NFL legend, former Cowboys player-coach Dan Reeves passes away at 77

Dan Reeves was an integral part of the Cowboys’ first five Super Bowl appearances, and went to four more over an incredible NFL career. | From @ToddBrock24f7

Dan Reeves is best known as the head coach for three different NFL franchises and one of only ten coaches in league history to win 200 career games. Over an NFL tenure that spanned nearly four decades (in an official capacity), he was a member of the coaching staffs for an incredible nine of the first 33 Super Bowls.

But Reeves got his pro football start as a running back for the Dallas Cowboys, amassing 1,990 rushing yards and 25 touchdowns over the course of 100 games in an eight-year playing career. But he also compiled nearly as many receiving yards and scores as one of the club’s earliest double-threat stars.

Reeves passed away early Friday morning at his home in Atlanta due to complications from a long illness.

A Georgia native, Reeves played quarterback for the University of South Carolina. Though he was far more proficient as a runner, Reeves finished his collegiate career as the Gamecocks’ passing leader.

The athletically-gifted Reeves went undrafted in 1965, but received interest from the NFL’s Cowboys and AFL’s Chargers, as well as MLB’s Pittsburgh Pirates. He signed with Dallas, even though they offered him less money, because they were willing to try him at other positions.

Danny Reeves, as he was then called, spent time as a safety before being moved to running back to help cover for team injuries. He took to the new role well, leading the Cowboys in rushing yards in just his second season (despite sharing the backfield with Don Perkins) and finishing second in receiving yardage (behind only Bob Hayes). Reeves ended 1966 with over 1,300 all-purpose yards, a league-leading and then-franchise-record 16 touchdowns, and helped lead Dallas to their first championship game in 1966 versus Green Bay.

Reeves was in uniform for the next year’s NFL championship, too- the infamous Ice Bowl- where he rushed for 42 yards, caught three passes for 11 yards, and threw a 50-yard touchdown to Lance Rentzel on a halfback option pass. It would be the Cowboys’ only offensive touchdown of the game, and accounted for half of the team’s passing yardage in the wickedly frigid conditions.

Knee injuries began taking a toll on Reeves’s playing days in 1968, and he spent his last three pro seasons as a player-coach under Tom Landry.

It was a unique position that would serve Reeves well later in his football life.

“Probably the toughest part was learning to keep things to yourself,” Reeves would say later, as relayed in Joe Nick Patoski’s book, The Dallas Cowboys: The Outrageous History of the Biggest, Loudest, Most Hated, Best Loved Team in America. “I knew a lot of things that were going on in the coaches’ meetings that I couldn’t share with players and a lot of things that players were complaining about that I couldn’t share with coaches… You had to keep your mouth shut.”

His double-duty stint included the Cowboys’ Super Bowl V loss- in which a pass he dropped was intercepted by the Colts and set up their winning field goal- and the 24-3 Super Bowl VI victory over Miami.

Following the 1972 season, Reeves stepped away from the team for a year, but returned in 1974 for a full-time spot on the coaching staff. After seven more years learning under Landry and trips to Super Bowls X, XII, and XIII, Reeves was ready for a head coaching job of his own.

He was the youngest head coach in the league when he took over in Denver in 1981. He would mentor a young quarterbacking phenom named John Elway and eventually lead the Broncos to three Super Bowl appearances.

After being fired and replaced in Denver with future Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips, Reeves took over the top job for the New York Giants. He went 11-5 and made the playoffs in his first year, earning AP Coach of the Year honors, but he lasted just three more lackluster seasons there.

From New York, Reeves went home to Georgia and was named the Falcons’ head coach in 1997. He led Atlanta to a 14-2 record in 1998. During that campaign, he underwent quadruple-bypass heart surgery in late December but still returned to the sidelines three weeks later for Super Bowl XXXIII, the franchise’s first, where they lost to his former Denver squad. He was named AP Coach of the Year a second time that season.

Reeves was replaced in Atlanta during the 2003 season at his request, again, by Wade Phillips.

To go with his 201 career victories, Reeves’ teams also notched 165 regular season losses, tying him for the most ever by a head coach.

Reeves even had a short-lived reunion with the Cowboys organization in 2009. After being hired as a consultant under Phillips (by then the Cowboys’ head coach), Reeves left two days later when specifics of his job duties could not be ironed out.

Reeves is in the Broncos’ Ring of Honor and has a special place in the history of two other clubs as their head coach. But his legacy in Dallas as both a player and a coach- and for a while, both at the same time- will make him uniquely missed by the Cowboys family.

The stoic Reeves was often asked throughout his life about the iconic Tom Landry, and his comments about his former coach and boss could just as easily pertain to Reeves himself now, as the NFL remembers a football life well lived.

“He was not going to make a rah-rah talk to get you fired up about playing,” Reeves said once of Landry. “He felt like the greatest motivator was preparation, and we never went into a football game that we weren’t very well prepared. We weren’t going to be surprised by anything the other team did because he covered every detail. His greatest motivator was preparation.”

Dan Reeves would have turned 78 on Jan. 19.

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