as offensive coordinator for the NFL's Miami Dolphins under Don Shula, helping the team achieve an undefeated, Super Bowl-winning season in 1972. Schnellenberger served as head coach of the NFL's Baltimore Colts from 1973 to 1974. At the outset of his tenure, Howard Schnellenberger announced to his staff and players his intention to win a national championship within five years, a bold claim for a program that was seemingly on its last legs. His five-year plan had two main priorities: installing a pro-style passing offense and upgrading the talent level on the roster through a new recruiting strategy aimed at heavily targeting the best local talent from the city of Miami and the region of South Florida, a strategy that would drastically change national recruiting in the state of Florida in the coming years. On the recruiting front, Schnellenberger spoke of mining the "State of Miami", which entailed fencing off the fertile South Florida recruiting base from other programs and cherry-picking the rest of the nation for a few choice recruits. To help with the new pro-style offense, Schnellenberger hired former Baltimore Colts quarterback Earl Morrall as a volunteer quarterbacks coach. Schnellenberger also sought to exploit the freedom provided by Miami's independent schedule to gain "intersectional exposure" and make the program "national." On the field, Miami went 5–6 in Schnellenberger's debut season, which was highlighted by a 26–10 upset win at No. 16 Penn State in which redshirt freshman Jim Kelly threw for 280 yards and three touchdowns in his first career start as Miami's quarterback. Schnellenberger set a bowl berth as the goal of the 1980 campaign and the team made good on its head coach's expectations, winning nine games and earning a trip to the 1981 Peach Bowl, where the Hurricanes defeated Virginia Tech 20–10. The bowl berth was Miami's first since 1967 and the team finished the season ranked 18th in both the AP and Coaches' Polls. Miami continued to improve in 1981, going 9–2 and defeating No. 1 Penn State 17–14 in a late-October game at the Orange Bowl. In the season's final game, the Hurricanes topped rival Notre Dame for the first time since 1960, 37–15, finishing the season eighth in the AP Poll. The following season, the team finished with four losses following Kelly's shoulder injury. Entering the 1983 season—the fifth of Schnellenberger's tenure—the program had to find a replacement for the recently graduated