Tour Day 3: Are the '72 Dolphins the Best Ever?

As we head to Nashville, let's talk about football's greatest teams and baseball's playoff races.

In the air heading for Nashville and my event tonight at Parnassus Books with Andrew Maraniss.

Had a great Wednesday night at the Smithsonian with Brilliant Reader Phil Hochberg and an incredible panel of Hall of Famers that included longtime Washington Post writer Len Shapiro, former football commissioner Paul Tagliabue, and one of NFL Films’ 100 greatest players ever, Darrell Green.

It was a wide-ranging football discussion, lots of fun stuff to talk about, but for me, the moment of the evening came when Phil asked everybody to name “one team, one year, best ever.” Unfortunately, he went to me first, and I looked around the stage and silently guessed that everybody else would definitely pick some team from long ago. And I realized that if I was going to be true to my beliefs about football, I’d have to say something likely to be pretty unpopular with the group.

So I did. I said that the obvious “one team, one year” choice is the 1985 Bears, because of the way they dominated both the football scene and the cultural scene. But because of the way football has changed, I said that the best team ever was probably last year’s Chiefs, because football changes so dramatically from one year to the next—much less from one decade to the next—and when you consider the awesomeness of the athletes, the training methods, the complicated schemes, teams from 40 of 50 years ago, simply transported to today, wouldn’t be able to match up.

It turns out, I was right about that being an unpopular choice. Darrell Green, in particular, was mortified at the idea that the 2023 Chiefs (who, admittedly, were not even as good as some previous Chiefs teams) would have beaten the 1985 Bears. I totally get it. But at the same time, here are the heights and weights of the 1985 Bears’ offensive linemen:

LT: Jimbo Covert, 6-foot-4, 277 pounds
LG: Mark Bortz, 6-foot-6, 282 pounds
C: Jay Hilgenberg, 6-foot-3, 259 pounds
RG: Tom Thayer, 6-foot-4, 271 pounds
RT: Keith Van Horne, 6-foot-6, 281 pounds

AND, here are the heights and weights of the 2023 Chiefs offensive linemen:

LT: Donovan Smith, 6-foot-6, 338 pounds
LG: Joe Thuney, 6-foot-6, 304 pounds
C: Creed Humphrey, 6-foot-4, 302 pounds
RG: Trey Smith, 6-foot-6, 321 pounds
RT: Jawaan Taylor, 6-foot-5, 330 pounds

Different game. For the record, the panelists’ answers to the one-team, one-year question were:

Darrell Green: 1991 Washington. I mean, that’s the right answer for him—he totally should pick a team he was on.

Paul Tagliabue: 1970s Pittsburgh and 1980s San Francisco. I totally loved that he gave such a fantastic commissioner answer—one team, one year, and he chose two teams over multiple years.

Len Shapiro: 1972 Dolphins. Somebody on the stage was bound to choose the undefeated Dolphins, but I feel quite sure that when Len said that a little piece of Michael Schur died.

Oh, I should mention two quick things about my stop in D.C.:

First, we ate at Clyde’s, which was good, but the main point is that they have a gigantic Babe Ruth mural as you enter the restaurant. I’m not sure why, but I’ll find out (and probably some of you already know). But it was cool.

Last night, at our hotel in Washington, there was a gigantic lion’s head above our bed. I don’t have any idea why.

This is a short flight, so let’s do a very quick baseball playoff update: