Tom Landry

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Thomas Wade Landry (September 11, 1924 – February 12, 2000) was an American football player and coach.

Contents

1 Pre-NFL years
2 NFL Player career
3 NFL Coaching career

3.1 The 4-3 defense

4 Beyond the NFL
5 External links

Pre-NFL years

Landry was born and raised in Mission, Texas, the son of a mechanic (and volunteer fireman). He attended the University of Texas in Austin, but interrupted his education after a semester to serve in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II as a B-17 bomber pilot, flying 30 missions and surviving a crash landing in Belgium. Following the war, he returned to the university and played fullback and defensive back on the Texas Longhorns' bowl game winners on New Year's Day of 1948 and 1949. He received his bachelor's degree in 1949.

NFL Player career

Landry became a defensive back in the AAFC in 1949 for the New York Yankees, then moved in 1950 across town to the New York Giants. In 1954 he was selected as an all-pro. He played through the 1955 season, and acted as a player-assistant coach the last two years, 1954-1955. Landry ended his playing career with 32 interceptions in only 80 games.

NFL Coaching career

For 1956 Landry became the defensive coordinator, opposite Vince Lombardi as offensive coordinator, with the Giants where he led one of the best defensive teams in the league from 1956 to 1959. The two coaches created a fanatical loyalty within the unit they coached that drove the Giants to three appearances in the NFL championship game in four years. The Giants beat the Chicago Bears 47-7 in 1956, but lost to the Baltimore Colts in 1958 and 1959.

In 1960 he became the first head coach of the Dallas Cowboys and stayed for 29 seasons (1960-88). During this run he won 2 Super Bowl titles (1972,78), 5 NFC titles, 13 Divisional titles; and compiled a 270-178-6 record, the 3rd most wins of all time for an NFL coach. His 20 career playoff victories are the most of any coach in NFL history. He was the NFL Coach of the Year in 1966 and the NFC Coach of the Year in 1975. But one of the most impressive accomplishments is his record for coaching a team to 20 consecutive winning seasons (1966-1985), an NFL record, and one of the longest winning streaks in "all" of professional sports. Throughout his tenure, Landry worked closely with the Cowboys general manager, Tex Schramm. The two were together during Landry's entire tenure with the team. A third member of the Cowboys braintrust in this time was Gil Brandt.

The 4-3 defense

Tom Landry invented the now-popular "4-3 Defense", while serving as Giants defensive coordinator. It was called "4-3" because it featured four down lineman (two ends and two defensive tackles on either side of the offensive center) and three linebackers -- middle, left, and right. The innovation was the middle linebacker. Previously, a lineman was placed over the center. But Landry had this person stand up and move back two yards. The Giants middle linebacker was the legendary Sam Huff.

Landry also popularized and invented the use of keys -- analyzing offensive tendencies -- to determine what the offense might do.

When Landry was hired by the Dallas Cowboys he became concerned with then-Green Bay Packers Coach Vince Lombardi's "Run to Daylight" idea, where the running back went to an open space, rather than a specific assigned hole. Landry reasoned that the best counter was to take away daylight.

To do this, he refined the 4-3 defense by moving two of the four lineman off the line of scrimmage one yard and varied which line people did this based on where the Cowboys thought the offense might run. This change was called "The Flex Defense" because it altered its alignment to counter what the offense might do. Thus, there were three such Flex Defenses -- strong, weak, and "tackle" -- where both defensive tackles were off the line of scrimmage. The idea with the flexed linemen was to improve pursuit angles to stop the Green Bay Sweep -- a popular play of the 1960s. The Flex Defense was also innovative in that it was a kind of zone defense against the run. Each defender was responsible for a given gap area, and was told to stay in that area before they knew where the play was going.

It has been said that after he invented the Flex Defense, he then invented the offense to score on it, reviving the man-in-motion and the shotgun formation. But Landry's biggest contribution in this area was the use of "pre-shifting" where the offense would shift from one formation to the other before the snap of the ball. While this tactic was not new -- it was developed by Coach Amos Alonzo Stagg around the turn of the 20th Century -- Landry was the first coach to use the approach on a regular basis. The idea was to break the keys the defense used to determine what the offense might do.

Beyond the NFL

Landry was known as a quiet, religious man, unfazed by the hype that surrounded the Cowboys, then being billed as "America's Team". He was in a comic book promoting Christianity in the 1980's. Landry was active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

Landry's departure came shortly after the Cowboys were sold to Jerry Jones before the 1989 season. Jones hired Jimmy Johnson, his former teammate at the University of Arkansas, away from the world of college football. Landry's unceremonious dismissal by Jones was lamented by football fans and media as lacking class and respect.

Landry's success during nearly three decades of coaching was the impetus for his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1990, less than two years after his last game. Landry was inducted into the "Ring of Honor" at Texas Stadium in 1993.

Landry died in Dallas, Texas, of leukemia, on the same date that Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Oliver, and Charles Schulz all died. On his passing, he was interred in the Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery in Dallas, Texas. The Cowboys wore a patch on their uniforms during the 2000 season depicting Landry's trademark fedora.

A bronze statue of Landry stands outside of Texas Stadium. The section of Interstate 30 between Dallas and Fort Worth was named the Tom Landry Highway after Landry by the Texas Legislature in 2001. The football stadium in Landry's hometown of Mission, Texas, was named Tom Landry Stadium to honor one of the city's most famous former residents.

In Fox's animated sitcom King of the Hill, the local middle school is named after Tom Landry, and Landry is a personal hero of the show's main character Hank Hill. In an episode of The Simpsons ("You Only Move Twice"), Homer Simpson buys Tom Landry's trademark fedora in an effort to improve his leadership qualities.

"When you want to win a game, you have to teach. When you lose a game, you have to learn." -Tom Landry

See also:

[Sporting News archive]

External links

Pro Football Hall of Fame: [Member profile]

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