Scott Mitchell

What was it like to play for Don Shula?

“I didn’t really fully appreciate how good of a coach he was until after I left Miami. We did the same thing every day. We had the same schedule, it never changed, and it probably never changed the whole time he was there throughout his entire career. He really didn’t ever run a play in the game that he just didn’t have a 100 percent confidence in that he hadn’t practiced that you know was going to work. He put a lot of onus on the quarterback having responsibility. You were responsible to get the team into a good play. From day one he said call your own plays in practice ... I didn’t even know any of the plays and I had to call my own plays and he did that for two reasons: to make you learn the offense but also to call the plays you had confidence in and I didn’t really fully appreciate all those things until I went other places and other people just didn’t do those things and how complicated they made things and how hard and how they really took that instinct out of you and just made you more of a robot-type thing. You had to learn new offenses almost every week. He just drilled the fundamentals into you and you just did the same thing over and over. It could become boring but it was very effective and he brought out the best in his players.”