Tom Landry
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It is Saturday afternoon, early November. A chilled
old-time wind chases the fire and baked bronze of dying
leaves, and Tom Landry sits in his office on the eleventh
floor of a suburban tower in North Dallas, looking down
with the sort of detachment that Baron Frankenstein must
have experienced as he watched the villagers fight fear
with sticks and hayforks.
The Monster is loose again!
Records fall like leaves then blow away under the
gusts of new records. Someone named Mike Richardson
(forget that name) wipes Kyle Rote and Doak Walker from
the SMU record book. Michigan’s Ron Johnson is
jet-age ghost, cremating the memory of Grange and Harmon
is his fantail. In a radio interview former Los Angeles
Rams’ center Art Hunter refers to O.J. Simpson as
"the best of Jimmy Brown and Gale Sayers rolled into
one." And Texas’s Chris Gilbert, the little
tailback who has
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broken all the Southwest Conference rushing
records and threatens more of the same to every career rushing
record in the history of college football, will have difficulty
making it as a first team All-America.
What was once a game of patience, prudence, and
pogroms enacted more or less in the geographical center of a
seven-diamond defense now looks as though it were invented by the
French. Even the college teams, who are not, strictly speaking,
relying on the "pro-type" offense, are gaining three or
four hundred yards a game. "Ten yards and a cloud of
dust": says former Texas Tech coach J.T. King.
The Monster is everywhere, legends
tumbling on his vibration.
"I still feel that the defense will stand up to the
test," Tom Landry is saying on this particular Saturday
afternoon. Landry is seemingly oblivious to the riots that are at
this moment taking place on the campuses across the land. Landry
is talking of the National Football League, specifically of the
game in the Cotton Bowl Sunday between his Cowboys and the New
York Giants, a game that will go a long way in setting the winner
of the capitol Division. There are those in football,
Giants’ president Wellingon Mara among them, who feel that
Tom Landry has perfected, maybe even invented football’s
modern defense. Landry credits the invention to Steve Owen; the
genius of the Giants from 1931-53, through it was Landry who
defined the relationship of the linebacker to the width of the
playing field. Thus establishing what Mara calls "the
inside-out theory of defensive football"- protecting the
middle while trusting the flanks to hot pursuit.
Landry was one of the first to recognize the tendencies and
traits in his opposition, and one of the first to devise
"keys" which would unlock the secrets of the mysterious
huddle. Many coaches eventually reached that conclusion, but Landry
did it as a player. And when it was perfected-and when the
Giants(the Giants during the 1930’s) were the most feared
defense in football- Landry started experimenting with offensive
weapons that could conceivably destroy his life’s work. It
was a restless imitation of art and life: from the missile came
that antimissile came the anti-antimissile…
But listen to Landry on this Saturday
afternoon:
"…The defense will stand up. But sometimes you
wonder (he says this with some irony in his normal monotone; his
oyster eyes twinkle; his Ice Age smile, collected through
centuries of slow but constant seepage, is alert to
history’s carnage)…
"You see what’s happening to college football. The
two-platoon rule opened it up to the multiple offense team can
defense it The key to defense is execution; in order to
execute will enough to contain a multiple offense a team must
play together four or five years… at least that long…
which is impossible for the colleges. As long as colleges play a
multiple offense…a T-formation offense, with quarterbacks in
the pass pocket… as long as that happens, the colleges will
never be able to defense it: they will never have enough
experience to cope with the many problems. The colleges must
either return to one-platoon football or resign themselves to big
scores."
Somewhere in the corners of your mind you hear Baron
Frankenstein speak, identifying his work, preaching caution,
almost amused at the misunderstanding. Lay aside you hayforks,
melt down you silver bullets: your icon are powerless, your dogs
less than useless. The Monster is not the creation but the
creator. It is the Landry Monster, that gangling
apparition of spreads and slots and double-or-triple wings and
men-in-motion and abrupt shifts, coordinated to wreck
anticipation, delight the fans, and make supermen from human
tissue.
They used to laugh at it. Such great-but-stylized coaches as
Buddy Parker used to warn Landry that the multiple offense would
never work, that it would strangle on its own complications; and
for a time in the early 1960’s it seemed as though they were
right. But Landry had it in his mind when re resigned as
defensive coach of the Giants to take the head job with the newly
formed Dallas Cowboys in 1960.
Like brilliant men in every field, Tom Landry is self-made.
Or, as Landry chooses to put it, he is the product of destiny and
divine and diving counter-play.
"It is hard to put your finger on why you make the
decision that you make," says Landry. "I’m a great
believer in my own convictions, but I pray a great deal that
I’ll make the right decision. I have on doubt that there is
something other than him self that leads man."
"He would never pat you on the behind and tell you
‘good job,’ " complained one former defensive
back. "If you intercepted a pass, Landry looked at you like
that’s what you’re supposed to do!" But that is
Landry’s style-taciturn without being shy, confident without
being boastful; he exudes rather than expounds his philosophy.
Expect for the practice field or meeting room, Landry permits
himself almost no personal contact. There is minor exception: he
sometimes lifts weights with the player in the off-season. Landry
is as trim and maybe as strong as any man on his team. With Tom
Landry, the priority is God, family, and football.
Tom Landry takes his aspiration seriously –and one at
time. Aside from beating the Green Bay Packers in a championships
game, Landry’s idea of personal fulfillment is to have
positive influence on as many young men a possible. This is his
passion and it traces back to his own boyhood, which was, in a
contemporary sense, unique.
Landry was born in 1924, a half block from the First Methodist
Church of Mission, Texas. Mission is small town with a large
Mexican-American population in this lush citrus valley between
the Gulf of Mexico and the Rio Grande. Tom’s father ran a
garage; he served as fire chief and superintendent of Sunday
school at the church down the street. Tom played every sport in
season made mostly A’s in his school subjects, and had an
exemplary Sunday-school attendance record.
The Giants in those glory days were pretty much the product of
two assistant coaches-Landry on defense, Vince Lombardi on
offense. "Jim Lee Howell gave them a lot of leeway,"
admits Wellington Mara. "He kept the power of veto, but he
recognized their abilities. I recall back about 1956, everyone
was defending the end sweep by dropping off the ends (who became
linebacker) and forcing the play inside. Landry wanted to defense
it inside out, stop them up the middle with the idea that the
pursuit would take care of the outside. Quite simply, Tom was
talking about today’s 4-3 defense.
Landry is four feet out on the playing field, shouting,
"Dammit, why did you…" but he never say who, he
never says what. It is dark now in Dallas. The lights are on dew
collecting on the pale green grass. It seems much later than it
is and Meredith jogs back to the sideline, his face broad with
wonder, twisted with regret. The whole thing must seem too stupid
for words: while the Cowboys were losing two of their last three
games, Meredith went from third to first on the
league passing chart. Too stupid for words…too painful.
Landry wears that same expression you have seen so often on the
lead film preceding all NFL telecasts, that classic
eyes-closed-to-earth muffled sob, that God-imploring anxiety
caught on film. As Landry realized that an illegal-motion penalty
had sealed Dallas’s defeat in the 1966 championship game in
this same stadium, in this same paralyzing dark cold, in this
same and endless quest for something attainable in an
unattainable sort of stupid way.
In Landry’s mind it was simple. He had taught them
offense, he had taught them defense. He had taught them how to
come from behind; he had provided the leadership that gives a man
confidence in the system, if not in himself.
"You don’t build character without somebody slapping
you around," Landry tells his press conference. "We got
to the point where we thought we could take it easy and win. Why
even my wife was talking of an undefeated season. That’s
sure sign of death…I’ll tell you this, we’ll be a
different team next week."
Unfortunately, in 1988 Tom Landry was replaced my Miami
Hurricanes coach by the name of Jimmy Johnson.
Though his exit from the game was swift and silent he will never
be forgotten for his tremendous impact on the game. For helping
popularize the modern 4-3 defense,
and according to Wellington Mara perfect it.
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