When Tom Landry addressed his football team for the final time, fittingly in the locker room at Texas Stadium on Feb. 27, 1989, he broke down in the midst of saying he'd miss them. After the franchise patriarch that guided the Cowboys from expansion infancy to "America's Team" composed himself, he said they'd forget about him in two weeks.
It's been nearly two decades since that fateful day and of course, the legendary Landry has not been forgotten by any of his former players, not to mention the sports world in general. For in the lexicon of professional football in this country there are perhaps only a handful of men who have influenced the sport more than the late, great Landry and some would debate whether the list is even that long.
To this day, no coach in NFL history has won more postseason games than Landry's 20 while his 250 regular-season career victories rank third behind just Don Shula and George Halas. And only Chuck Noll, Bill Walsh, Joe Gibbs and Bill Belichick have won more Super Bowls. However, perhaps Landry's most impressive on-field coaching accomplishment was guiding the Cowboys to a still-standing NFL record 20 consecutive winning seasons from 1966-85. He also won 13 divisional titles and five NFC crowns.
"Coach Landry was a real gentleman," Cowboys Ring of Honor linebacker Lee Roy Jordan said recently. "He was down to earth. I really believe he was admired by those who played for him. Coach Landry was a positive-type person, he believed in the team, the team-concept. It wasn't about the individual. We were a team."
Jordan was among the few players fortunate enough to play for both Paul "Bear" Bryant at Alabama and Landry. He spent each of his 14 NFL seasons with the Cowboys from 1963-76 and was considered the leader of the iconic "Doomsday Defense" that anchored Dallas to a pair of Super Bowl wins.
"One of the deals with Coach Landry was that we never felt like we were out of a game," Jordan said. "In fact, the more we were behind, it seemed like he pulled out more plays. For the most part, he was a conservative coach, especially if we were ahead or in the first halves of games. I honestly thought Coach Landry was a lot better coach when we were behind than when we were ahead.
"If there was a second left, we still thought we could win because we knew he had his bag of tricks for those situations."
There was literally no situation on a football field for which Landry didn't have an original idea, as arguably only Paul Brown has offered the game more innovation. Among some of his more famous initiatives were the Flex defense and strength and conditioning coaches while he's also credited with the popularization of the Shotgun formation and situational substitutions.
And, of course, there was the suit and fedora he wore on the sidelines for nearly every game of his 29-year tenure as head coach of the Cowboys. The image of his fedora marks the highway signs bearing his name on Interstate 30. Fittingly, the Cowboys new stadium, set to open next season, resides adjacent to the Tom Landry Highway in Arlington.
"I admire and respect Coach Landry to this day," former Cowboys wide receiver Preston Pearson said. "I am just so appreciative of what he did for me. It doesn't get any better in this sport than playing for Coach Landry. I was among the fortunate ones."
Thomas Wade Landry was born on Sept. 11, 1924 in Mission, Texas, which is located in the Rio Grande Valley. His parents, Ray - an auto mechanic and volunteer fireman - and Ruth, had previously moved from Illinois in the hopes that the warmer weather would help with his father's muscular rheumatism. A football player from an early age, Landry led Mission High School to a 12-0 mark and a regional championship in 1941. He played quarterback, safety and punter and earned a football scholarship to the University of Texas.
After just one year with the Longhorns, Landry headed to Europe for World War II where he flew 30 missions as a B-17 pilot with the Air Force. He returned to the Austin campus in 1947 and quickly changed positions with Bobby Layne firmly entrenched as the team's quarterback. A two-year starter at defensive back and team captain in 1948, Landry finished his collegiate career in stellar fashion by rushing for 117 yards on just 17 carries in place of starting fullback Ray Borneman as Texas stunned Georgia, 41-28, in the Orange Bowl.
As a rookie in the All-America Conference, the 6-1, 195-pound Landry was a backup running back and punter for the New York Yankees in '49. The team and league folded, which via territorial rights landed Landry with the Giants. Despite being as slow as some of the team's linemen, Landry went on to earn All-Pro and Pro Bowl honors as a cornerback.
However, even as a player, Landry was always coaching, always looking to gain an advantage and more times than not, diagramming defensive schemes that his teammates followed without question. After two seasons as a player-assistant coach, Landry - who finished with 32 career interceptions in 80 games - made the transition to full-time defensive coordinator in 1956 and immediately suggested a never-before-seen defensive alignment that virtually every NFL team employs to this day, the 4-3. Before that, defenses were anchored by five-man fronts. Landry also became the first coordinator or coach of any kind to signal plays in from the sidelines.
Thing is, while Landry was breaking ground as a defensive coach under Giants head man Jim Lee Howell, the team's offensive coordinator was Vince Lombardi. From 1954-60, the Giants played in three NFL titles games including a 47-7 defeat of George Halas and the Chicago Bears in 1956.
Landry once said of his early-found love of coaching defense, "Even when I was still playing offense, I felt defense was the most challenging part of the game. The offense has its plays diagramed for it and knows ahead of time exactly what it has to do. On the other hand, the defense must constantly anticipate and react.
"On defense, you have to accept the fact that you're going to give the other guy the first shot, the initial advantage. Trying to figure out a way to take some of that advantage away from him was always the most intriguing part of the game for me."
When Landry passed away of leukemia at 75 years of age on Feb. 12, 2000, hardly a story was written that didn't mention that he never intended on becoming a football coach. After receiving his bachelor's degree in business from Texas in 1949, Landry also secured an industrial engineering degree from the University of Houston in '52 and he fully intended on becoming an engineer when his playing career ended. Landry often said that coaching was "too insecure."
Still, when the chance to guide his own team, from scratch no less, came about, Landry accepted. It helped that the offer was in Dallas, as Landry ran an insurance business there in the offseason. And so it was that on Dec. 27. 1959, owner Clint Murchison Jr. and general manager Tex Schramm announced Landry as the first head coach of the Dallas Cowboys.
Success was anything but immediate, as could be expected with an expansion franchise. The inaugural season of 1960 concluded at 0-11-1 with Landry later saying, "Our quarterback (Eddie LeBaron) used to raise his hand for a fair catch before taking the snap."
And while improvement came, it was slow developing, but nonetheless Murchison and Schramm never lost confidence in Landry. On Feb. 5, 1964, after Landry had compiled a 13-38-3 record over four seasons, he was awarded an unprecedented 10-year contract.
"That was the most significant thing that ever happened to me. I'm sure when that happened there were a lot of shocked reporters in that room," Landry told The Dallas Morning News in 1989. "It came as a surprise. Everybody thought Clint was going to make a coaching change. From then on, I really dedicated myself to be a football coach.
"Clint Murchison was so important to the long streak we had. He never put pressure on me, never asked me a question in all those years. Anytime we got in a slump, he was the first to write a note with something clever. Today, everybody panics after two or three years."
Two seasons after the stunning extension, Dallas went 10-3-1 with Landry being named the 1966 NFL Coach of the Year.
The glory years came in the 1970s, with the Cowboys appearing in five Super Bowls over a nine-season stretch, culminating with victories in VI and XII. They finished a game shy of returning to the big game three consecutive seasons from 1980-82 before missing the playoffs altogether in four of Landry's final five years. Dallas finished 3-13 in his last season of 1988, the team's worst mark since that initial 1960 campaign.
After Landry's incredible 29-year run ended, the accolades from opposing coaches poured in with Pittsburgh's Chuck Noll saying, "You always had to spend a lot of extra time preparing to play Tom Landry's teams," while former Philadelphia Eagles coach Dick Vermeil, who later won a Super Bowl with the St. Louis Rams, said, "We based our whole program on beating Tom Landry. It was respect for him that motivated us. I always felt that the Cowboys were the best-disciplined team, especially on game day."
Landry's legacy in the NFL has been more far-reaching than just the plethora of innovations that are still used today, as several of his assistant coaches went on to success at both the NFL and college levels. Mike Ditka and Dan Reeves combined for 311 wins and five Super Bowl appearances while Gene Stallings won a National Championship with Alabama in 1992. Other assistant coaches turned NFL head men included Raymond Berry, who led the New England Patriots against Ditka's Bears in Super Bowl XX, former Texas Longhorns coach John Mackovic and Dick Nolan.
"Everything I believed in as a head coach, I learned from Coach Landry," Ditka once said.
Off the field, Landry was a deeply religious man, one who based much of his beliefs around faith and family. After his coaching career concluded in 1989, along with his wife, Alicia, he devoted a great deal of his time to charitable foundations, including the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and motivational speaking. He also continued a lifelong hobby of flying by piloting his own Cessna 210.
The ultimate honor in terms of football came when Landry was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1990. His Canton bio reads in part, "Noted for impassive, sideline demeanor." And while that was accurate, that wasn't necessarily Landry the person.
"People based their judgments just on what they saw on the sideline," Landry once said. "The way I trained myself to concentrate, I blanked everything else out. You can't show emotion. I trained from watching Ben Hogan. He never let his concentration break. That's why Roger (Staubach) was so good. The image never bothered me too much. My friends know me."
Landry was inducted into the Cowboys Ring of Honor on Nov. 7, 1993, when fittingly, the opponent at Texas Stadium was the New York Giants. A statue bearing his likeness, playbook in hand and all, resides in front of the main entrance at Texas Stadium.
"Tom Landry is the finest coach to ever coach in professional football," Staubach said.
And rest assured, today, tomorrow and forever, Tom Landry will never be forgotten.
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