Bob Kuechenberg looked like a grizzled veteran long before he actually was one. The Notre Dame product was taken in the fourth round by the Philadelphia Eagles in 1969, but he quit during training camp and spent a year playing semi-pro. The Dolphins signed him in 1970, and he found a home in pro football for the next fourteen seasons.

Once he arrived in Miami he settled in as a starter on the left side of the line. He helped the Dolphins reach three straight Super Bowls in the early 1970s and win the last two. He made four Pro Bowls during that stretch of the decade and earned first-team All-Pro honors in 1978. Late in his career he returned to the Pro Bowl in his final two seasons, 1982 and 1983, and gave a rebounding team a steady presence on an offensive line that was otherwise turning over.

Kuechenberg could be difficult. Teammates and coaches described him as moody, and he was never shy about voicing his opinions. None of that changed the fact that he did the job well for a long time. He played through injuries, including a broken arm in Super Bowl VIII, and still held up against high-level defensive linemen. Don Shula later called him one of the toughest players he coached and noted how rarely he was flagged for holding across more than a decade of snaps.

He spent nearly his entire career in Miami, starting 176 of the 196 games he played and appearing in a franchise-record 19 playoff games at the time. The line around him changed, the quarterbacks changed, and the team’s window closed and reopened, but Kuechenberg kept lining up. When the Dolphins made it back to the Super Bowl in the strike-shortened 1982 season, he was still there.

He was a finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame eight times but never got the call. The Dolphins added him to their Honor Roll in 1995. He died in 2019 at age 71.