The 100 Greatest Plays in Dolphins History: No. 37

To help count down the days to the start of the Miami Dolphins regular season last year, we marked each day with the corresponding jersey number and came up with the three best players to wear that number.

This year, we're counting down to the start of the regular season with a countdown of the top 100 plays in Dolphins history.

Given that the Dolphins have played 849 regular season games and 41 more in the playoffs, it's an awfully difficult task to narrow things down to 100 plays and then rank them. The plays selected were ranked on the basis of difficulty, uniqueness, immediate and long-lasting impact and historical significance.

The countdown initially appeared in Dolphin Digest in 2019 but has been updated.

We continue with No. 37:

No. 37: Olindo Mare's Game-Winning Field Goal at Denver in 2002

Setting the stage: Since the start of the new millennium, there might not have been a season that offered more early promise than 2002 when new running back Ricky Williams helped the Dolphins start off 4-1 heading into a Sunday night matchup against the Broncos in Denver. The Broncos also were 4-1 at the time with their offense run by quarterback Brian Griese, who joined his Hall of Fame father's former team the next season. The Dolphins appeared on their way to a comfortable victory when Patrick Surtain's 40-yard pick-six gave them a 21-12 lead halfway through the fourth quarter, but instead they would need a fantastic finish to pull out the win.

The play: Griese rebounded from the pick-six to lead Denver to 10 points over its next two offensive possessions, the last coming on Jason Elam's 55-yard field goal with 50 seconds left. That wasn't a whole of time for the Dolphins to respond, although they did have two timeouts left. Things looked particularly bleak after two Jay Fiedler incompletions left the Dolphins in a third-and-10 situation from their own 26-yard line with 29 seconds remaining. But then Fiedler connected on a 17-yard pass to tight end Randy McMichael before the second timeout and then a 22-yard hook-up with Dedric Ward to the Denver 35 before the third timeout with 11 seconds left. Instead of risking having the clock run out, head coach Dave Wannstedt sent kicker Olindo Mare onto the field and he nailed a 53-yard game-winning field goal to give the Dolphins a 24-22 victory in the first game ever to feature two field goals of at least 50 yards in the final minute. The victory would prove costly, though, because Fiedler sustained a broken thumb and have to sit out the next three games, all of which the Dolphins lost on their way to a disappointing 9-7 finish that kept them out of the playoffs.