DAVIE, Fla. -- Eugene "Mercury" Morris, the starting running back for the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins, has never been shy to boast about his team's accomplishments.
On Tuesday, Morris took it a step further: He said he believes Miami's NFL record will last forever.
"Let me say, I think that it's been so long and that it's happened one time that people still don't get it," Morris said at the Dolphins' training facility. "Some things that happen once in life, they won't happen twice.
"It's strange that the media has a fixation with wanting to see this to happen in their own space so they can say they were part of what they saw in terms of this [1972] team."
Every NFL team has lost this year, which means Miami's record stands for the 41st consecutive season. There are several variables that make it more challenging to go undefeated in today's NFL.
First, there are more games. The Dolphins went 17-0 in 1972. Today, a team would have to go 19-0. Second, free agency changed the landscape to where it's more difficult to put an elite team together.
Morris said the key to the '72 Dolphins was that they never set out to go undefeated.
"Today, that's the conversation when you get 6-0, 7-0, 8-0, 9-0. ... Can you go unbeaten?" Morris said. "When you make that your goal, you create from the other side a way in which they can rise up with their emotions to beat you because their game against you becomes 'The Game.' We were underdogs after 15, 16 games in a row. We were underdogs in the Super Bowl."
The 2007 New England Patriots were the closest team to matching the '72 Dolphins. New England went 18-1 with a loss in the Super Bowl to the New York Giants.
Morris is confident Miami's record is forever safe.
"Bill Parcells said it: You are who your record says you are," Morris said. "What's hard to take is that fact. So there's not going to be somebody else that's going to come along and match it."
Morris will be one of four players inducted into the team's "Walk of Fame" on Dec. 29. Morris will join former Dolphins Keith Sims, O.J. McDuffie and Kim Bokamper.