Herb Adderley, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and one of only four men to play on six world championship teams- including one as a Dallas Cowboy- has died.
Adderley came to Dallas in 1970 as part of a trade with the Green Bay Packers. The cornerback was a key component of the Cowboys’ legendary “Doomsday Defense” that helped define the franchise in that transformative decade. His play helped lead Dallas to Super Bowl V, where they lost to the Baltimore Colts, and then again to Super Bowl VI, in which the team beat the Miami Dolphins to claim their first league title. Adderley recorded nine interceptions over the course of those two seasons.
Pete Dougherty of the Green Bay Press-Gazette writes:
“To watch [Adderley] up close, unforgettable,’ said Pat Toomay, a defensive lineman who was a Cowboys teammate for Adderley’s final two seasons in the NFL. “Never have I seen such grace. And he could just hang, hang, hang. It was like he was in slow motion. He’d go up and up and up, and hang and hang and hang, and then bat down the ball or pick it.”
But Adderley’s success in Dallas was largely overshadowed by his unhappiness with coach Tom Landry’s system, which mandated that players execute their assignments to the letter, even when they were counterintuitive to the player’s instincts or what actually transpired during action.
In his book The Dallas Cowboys: The Outrageous History of the Biggest, Loudest, Most Hated, Best Loved Football Team in America, author Joe Nick Patoski relays a story about Adderley receiving Landry’s ire after batting away a potential scoring pass during a 1972 game.
“Herb, you’ve got to play the defense like everybody else!”
“You mean I’m supposed to let a guy run by me and catch a touchdown pass?” Adderley protested.
“Yes, if that’s what your keys tell you to do!”
“No,” Adderley argued, “I don’t play that way.”
“Then you won’t play at all. Stay or leave; I don’t care.”
Landry benched the four-time All-Pro and traded him to the Rams after the season.
Outspoken against the often-poor treatment he received in the still-segregated South, Adderley all but disavowed his tenure with the Cowboys. He preferred instead to associate his career solely with the team that he won five championships with, the team that put him in their Hall of Fame in 1981.
“I’m the only man with a Dallas Cowboys Super Bowl ring who doesn’t wear it,” Adderley was quoted as saying later in life. “I’m a Green Bay Packer.”
He had been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame the year prior and is still considered one of the greatest cornerbacks to ever play the game.
Herb Adderley was 81 years old.
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