can’t stop us, and they do it. Not 100 percent but certainly play in and play out, a high percentage of the time, they go ahead and do it. That affects the defense. You can’t imagine how unbalanced the defense starts to feel when you can start controlling that and burning that clock down. Now when you throw the pass, you score fast, the other team takes the ball and scores fast, you get high-scoring games that are very exciting. I’m not saying it’s not a great thing for the fans. But when I watch a game and I see what Philly is demonstrating right there, they have things that are reminiscent of our old power running game when we went undefeated. It’s gratifying but it’s a little scary. (laughter) So there’s two sides to that coin.”
(Have you looked down that schedule a little bit? Who is going to beat the Eagles?) – “Probably the team that is the least likely looking at the schedule is the one that will do the trick. That’s how competitive today’s game is with how much the passing game has been enhanced. Back in the day, until the ball was in the air, you could knock a guy clear off his feet anywhere on the field in a pass pattern. But today, it’s not the case. It’s a very different game. It’s just probably more exciting for more people in the stands than it was then. I’m not downplaying that. And I’m not really trying to compete with it. It’s just a fact. It’s just the way it is. But if you see a team all of a sudden that doesn’t depend on that, that actually shows signs of ball control, it gets us old grandpas sitting in our antiquity chairs to sit up and say, ‘Damn! They look a little reminiscent of something we might have done back then.’ So it gets a little exciting and you’re happy about that, and you like to watch them. But then as they keep going undefeated, you’re starting to think, ‘wait a minute here. Why am I applauding? These guys are going to dance on our dance floor here shortly.”
(You mentioned how the game has changed and how you can’t just knock players clear off their feet anymore. The league has obviously made a lot of rule changes to try and protect players overall. And then you see instances like the QB Tom Brady roughing the passer call that erupted social media and people were complaining on the other side of that. What do you think about the rule changes and does the league have it right when it comes to protecting players? Or is it still a work in progress?) – “I can’t comment on protecting players. That’s more than the league. I’m sure the league has combined with medical. There’s a lot that goes into that, the whole science of that. But as far as making it competitive on the field, I think it’s more competitive than it’s ever been. I’m a power runner, a fullback. I’m not a breakaway runner. I have to have linemen that can cooperate and work with each other. It becomes very intricate, very tricky. I’m appreciative of that. I like that. But I understand that probably 50 percent of the people or more sitting in the stands don’t really know about that. It’s not that exciting to them. To see a 3-yard gain on first down, it’s like what just happened? Well, if you know the inner workings of it, you’re much more appreciative of it. And you know the ability of an offense that controls the clock to make the other team to not have time to get that last touchdown, no matter how good their passer is. That’s the difference. Now, it’s a business. The NFL is a business. To make it more attractable to the fans, the product more attractive to the customer, the purchaser, certainly you enhance the passing game. Coach (Don) Shula was one of the guys. He was on the rules committee when they started changing a lot of those passing rules. If you look back in the 70s and 80s, he was one of the guys that was into that. He liked the passing game and thought it was better to help that side of it more than the power running game. Obviously that’s come to fruition. But when you’re sitting in the stands and you don’t really know a lot about football, again you can recognize that throw and that catch, and that’s exciting. And it comes right down to the wire. They fire a lot of them right down to the wire. But suddenly you see all of that ball control that we had seems to have disappeared in antiquity. And then all of a sudden you see there’s Philly sitting there and they’re starting to do some of the things that we did. You sit up and clear your throat and think, ‘Damn, they’re starting to control that ball.’ Well, the only way that you can keep the other quarterback from not slinging the ball 40 yards is to burn that clock up. And you see Philly starting to do that. That’s reminiscent to what we had back 50 years ago. Even though I’m in my rocking chair in antiquity, every once in awhile, I sit up, clear my throat and call (Manny) Fernandez and say, ‘did you just see that?’ (laughter) And for 30 seconds or a minute and a half, we’re right into it, bridging the 50-year gap and each paragraph is being spouted. And it’s fun. It makes you feel current.”
(On that note, you mentioned that you get the messages from Manny Fernandez and some of your other former teammates. When you’re going to be on the field together in-person on Sunday, how is that going to be different to not be exchanging text messages and actually be there as a group once again, celebrating this monumental occasion, this 50 years since you guys did what many thought couldn’t be done?) – “Well, to answer your question, it’s super. I look forward to it. They all do. I’m sure we all do. And we appreciate it. But just being week-to-week, or year-to-year, where we would all get together – the Dolphins have been gracious enough over most of the 50-year period to bring us back at least once a year or maybe even more. Or provide us an opportunity where all the veterans and the old pros could all get together. You don’t realize how fast you’re getting old until your teammates, your friends, acquaintances, family, start to disappear. I don’t think anything brought it more drastically to mind than when Coach Shula passed. None of us – he was just such a strong and prominent figure in so many of our lives, that you just assume he’s always going to be there. And then suddenly to be talking about him in the past tense was a really bitter pill. It made us realize we’re all getting older. We’re passing that quarter-mile post. It’s coming around the bend. That’s what promoted the fact with me about writing the memoir was that I realized 75 is a lot different than 55. Let’s put it that way. I was still making memoirs at 55. Now at 75, I’m looking back at them.”
(What sort of reaction are you getting from your teammates about your book?) – “(laughter) Well, that’s the great thing about a memoir. You don’t say it’s history, you say it’s a memoir because everybody remembers things a little differently. (laughter) Coach (Don) Shula and I never had the same expression or the same comment about anything from a ham sandwich to a cup of coffee. We’d find something to (inaudible) about. But it’s a memoir. That means that’s the way I remember it. Now what I did with Manny (Fernandez) and several of them – Larry Little, Paul Warfield, Bob Griese – and even back before Jim Kiick passed away, I started re-hashing stories with him because sometimes the way you remember, you only remember from your perspective. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the details on things, just how it concerned me and how it affected me. So when you start writing about it 50 years later, you kind of want to get your teammates – I didn’t want them to get involved with it in writing it; but at the same time, after I wrote it, I wanted to have them proof it and say, ‘Do you remember this this way?’ Like when Shula first got there and we had the confrontation, when we put the alligator in his room. Because some of the details got shifted over the years, so I wanted to make sure my teammates were still remembering it the same way I was. So when you talk about a memoir, that kind of gets you off the hook. That’s the way that I remember it. And Manny Fernandez and Larry Little were kind enough to really proofread it. Paul Warfield (too). Different fellows took the time to sit down and read it. A lot of my offensive linemen read it, read the proofs, and got back to me and told me about the differences. And then I decided whether I had to change it a little bit. Because as they were telling me, I started to remember that’s probably more the way that it happened than the way I just wrote it down here. So I incorporated them to kind of proofread a little bit and I think you have to do that because all of us tend to remember things the way we want to remember them instead of the way they actually happen.”
(One other thing I wanted to ask you – G Larry Little was on a few minutes ago and he said something that sounded kind of sad but I understood where he was coming from. He said this is probably our last time together as a group. Do you think that might be true? Or will you guys always have a way of getting back together, do you think?) – “Well, your definition of together. I get a real kick out of just them calling me on the phone. During the Giants game with Tom Coughlin, I was switching lines and talking to different guys and sitting out in the rec room with the TV set. That’s the closest to being actually in a football game in 35 years that I’ve ever been. The involvement is different levels at different times, I guess is what I’d have to say.”
(Is that your ’72 Super Bowl ring on your left hand?) – “Yeah. The perfect season. That was a good one. (laughter) Because we had done so well on the way to it and what a hard-fought game it was, it should have ended at 17-0 just the way the season did. But in the waning moments, it turned into a melee and then Jake Scott and Manny Fernandez and others stepped forward. That’s a really great thing – I stressed that in the book. I’ll just touch on one thing – when you have a perfect season, it’s not all Paul Warfield on offense or Larry Csonka or Bob Griese. And on defense it’s not all Nick Buoniconti or Jake Scott. It’s everybody. Two of the crucial games, Charlie Babb turned the Cleveland game around for us. We were about to lose when we played Cleveland. And he wasn’t even a starting defensive back. He was a rookie backup defensive back but he saw something in the film, went to the coaches – it’s a long story and I won’t tell you the whole story but you can look at it in the book. He made the difference in that game. Here he is and he’s not even a starter. Larry Seiple at Pittsburgh in the playoffs sees something. The Pittsburgh Steelers are busy getting a punt return set up and they’re not paying attention to the fact that the punt is being punted. Seiple, who is really cagey and went on to be a coach, he could play tight end for us and he punted. He could play quarterback. He could play wide out. He was one of those very versatile guys that you could plug in anywhere. He’s a very valuable guy on the team. Most writers don’t remember his name other than the run that he made in Pittsburgh. But he was an integral part. That was the essence of what I wanted to convey when we talk about the ’72 team. It wasn’t the stars. It wasn’t the coaches. It wasn’t the trainers. It was all of us. Charlie Babb stepped forward. Larry Seiple stepped forward. Jake Scott stepped forward. They made the difference on the matter of one, two or three plays that made the difference in the season. That’s how finite that gets. That’s how competitive that is to be able to say that they’re the No. 1 team in the history of the league. The only one that went from game one to the championship and won them all. Because you have to have people, more than your superstars on offense or defense or even on special teams. You have to have coaches that are more than just a general coaching staff. They have to be dedicated. They have to really think about it. Far into the night after they’ve left the practice field, driving home, they’re still thinking about it. What is the winning edge? And that’s how finite that gets. And to be a member of that, and having had that work and seeing that operate, that’s the ring I wear and that’s the way it will always be because it’s a thing you’re more proud of because it reflects teamwork, not just a few stars.”
(A lot of the younger readers are familiar with this aspect of you and I’m wondering if you’ve ever encountered this description of yourself as the only ball-carrier to get a call for unnecessary roughness. Do you remember that play? That’s a very cool thing to be able to say about yourself.) – “(laughter) You have to understand that that was then and this is now. But there was a great difference on the football field back then in regards to hitting each other late and all of the things that happened. A lot of defensive backs, when you’re a power running back – and I’ll try to cut this down so it’s not so long. When you’re a fullback and you run up through the middle, you’re not breaking any 90-yard runs around the end or anything. The defensive backs can come in late because at tackle, if a guy like Joe Greene gets you around the shoulder or gets a hold of you, he’s not turning loose. It’s just a matter of how far you can drag him and how your momentum of the pile can change. And when those defensive backs come in and give you a shot, because you’re trying to drag just to get another yard and a half or so, and here they come in late and stick you in the ribs or come in and hit you up around the head or whatever it is that happened – it happened a lot – well, you remember that. Then in the book, I said something about the coming of age, the winning edge mind, when I was in the huddle and Paul Warfield – a great wide receiver that I saw when I was high school because he was playing for the Browns in Cleveland, and I snuck into a game and got to see him perform – he’s in the huddle with me and he goes down. After I hit a guy, and kind of knocked him sideways, a defensive back, Paul Warfield leans over in the huddle and says, ‘Hey, good job. Watch this.’ Then he gets him one-on-one, and Paul Warfield gets that guy I just hit, who is a little bit dazed, who is 40 or 50 pounds lighter than I am, I just turned into him at the last second and just crunched him because I’m tired of him beating on me. So I turned into him, instead of turning away from him, and hit him and dazed him a little bit. Paul Warfield sees that, goes to (Bob) Griese, he knows he can get one-on-one with that guy, and twists him in the ground and scores. That’s when I realized I should do more of that for Paul Warfield because we’ll win more. (laughter) But in the particular instance that you alluded to, that was something that I was getting even with. I tried to do that legally with a forearm but sometimes in the heat of the battle when you’re getting hit, that forearm turns into a fist because your elbow gets knocked down and that’s the way it happened. I whacked a guy pretty good that had whacked me pretty good, and I considered it a late hit on his part. Although there was no flag. He wasn’t penalized for it. What I did, I got penalized for and should have, because you shouldn’t be allowed to hit a guy with your fist. There’s no room for that in football. But sometimes that happened. It wasn’t by design. I tried to deliver a forearm but that’s what I was doing was getting eager. I got caught and I paid the penalty. (Don) Shula was not real happy with it. When he saw the blow he was excited and thought great hit. Then about that time, I was coming off the field and the flag hit me in the shoulder and he looked at the flag, grabbed me by the shirt and started shaking me. (laughter) He would get so emotional in a game you’d have to send him over there. He went from being very happy to being very angry. There are some words in Hungarian that convey that. I didn’t know that character assassination was part of it but it got in there. (laughter) Anyways, Shula was moment to moment in a game. There was no bigger cheerleader than him. But he was like that. He was like Woody Hayes at Ohio State. You know how excited he’d get in a game and actually hit someone. Shula was like that but at the same time, there was another part of him that he would be seeing everything that happened on the field and he would be thinking there would be a strategy cooking up in his gizzard. And by the fourth quarter, he would come to us and say, ‘they’d be doing this, this and this. If we create this situation,’ he’d say at halftime. He’d have a whole scenario of what he had seen that the team we were facing was doing differently against us than they had against all of the other teams they had played before us that we watched films on and documented. He would notice that new thing and he would have something cooked up and have it ready for us at halftime to ingest and hopefully put it on the field. But he loved it when we were excited and in the game and hitting players back and forth. He was like that but any time that flag came out, that was like the gladiators or the guy in bullfights waving the red flag in front of the bull. If that flag hit us and we were guilty of something that wasn’t absolutely necessary, Shula would go off on a tangent. He went from being very happy to being very unhappy with me in about three seconds. I guess you had to be there.”
(I believe you were one of the several ’72 players who were on the sideline during that ’85 game where the Dolphins knocked off the Bears and broke their undefeated start. I was curious as to what memories you have of that game and whose idea was it to kind of come and support the team in ’85 during that big game?) – “I don’t remember whose idea it was but I think just the fact that we were there hexing them helped. I felt like it did. I don’t know. I think the Dolphins players, I think they responded to that. Just the way I went to see them recently when Coach (McDaniel) was just about to start the season, I went down and paid a visit to them and talked. It’s been 50 years. What could I say to a guy on the field today? Not much as far as how to play the game or something. But about the intensity, and about the winning edge, there’s a whole raft of things that you can communicate to the players today because winning is still the supreme benefit. I know pay scales are all different. They’re making millions. That’s great. But move that all over on the desk because money comes and money goes, but winning and becoming a team that has a mantle that nobody else has – if you can achieve something, at least aspire to achieve something that no one else has done. That makes for great memories. Those guys that are on that field, that’s pretty much what I said to them when I spoke to them before the season. They had a new coach coming in and it was very reminiscent of 1970. I sat in there and talked with them and I said ‘Look good, look hard here. This gray hair and this wrinkled old face. Fifty years is going to go by. Some of year are going to experience it going by very fast. Some of you are going to experience it going by very slow. All kinds of things are going to change drastically in your life. But right now, you’re in a crossroads where you have an opportunity. If you care about it enough, you have an opportunity to do something perhaps no one else has done or will again. The season is two games longer than it used to be, so if you go undefeated, technically you’ve done a little more than what we did.’ So we’re still on top of the mountain but you have to give credence where credence is there. If it’s two more games, you have to adhere to that. So there’s a chance. So when I spoke to them, I talked about that. I talked to them about the money is going to be spent. The notoriety is going to fade. But what you did will remain with you. And if you’re the best ever – if you’re the best in 100 years, the first in 100 years, the best team ever. Think about that. It’s something that keeps us competitive. It keeps us still in the game. I love it.”
