You got me there ethurst. Joe Thomas drafted Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick, Dick Anderson, Bill Stanfill, Jake Scott, Nick Buoniconti and Mercury Morris, as well as orchestrated the trades for Larry Little and Paul Warfield.
Joe Thomas also operated on a shoestring budget. Joe Robbie didn't pay top money for athletes back then because he couldn't afford to until later on so Thomas hit the highway (literally) to search for athletes. The Dolphins, during their first few years of existence, didn't even have scouting reports on most college players and didn't join BLESTO (Where you could obtain scouting reports and film and information on college prospects until the AFL-NFL merger) in 1970.
What's amazing is that WITHOUT modern day tools of the time is that Thomas also aquired Jim Langer, Bob Kuechenberg, Wayne Moore, Norm Evans (through expansion) Dick Anderson, Manny Fernandez (Free Agent) Mike Kolen, Curtis Johnson, Tim Foley, Lloyd Mumphord, Bob Matheson (who the 53 defense was named after) and the original Dolphin, Howard Twilley. This list goes on and on. His success rate in drafting and aquisitions, if you put a percentage to it , hovers around 97%. the Warfield trade was just icing on the cake.
And to show you how great Warfield was, during his time in the NFL, defensive backs could pretty much maul you past five yards coming off the line of scrimmage but yet, Warfield was smooth as butter. No one could cover him. If you put Warfield in Jerry Rice's era (which I call, the era of passing), he probably would have had more touchdowns and yards that Rice. Warfield also had world class speed and was a devastating blocker.
And not only did Thomas draft players but he also gave a young personnel director named Bobby Beatherd training under the Dolphins as a GM. What did Beatherd do? Help construct Super Bowl teams with Joe Gibbs (Washington Redskins) and in San Diego (1994 Chargers). The Redskins in the 1980's were considered along with the 49ers, the decades best managers as far as player aquisitions.
So when Shula got to Miami, he had a stacked deck.
And that's not including some pre 1970 Dolphins that either retired or went somewhere else and became stars like Jimmy Warren (Raiders), Joe Auer (who retired), Wahoo McDaniel (retired and went into wrestling) and Dick Westmoreland who still holds the Dolphin interception record with 10 in a season. The closest person ever to get to that was Sam Madison in 1998.
The only other personnel people that started from scratch and turned teams into powerhouses was the Steelers (Art and Dan Rooney 1969-1980), the Cowboys (the first team to use draft simulations by computers (with Tex Schramm and Gil Brandt 1969- 1980) the Walsh/DeBartelo team in San Francisco (1979 - 1989) and Ron Wolf (Raiders and Green Bay Packers) who Parcells in probably getting advice from these days in an unofficial capacity.
Shula should have never taken the job as GM. He's a coach, not a GM and because of this, I felt that Miami cheated themselves but Shula, in a way had to because of Tim Robbie and his siblings fighting over the will of Joe Robbie after his death. Robbie spent more time in court and on the beach rather than the GM's chair so I guess that Shula had to do it by default.
Simply put, Joe Thomas was the best GM that the Dolphins ever had. That's why I'm not sold on the fact that Parcells is the best thing that ever happened to the Miami Dolphins. For one, we don't know how he's going to pan out. Even though you have free agency these days and a salary cap, he'd have to hit on a lot of picks and transactions like Thomas did to surpassed his success.
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