Legendary NFL running back Jim Kiick, who played key-role in Miami Dolphins’ perfect 17-0 season, dies aged 73 after battle with Alzheimer’s disease

Jim Kiick, the versatile running back who helped the Miami Dolphins achieve the NFL’s only perfect season in 1972, has died at the age of 73, the team announced Saturday.

No cause of death was specified by the Dolphins, however his daughter Allie, a profession tennis player, revealed that the two-time Super Bowl winner had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease three years ago.

The former University of Wyoming star was an integral member of the 1972 Dolphins team that went 17-0 and won Super Bowl VII, before retaining the trophy the following year.

Pro Football Hall of Famer Larry Csonka and Mercury Morris.

Kiick and Csonka earned the nicknames Butch and Sundance for their off-field shenanigans, a nod to the 1969 outlaw movie ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’.

Kiick and Csonka were often coy on the obvious question of which one was Butch Cassidy and which was the Sundance Kid.

‘Same answer I tell everybody,’ Kiick once told a reported. ‘I was the better-looking guy. Whether it’s Butch or Sundance, which was Paul Newman and Robert Redford, either way, you couldn’t lose.’

Kiick – or ‘Butch’ – was a fifth-round draft pick in 1968, spending the first seven of his nine NFL seasons in Miami – making the American Football League All-Star team in his first two years.

He ran for 3,644 yards and piled up another 2,210 receiving with the Dolphins, scoring 31 total touchdowns. His 28 rushing touchdowns are sixth on the Dolphins’ all-time list, with teammates Csonka and Morris among the few ahead of him.

Kiick had two touchdowns for the ’72 Dolphins in the AFC championship game, and also scored in the Super Bowl victory that capped their 17-0 season under Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Don Shula.

Kiick also was an excellent blocker and a threat as a receiver. He had 233 career receptions for 2,302 yards.

After the club repeated the following season, Kiick played one more season, in 1974, then left for the Memphis Southmen of the short-lived World Football League with Csonka.

But after the WFL folded during the 1975 season, Kiick returned to the NFL and played with the Denver Broncos and Washington Redskins over the 1976 and ’77 seasons before retiring.

In all, he finished his NFL career with 3,759 yards rushing, 2,302 yards receiving and 33 total touchdowns.

Days before his death, on Thursday, Allie had tweeted that her father was in an assisted-living facility and that because of the COVID-19 pandemic, he was not allowed any visitors.

‘This isn’t a sympathy post but I really miss my dad,’ Allie Kiick tweeted, along with a screenshot of a message she posted about her dad’s condition. ‘I’m hoping that maybe seeing things from a different perspective helps people understand. #COVID19’

Reporting that her father’s health was ‘declining rapidly’, Allie continued: ‘I miss my dad. Every time I see him, he says, ‘I miss you.’ It’s pretty hard when you’re sitting on the outside of the glass and you can’t do anything to cheer him up. He’s lost the spark in his eyes as would anyone in his situation.’

Kiick was born in Lincoln Park, New Jersey, in 1946. His father, George Kiick, played for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Kiick went on to become a three-sport star at Boonton High School.

He went on to play for the Wyoming Cowboys and led the team in rushing in each of his three seasons, earning first-team All-Western Athletic Conference honors in all three.

In 1968, he was selected to play in the College All-Star Game, where he first met Csonka. Both were drafted by Miami that same year.

After retirement, Kiick went to work as a private investigator in the Broward County Public Defenders’ Office, the Miami Herald reported.

Although Kiick was overshadowed by his best friend, Csonka, and Mercury Morris, a dynamic 1,000-yard rusher, he will forever be remembered in Dolphins history, for his skill on the field and escapades off of it.

‘He is the best dad I could have ever asked for, and will forever be a legend and my hero,’ Allie Kiick wrote after his death.

Kiick’s passing comes just two-and-a-half months after the death of the coach of the Dolphins unbeaten 1972 team, Don Shula, who passed away on May 4 aged 90.