I remember playing basketball that morning in a local park, with all of my neighborhood friends. Very matter of fact. Nobody was concerned at all.
The Dolphins did not reach my rushing yardage projection. I was irritated about that. While playing basketball and leading up to the game my theme had been at least 200 yards rushing. Sometimes I got bold with 250. I didn't see how it wouldn't happen. I believe the final tally was slightly below 200.
But stats don't always cooperate when a team jumps out to a big early lead. I didn't learn that until perhaps a dozen years later...new to Las Vegas and studying trends. In that Super Bowl the early rushing total suggested well beyond 200. But once the lead was significant the game reached a lull stage, without as much urgency on offense and mostly containing the Vikings.
There are few things in sports as random as the final outcome when a dominant team or athlete surges to a huge advantage early. The stats can keep going. Or stall. The margin can keep going. Or stall. Tiger Woods cruised during the fourth round countless times, the win already secured. Analysts who rely on that final time or margin as absolute can be fooled by frontrunners more than any type of performer.
I have a tape of this game. Everything is familiar from my memories as a 14 year old except one thing: I am always shocked at how tight the tailback is to the line of scrimmage. I always want to grab Mercury and yank him a yard or two further back. I guess when I went to school at USC a half decade later our Student Body Right featured different spacing...allowing more time for Marcus Allen or other tailbacks to pick and choose. I retain that image as ideal, and not the Dolphins version from the early '70s.
That era was so special I'm not overly bothered that it hasn't repeated. We earned it then and haven't earned it since. That's the way I look at it. Great choices then and poor to middling choices subsequently. And I'm not merely referring to draft picks. Those Dolphins were virtually unanimous as smartest team in the league, if not professional sports period. The Celtics under Auerbach owned that smartest in sports tag for so long. But that team stalled briefly in the early '70s, until picking up an unexpected title just a few months after this Dolphins/Vikings game. That was kind of surprising when they upset the Bucks and Jabbar in a 7 game final.
With the Dolphins and Celtics simultaneously on top, there was much discussion in summer 1974 toward which franchise was the smartest in the sporting world.
I like to mention that type of thing because it gets lost to time. Nobody thinks of those 1973 Dolphins with any connection to the Boston Celtics. They were briefly linked on sports radio talk shows and in bar stool type conversations. If we had ESPN type programming from that time frame the clips would be startling.
The Celtics won again two years later. Then Bird, and more smart stuff.