Call me a masochist, but I was watching a show about the 1973 Miami Dolphins on the NFL Network’s America’s Game program the other day. The 1973 Dolphins, of course, was the team that beat the Minnesota Vikings, my team, in Super Bowl VIII.
I was nine. It was the year during which I became a football fan and the Super Bowl loss was heartbreaking. There’s a short segment in the show where Paul Warfield, the Dolphins Hall of Fame wide receiver is discussed. This is Warfield as a Cleveland Brown:
They were talking about a reception he had against the Oakland Raiders, in which he caught the ball on a post route, made a guy miss, crossed the field, and while approaching the Raiders’ safety, ever so lightly and gracefully, did a pirouette that caused the defender to simply melt into the ground. It looked so easy and so beautiful. I’ve never seen a move like it and I’m absolutely surprised I hadn’t seen it until now.
The idiotic NFL doesn’t allow embedding of their videos, so I can’t show it to you here, but you can see the clip at Warfield’s page at NFL.com. The play is about a minute and thirty seconds into the video.