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There wasn’t a lot of celebrating in the Miami Dolphins locker room after they beat then Washington Redskins in Super Bowl VII to become the first and still the only team to record a perfect season.

“It was a mature team that just took everything in stride,” said Doug Crusan in the new book “Seventeen and Oh” about that perfect season. “Although to be honest, it was a relief more than anything. We had finally done it.”

This is the 50th anniversary of that historic season and still no other team has done it. And now that the schedule has been increased to 17 regular season games (it was 14 when the Dolphins did it), it looks unlikely any team will go 20-0 to have another perfect season.

The closest any team has gotten to it since then was in 2007 when Patriots went 18-0 before losing the Super Bowl to the New York Giants.

The book written by Marshall Jon Fisher, who was a young fan growing up in Miami in 1972, and published by Abrams Books, is a sweeping history not only of that Dolphins season but of what was happening in Miami and the rest of the country at that time.

They went to training camp in a year in which both political conventions were in Miami Beach and the Watergate break-in had just taken place. And the Vietnam War was still raging. It was a tumultuous time. And in an era before million-dollar salaries, he writes the players considered themselves ordinary working guys who lived in the community.

Some of the author’s school friends got the courage to knock on Howard Twilley’s door and ask him to throw the football with them. His friend said Twilley was too nice to say no although his wife may have been annoyed.

The Dolphins went to camp with a chip on their shoulder because they had been blown out by the Cowboys in Super Bowl VI and were on a mission to win it this time and they did it. That is almost as hard to do as having a perfect season. A team that lost the Super Bowl has only won it once since when the Patriots beat the Rams in 2019 after losing to the Eagles the previous season.

The book is divided into 21 chapters, one for each of the 17 games, two at the beginning for what he calls Preperfect I and II and one for Super Bowl pregame and one Post Perfect chapter.

Each chapter not only includes the story of each victory, but has mini bios of the players and what they were like. For example, he pointed out quarterback Bob Griese is an introvert. I remember covering their two Super Bowl wins and he was one of the worst interviews on the team. It was annoying at the time – especially when he later became a TV analyst – but I guess it was his personality.

He also provides inside details of how Joe Robbie, who really didn’t have the money to own an NFL team, kept it afloat and as Mike Ditka once said of George Halas, he treated nickels like manhole covers.

Robbie even fired the caterer providing the food in the press room because he wanted to save money. The author doesn’t mention it but he did spend money hosting a dinner for the New York media before the Giants game in an effort to promote the team before the days of the Internet and ESPN and the NFL Network.

The author is also candid in talking about Robbie’s drinking problem, which was no secret in the NFL. I once saw him passed out at the hotel bar in a league meeting. And he quotes Larry King as saying Robbie wasn‘t a very likeable person.” The author doesn’t sugarcoat how things were.

Robbie also had a contentious relationship with city officials over their refusal to build him a stadium to replace the Orange Bowl. He was so upset that he signed off when the league decided to give Super Bowl XVI to Detroit when it was Miami’s turn in what was a Miami-New Orleans Los Angeles rotation in the early years.

They were trying to prod Miami into replacing the Orange Bowl. The move was announced at a Hawaii meeting and when I interviewed Robbie, he was candid in saying the stadium issue was costing Miami the Super Bowl.

The Miami Herald didn’t cover the meeting and when a staffer called to ask what happened, I gave them the Robbie quotes. The next day, Robbie said, “I didn’t realize I was talking to the Miami media.” Miami wouldn’t budge and went nine years without a Super Bowl until Robbie built a privately funded stadium by inventing the PSL concept.

The author also notes that the doctors passed out painkillers like they were candy and didn’t seem to realize that too many cortisone shots made them less effective.

He also notes the team had only five black starters, which wasn’t unusual in those days. The league had a gentleman’s agreement to ban black players from 1934 to 1946 when the Rams and Browns, who were then in the AAFC, signed two each.

The book said the Rams did it In 1947 and hopefully that will corrected in later editions. Coach Don Shula, though, did make an effort to have the players cross racial lines and create harmony on the team. But times were changing. By 1974 when the Steelers started their Super Bowl run, they had seven black starters on defense because they mined the black colleges for talent. When the southern colleges integrated, more black players were showcased and the league is now over 70 percent black or multi-racial.

Although the book is likely to fly off the shelves in Miami, it is a must read for any sports fan and is likely to be included in the future in any list of top books about the NFL. But there is one paragraph the Miami fans won’t like.

He points out that even though they a perfect season, they weren’t the best team ever. They probably weren’t as good as the 1973 team that lost the second game in Oakland and then lost a later game when they had clinched the playoff spot and rested Griese and some other starters. But they were more dominant in 1973, particularly in the playoffs.

The Dolphins, particularly Shula, usually contended having a perfect record made them the best team. He was upset a few years ago when ESPN put together a tournament using a computer and had the Steeleers beating the Dolphins in the title game.

Shula ignored the fact that they weren’t a team of the decade and a lot of things went right for the Dolphins that year. For example, Green Bay, which won the first two Super Bowls, and Kansas City, which appeared in two of first four, had grown old.

Dallas, which beat the Dolphins in the Super Bowl the previous year, lost Roger Staubach for much of the year and lost to Washington in the NFC title game. Staubach returned the previous week to lead a comeback win over the 49ers but he was still rusty.

And the Redskins had Billy Kilmer at quarterback because Sonny Jurgensen was injured. Pittsburgh didn’t become a great team until 1974 when they added four Hall of Famers and signed a fifth as a free agent to give them10 HOFers. They won four of the next six Super Bowls.

And Oakland, their toughest rival in those years, lost to Pittsburgh in the Immaculate Reception game so the Dolphins played a young Pittsburgh team instead of Oakland.

The Raiders ended their win streak in 1973 but then lost to them in the playoffs before beating them in the Sea of Hands game in 1974 that ended their bid for a fourth consecutive Super Bowl appearance and a third consecutive Super Bowl win.

So the Raiders beat them twice in three games in 1973 and 1974. We will never know if they would have beaten them if Pittsburgh hadn’t pulled off the Immaculate Reception

The next year Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick and Paul Warfield jumped to the WFL and their run was over. Robbie could have tried to keep them, but he always looked at the bottom line. The Dolphins went 10-4 in 1975 but missed the playoffs and slid to 8-8 the following year.

Shula never won another Super Bowl after 1973, coaching 23 more seasons and making it to the Super Bowl twice but lost to Washington and San Francisco. That left his title record 2-5. He had four Super Bowl losses and the 1964 title game to Cleveland when he was in Baltimore in the pre Super Bowl era.

Things weren’t the same for Shula once he didn’t have Joe Thomas and Bobby Beathard finding his players and he couldn’t build a title team around Dan Marino. Still, he wound up being the winningest coach of all time.

The post perfect life of the players was mixed. Some had successful careers. Doug Swift for example went to med school at an Ivy League school (Penn). But others suffered the effects of playing in a run oriented era when there wasn’t much emphasis on player safety. Too many had to deal with CTE and dementia and addicted from taking too many painkillers. Two wound up in jail.

And Robbie’s heirs wound up selling the team after he died.  When he died, he singled out three of his nine children to act as trustees and manage the Dolphins. Others disagreed and a legal fight started that ended with them selling the team. Each of the Robbie children wound up with $6 million after taxes. If they had kept the team in the family, they would be worth billions. 

The Dolphins have been poorly managed and coached in recent years and have had only nine winning seasons in 21 years.

Still, to paraphrase Bogart in “Casablanca,” they will always have the perfect season. For one brief shining moment, they were perfect. This book tells the story of what it was like when they did it and how they did it.

Baker Mayfield is the latest quarterback to show that being the first pick in the NFL draft doesn’t guarantee success.

He was traded to the Panthers after the Browns gave up on him and signed Deshaun Watson to a $230 million guaranteed contract despite his off-field issues.

Mayfield was so happy to get out of Cleveland that he even took a $3.5 million paycut to go to the Panthers, where he will battle Sam Darnold for the starting job.

Even if Mayfield puts his career back together, he no longer has a shot at winning the Super Bowl with the team that drafted him first.

If you don’t count Eli Manning, who technically was drafted by San Diego, the last No. 1 overall pick to win a Super Bowl for the team that drafted him was his older brother Peyton.

Mayfield was drafted in 2018 and Kyler Murray, Joe Burrow and Trevor Lawrence were drafted with the first pick the following three years.

Burrow is the only one of the four to make the Super Bowl, although it is too early to judge Lawrence because he didn’t have a chance to develop under the coaching of Urban Meyer. With quarterback whisperer Doug Pederson now the Jaguars head coach, Lawrence will likely have a better chance to live up to his billing.

The Mayfield-Darnold duel pits the first and third quarterbacks drafted in 2018. They are both trying to resurrect their careers. The Jets gave up on Darnold a year ago when they drafted Zach Wilson.

Mayfield and Darnold are proving that judging quarterbacks coming out of college is an inexact science. The third and fifth quarterbacks drafted on the first round that year, Josh Allen, who went seventh to Buffalo, and Lamar Jackson, who went 32nd to Baltimore, have proved to be better quarterbacks.

The fourth quarterback drafted on the first round that year, Josh Rosen, who went eighth to Arizona, was dumped after a year when they decided to take Murray. Rosen is currently with his fifth team in Atlanta.

Now Mayfield and Darnold both get a second chance. It remains to be seen if they make the best of it.

The NFL appears to be the Teflon League.

As the NFL prepares for the start of another season, it is facing numerous problems.

It starts with the safety of the game itself. Demaryius Thomas, who died at age 33 last December, was the latest deceased player to be diagnosed with Stage 2 CTE.

There were other complications because he suffered from seizures brought on by a 2019 car crash, so it is impossible to tell what factor CTE played in his death. But the fact that he suffered CTE at such a young age is another sign that safety remains an issue.

Then there is the issue of the Washington Commanders, which has now reached the halls of Congress.

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform held a recent hearing about the Commanders many problems, including rampant sexual harassment of the team’s female employees.

Not surprising owner Dan Snyder was a no-show, leaving commissioner Roger Goodell to claim the team has transformed its culture.

But with Snyder in charge, that is debatable. The committee also revealed that the team conducted a shadow investigation designed at intimidating witnesses.

The obvious solution would be for the NFL to remove Snyder, but Goodell quickly pointed out he doesn’t have the power to do that — although he is not pushing the owners to do it, either. He doesn’t want to rock the boat.

Meanwhile, what was an iconic franchise has turned into a dumpster fire, which is not good for the league.

And then there is the lack of diversity in the coaching ranks, which led to the Brian Flores lawsuit. And there’s also the Jon Gruden lawsuit over the leaked emails that cost him the Raiders job.

On top of that there is Deshaun Watson, who will eventually play but isn’t going to help the league attract more women as fans.

And the league also got away with banning Colin Kaepernick, which will be a stain on the league in the future.

Despite all of these problems, they seem to have no effect on the league. The fans seem addicted to watching the games on TV and the TV money keeps exploding, especially with new platforms entering the bidding.

So as long as all the money keeps flowing in, the NFL can brush off all of its problems.

In 26 years ago as a head coach, Bill Belichick has never gone four years in a row without winning a playoff game.

Belichick is now on the cusp of doing that for the first time.

Last year was the third time he went without a playoff win for a third year in a row.

The first two times were his first three years with the Browns and then the 2008, 2009 and 2010 seasons with the Patriots. He won a playoff game in his fourth year with the Browns and then went 18-0 before losing the Super Bowl in 2011.

That is why this is such a critical year for Belichick and his future as a coach.

There are differing opinions where the Patriots are as a team. Fansided reported only three teams in the AFC – the Jets, Jaguars and Texans – are worse than the Patriots. And noted they have just one Pro Bowler, Matthew Judon, on defense.

And Belichick spent big in free agency last year, including signng two expensive tight ends, and still didn’t win a playoff game. And now he’s lost play-caller Josh McDaniel and maybe the job to Matt Patricia, who is noted more as a defensive coach.

And last year, they had a seven-game winning streak but then lost three of their last four and then were blown out in the playoffs by the Bills, 47-17.

Meanwhile, The Athletic’s view is that Belichick is getting too much grief.

Regardless, owner Bob Kraft seems to be getting impatient.

“More than anything, it bothers me that we haven’t won a playoff game the last three years,’’ Kraft said at the league meetings in March.

It may bother him more if they go a fourth year without winning a playoff game.

Now the question is whether Belichick can end his three-year drought and win a playoff game this year.

When owner Shad Khan first volunteered to have the Jaguars play in London every year, the team stressed it would be good for the bottom line.

In 2013, the Jaguars game in London accounted for 15.3 percent f their local revenue, twice the revenue for a game played in Jacksonville.

As it turns out, the game is no longer that lucrative.

Team president Mark Lamping recently told Ryan O’Halloran of the Denver Post, who worked in Jacksonville for the Florida Times-Union when the team started playing in London, that the percentage of local revenue has been dropping since then.

It dropped to 12.4 percent in 2015, 11.1 percent in 2016 and 11 percent in 2017 and this year will be in the high single digits or less than 10 percent.

He said the drop in percentage is because the team has raised revenue in Jacksonville with new productions and s stadium renovation and the value of the pound compared to the dollar has dropped. A pound was worth $1.60 in 2013 and is now worth $1.30.

Despite the dropping percentage, the Jaguars seem committed to playing every year in London.

But it begs the question of whether the game will put them at a competitive disadvantage if they become a contender.

This year the Jaguars are the only team that will play just seven of their 17 games at their home stadium.

Although home field advantage in the NFL isn’t what it once was, it will be interesting to compare what the Jaguars record will be in their 7 home games compared to their 10 road games, including the London game, which counts as a home game.

This year, it may not make much of a difference because the team is still in a rebuilding mode. In two years when the team should be a contender, we’ll see if it makes a difference.

There was no drama or second guessing when the Jaguars had the first pick in the draft last year.

The Jaguars had an easy choice because Trevor Lawrence was on top of virtually every draft board and was considered to be a generational quarterback.

And while Lawrence struggled in his first season on a bad team with poor coaching, the Jaguars still hope he will become a franchise quarterback who can lead to Super Bowl titles in the future.

But this year, it is a different story. There is no consensus top pick, and the Jaguars face a difficult decision. Do they go for an edge rusher like Aidan Hutchinson or Travon Walker, or do they go for an offensive tackle like Evan Neal?

And with no quarterback at the top of the draft, they probably can’t make a lucrative deal to trade down for extra picks.

Complicating things was a MMQB report that general manager Trent Baalke isn’t high on any of the projected top picks but can’t get a king’s ramsom for the top pick this year and worries he will be roasted if he doesn’t take Hutchinson. But it makes no sense to take him if Baalke isn’t sold on him.

If he takes Hutchinson, we may not know if he is really high on him but didn’t want to make a pick that that is considered risky. And another complication was a report that coach Doug Pederson prefers an offensive player.

Of course, there are no guarantees with the top pick. For every Terry Bradshaw, Troy Aikman and John Elway, there’s a JaMarcus Russell, Courtney Brown and Aundrey Bruce.

When the Jaguars make the top selection, they will close ranks and talk about how much they like the pick.

They can only hope he is an impact player.

If he isn’t, it will be fascinating to see if someone leaks the real story behind the pick.

The Super Bowl turned out pretty much the way it was expected to go.

It was a close game as expected and the Rams, who were slight favorites, won it by three and didn’t cover the spread.

They won it because their three key players, Matthew Stafford, Cooper Kupp and Aaron Donald, took control of the game on the final series for each team. Kupp got the MVP award but they could have shared it.

Stafford and Kupp led the game-winning drive and Donald blew up the Bengals final two plays.

Unfortunately, the officials, who let the two teams play for the first 58 minutes, got too involved at the end.

If not for a questionable pass interference penalty, the Rams would have faced a fourth-and-goal at the 8 with the game on the line instead of a first-and-goal at the 1.

But the Bengals also shot themselves in the foot several times, so they couldn’t blame the officials. To start with, coach Zac Taylor decided to go for it on fourth-and-1 at midfield on their first series. The Bengals didn’t convert and gave the Rams good field position for their first touchdown.

It turned out that running back Samaje Perine lined up on the wrong side, according to Phil Simms, bringing the linebacker to the side Joe Burrow was throwing the ball and enabling him to knock away the pass.

And Taylor only gave the ball to Joe Mixon 15 times even though he was averaged 4.8 yards a carry and the Bengals were in the lead much of the second half.

And Mixon wasn’t even on the field when the Bengals had a third-and-1 at midfield on their final drive. Perine got the call and Donald stopped him for no gain. Donald then forced a wild throw on fourth down and the Rams were the champions.

Now the question is where the teams will go from here. The odds are against both of them returning.

The Rams will try to repeat, which hasn’t been done since the Patriots did it in 2003-2004.

And the Bengals face the daunting task of becoming only the second team since the 1972 perfect Dolphins to win the Super Bowl after losing it the previous year. Tom Brady and the Patriots are the only team to do it since then.

And Burrow is trying to become the first quarterback to lose his first Super Bowl appearance and make it back the following year since Jim Kelly lost four in a row in the early 1990s.

Of the last 16 quarterbacks to lose their first Super Bowl start since then, none has returned as a starter. Drew Bledsoe made it back as Brady’s backup.

It was not surprising the close game got good TV ratings to set the stage for what the league hopes will be another good season next year now that a group of young quarterbacks are taking center stage.

But they also have off the field issues, including the discrimination lawsuit filed by former Miami coach Brian Flores, who also claims that owner Stephen Ross offered to pay him $100,000 a game to lose games for better draft position.

Ross denies the allegations but the league also has to find ways to get more minority coaches in the ranks of the head coaches.

The best storyline of this Super Bowl is that this will be the first one matching two quarterbacks taken with the first pick of the draft.

But that is about the only thing that Joe Burrow of the Bengals and Matthew Stafford of the Rams have in common.

Stafford spent 12 years with Detroit without winning a playoff game before being traded to the Rams and he is in the Super Bowl in his first year with them. A victory would feed the narrative that he never reached his potential because he had bad teams around him in Detroit.

It would also give coach Sean McVay his first Super victory after he and quarterback Jared Goff seemed overmatched ion his first Super Bowl appearance against the Patriots. A loss would give him an 0-2 Super Bowl record.

Burrow, by contrast, in his second year and he’s one of the young guns in the AFC along with Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Justin Herbert.

So far, Mahomes is more accomplished with four consecutive trips to the AFC title games with two wins and a 1-1 Super Bowl record.

But Mahones had a poor second half against the Bengals last week after throwing an ill advised pass at the end of the first half that cost the Chiefs a field goal.

Burrow led the team to the overtime victory after they overcame a 21-3 first half deficit.

A Super Bowl victory would put him in Tom Brady territory. He won the first of his seven Super Bowls in his second year.

One key to the game is whether the Bengals can protect Burrow, who was sacked nine times by the Titans. But even though they have Aaron Donald and Von Miller up front, the Rams are usually best at rushing the passer when they blitz.

On the other hand, Burrow is good at beating the blitz and the Rams have a shaky secondary except for Jalen Ramsey. So it figures to be an intriguing matchup and the stage probably isn’t too big for Burrow, who plays like a veteran.

The Rams are favored by four, but the game is likely to be closer than that even though the Rams have a home field edge.

Nobody will be surprised if this game goes to overtime or is decided on a field goal on the final play of regulation.

It has all the makings of a memorable Super Bowl.

The Los Angeles Rams were all in for a Super Bowl-or-bust run this year.

The Cincinnati Bengals were in what appeared to be the second year of a rebuilding program with quarterback Joe Burrow returning from the injury that he suffered last year.

Despite their different journeys, the two teams pulled off comebacks in the conference games to advance to this year’s Super Bowl.

The Bengals rallied from a 21-3 deficit to upset the Chiefs, 27-24, in overtime while the Rams were favored over the 49ers after losing six consecutive games to them and needed a fourth quarter comeback to post the victory, 20-17.

For both winners, there was a lot of vindication.

The Rams continued their policy of throwing draft picks around like confetti, and it worked.

Among the moves this season were trading for quarterback Matthew Stafford in the offseason and for defensive standout Von Miller during the season. Both were valuable additions to the team.

Stafford didn’t win a playoff in his 12 years with the Lions, but the Rams decided he would be an upgrade over Jared Goff. He had some ups and downs during the regular season as he threw 17 picks, but he threw only one in the playoffs.

For Bengals owner Mike Brown, the son of legendary coach Paul Brown, it was a chance to show he could put together a Super Bowl team.

The Bengals had gone 31 years without a playoff win. Marvin Lewis coached the team to the playoffs seven times in 16 years but didn’t win a playoff game. Brown and Lewis parted ways after the 2018 season.

And the drafting of Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase with their first picks the last two years helped coach Zac Taylor build a playoff team.

And both teams took advantage of blunders by the losing teams. Kansas City had a 21-10 lead with five seconds left in first half. Instead of taking the field goal, they tried a play that didn’t work. And in the second half, the Chiefs didn’t adjust when the Bengals used a 3-8 alignment and didn’t run the ball enough.

The 49ers had a fourth-and-2 in fourth quarter, leading by three. Instead of going for it, they punted and opened the door for the Rams comeback victory.

So now the Rams will host the Super Bowl in their home stadium. It never happened before last year when Tampa Bay played the Super Bowl against the Chiefs in their home stadium.

In 1979, the Rams played the Super Bowl in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena against the Steelers. The Rams led after three quarters but the Steelers rallied to win their fourth Super Bowl in the fourth quarter.

The Rams last made the Super Bowl after the 2018 season and lost to the Patriots. The Rams also made it twice when they were in St. Louis, beating the Titans in 1999 and lost to the Patriots in 2001.

Cincinnati is playing in its third Super Bowl and lost to the 49ers in its first two appearances in 1981 and 1988.

What can the NFL do for an encore?

After all four divisional round games ended on the final play last week, it will be difficult for the conference title games to top them, but they figure to be close.

The Rams host the 49ers and the Chiefs host the Bengals Sunday, and both home teams are slight favorites.

The interesting thing is that both games are rematches of games at the end of the season. The curious thing is that both underdogs won.

The 49ers beat the Rams for the sixth straight time in the final regular season game and the Bengals beat the Chiefs in the second-to-last game.

Three of the four coaches in the game —Andy Reid of the Chiefs, Sean McVay of the Rams and Kyle Shanahan of the 49ers — have lost Super Bowls. Reid has lost two but won one. McVay and Shanahan have yet to win one. Zac Taylor of the Bengals hasn’t been in a Super Bowl.

Shanahan was also the offensive coordinator of the Falcons when they infamously lost to the Patriots despite having a 28-3 lead in the second half.

The Chiefs are aiming for their third trip in a row to the Super Bowl and are playing in their fourth consecutive conference title game.

The Chiefs-Bengals game figures to be a shootout between Patrick Mahomes of the Chiefs and Joe Burrow of the Bengals although Joe Mixon also gives the Bengals a running threat.

The 49ers-Rams game features two quarterbacks in different situations. Jimmy Garoppolo could be playing his last game for the 49ers if they lose because the 49ers may be ready to move on to Trey Lance next year.

Matthew Stafford is in his first year with the Rams after failing to win a playoff game in 12 years in Detroit. Now he is trying to make his first Super Bowl.

The scores in their recent meetings were 27-24 49ers and 34-31 Bengals.

The NFL will be happy to have those scores again.