Shula doesn\u2019t get credit<\/a> for a pair of victories in the Playoff Bowl, a third-place game the NFL staged in the 1960s. Shula won it twice with the Colts, capping the 1965 and 1966 seasons.<\/p>\nIn 1965, Shula\u2019s Colts beat the Cowboys. The next year, Shula\u2019s Colts beat the Eagles.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s silly to say it\u2019s a vacation deal,\u201d Shula said after the 1966 game, per Hyde. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t ask for more desire or effort, and that goes for both teams.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Playoff Bowl eventually yielded to the Pro Bowl. But Shula\u2019s victories were wins that happened in the NFL postseason. They should count as postseason wins.<\/p>\n
By way of example, Kylian Mbapp\u00e9\u2019s two goals in Saturday\u2019s World Cup third-place game count toward his 2026 World Cup total and all-time World Cup total, giving him both the Golden Boot for the most goals in the latest tournament and the all-time World Cup goal record, with one more than Lionel Messi.<\/p>\n
Without those two goals in a \u201cmeaningless\u201d game, Messi would have won the Golden Boot \u2014 and Messi would hold the record for the most World Cup goals.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t matter that the NFL would never again<\/a> have a third-place game. It once did. And it was a playoff game, at a time when the NFL staged far fewer playoff games than it now does. Those two wins from the 1965 and 1966 Playoff Bowl should be added to Shula\u2019s record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If\/when someone seriously challenges Hall of Fame head coach Don Shula\u2019s all-time win record, the magic number shouldn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-774493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}