A.J. Duhe

Sport: Football

Induction Year: 2001

University: LSU

Induction Year: 2001

By Bob Tompkins

A.J. Duhe, blessed since his youth with a will to win and the gift of gab, remembers a game in his splendid rookie season with the NFL’s Miami Dolphins when he showcased both traits.

The year was 1977. Duhe, the feisty Cajun from Reserve, was nearing the end of a season he capped as the NFL’s Defensive Rookie of the Year. He led the Dolphins in sacks with seven and made 83 tackles.

It was a season when he validated Miami’s faith in him from the previous draft. The Dolphins made him their first-round choice out of LSU, where he averaged 72 tackles a season in four years and was twice an Academic All-Southeastern Conference honoree.

Years later, Duhe reflected on his football career from his office in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., where he works for the Crystal Palace Casino in Nassau, The Bahamas. His job is to market events and recruit high rollers to the gambling parlor.

“It was a Thanksgiving Day game against the St. Louis Cardinals,” Duhe reminisced. “They were on a six- or seven-game winning streak, and we were a young team defensively with five or six guys who were either true rookies or second-year guys who had not played to any significant degree the year before.

“There was talk of St. Louis going to the Super Bowl, and we were pumped.”

It showed, too. Bob Griese threw six touchdown passes, and the Dolphins set club records for points (55) and yards (503) in a 55-14 rout.

“We sacked (Cardinals quarterback Jim) Hart six or seven times, and I was the Ragin’ Cajun running my mouth all the time,” Duhe said. “That was my way of getting involved, and it kind of ticked off some of their guys like Conrad Dobler and Tom Banks. Dobler was talking to me later about that game, and he said they were saying in the huddle, ‘We’ve got to shut this young punk up.'”

With a few minutes left in the game, a bench-clearing fight broke out, and it was all on video and taped. Back then, if you got fined $50 or $100, it was a big deal. Two or three days later, coach (Don) Shula got word the game resulted in the largest fines in NFL history because so many people were involved.

“My name didn’t get called at all, and everybody couldn’t believe it because they said I started it all,” he said. “But when they looked at the tape, I was at the bottom of the pile.”

Duhe was a defensive lineman at the time, and the Dolphins’ defensive coordinator was future LSU head coach Bill Arnsparger. He had gotten an early look at Duhe as an assistant coach for the South team at the Senior Bowl the previous January.

“We saw him work for a week and got to see him prepare and learn, and we got to learn more about his ability,” Arnsparger recalled.

“We started him as a lineman, but eventually moved him to linebacker,” said Arnsparger, who will give the presenting speech for Duhe when he is inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. “The last time I talked with him, he said he said we should have had him there all along.” Duhe moved from lineman to linebacker during Larry Gordon’s 1980 training camp holdout.

“We needed someone at linebacker, and we realized he had the ability to do it,” Arnsparger said of the position change, which reportedly was prompted by the suggestion of a Miami sportswriter.

“When they called me in to tell me of the change, I thought it was almost like the kiss of death,” Duhe said. “I thought this was the writing on the wall – a sign that my career was pretty much over.”

The game was changing then, with offensive and defensive linemen starting to outweight him by 20 pounds or more.

“(Arnsparger) kind of nursed me along at a tough time of my career,” Duhe said.

Duhe began the 1980 season as an outside linebacker but moved inside by the third game. He made 84 tackles that season and tied for the team lead with 5 1/2 sacks.

The following year, he finished second on the team in tackles with 110 (61 solos) and added 71/2 sacks. He earned two game balls that season and was named first team All-AFC by UPI.

Perhaps his finest hour as a pro was the AFC Championship game on Jan. 23, 1983. Duhe intercepted three Richard Todd passes and returned one 35 yards for a touchdown in a 14-0 win over the New York Jets.

“That’s one of my fondest memories,” he said. “We had beaten them twice already that season and everybody was saying nobody can beat the same team three times in the same season.

“Coach Arnsparger did a great job with the game preparation,” Duhe said, “and there were some things he did that enabled me to be in position to make the plays.”

Duhe has three children, including oldest son Adam III, a rising senior defensive end for Ft. Lauderdale’s St. Thomas Aquinas High football team. Duhe doesn’t hesitate when asked what was the toughest part of his career.

“The toughest thing was being told (before the ’85 season) that I wasn’t going to be a part of the team anymore,” he said, noting five operations over an 18-month period to his knee, ankle and shoulder made him expendable to the Dolphins.

It took him years to erase the bitterness of ending his career. He said had he been allowed one season to recuperate, he could’ve returned to play well for a few more years.

The end came hard, but it didn’t come as soon as he initially feared, thanks to the chance he received to extend his career at linebacker.

“It was a slow transition, but it worked out good for me,” Duhe said of the move. “It could’ve been my last dance, but it turned out I had a couple of more encores.”