Tag: Tom Landry

Remembering former Washington running back Duane Thomas

Looking back at the life of former Washington and Dallas RB Duane Thomas.

Former Washington running back Duane Thomas died last week. Thomas was age 77.

Thomas came to Washington to play for the Redskins under quite unusual circumstances.

Dallas already possessed the talents of running back Calvin Hill, yet when the Cowboys announced their first-round pick of 1970, the name was running back Duane Thomas.

The Cowboys were right; Thomas was better and the starter. At 6-1, 220, Thomas was such a smooth runner that critics sometimes said he wasn’t running hard. Yet, when watching replays, one observes him making people miss and running by many, as he led the NFL, averaging 5.3 yards per carry his rookie season.

Though he led Dallas in rushing his first two seasons and led the Cowboys to two Super Bowls, he was unhappy. For instance, Thomas refused to talk in team meetings and to the press covering the NFL. He referred to then-Dallas head coach Tom Landry as ‘the plastic man.’

Once when a reporter referred to the Super Bowl as the ultimate NFL game, Thomas replied back defiantly, “If it’s the ultimate game, how come they’re playing it again next year?”

Thomas gained 95 yards, leading the Cowboys to their 24-3 win over the Dolphins in Super Bowl VI. However, because of the way he treated the media, they took out their revenge, refusing to vote for Thomas as the Super Bowl MVP.

Landry had endured enough throughout that 1971 season and had Thomas traded in the offseason. However, he would not play for the Chargers or anyone else in the 1972 season.

In 1973 Thomas’ value was plunging, yet Redskins head coach George Allen came to rescue the Chargers. Teams loved trading with the desperate Allen, always willing to over trade draft pick(s) for another veteran.

So Allen traded a round one and round two choice to the Chargers for the troubled, moody Thomas. Then Allen proceeded to continue to run Larry Brown into the ground, cutting his career short, only having Thomas carry the ball 32 times for 95 yards in 1973.

In 1974, Thomas carried the ball 95 times for 347 yards and five rushing touchdowns. But that was it for Thomas, as the Redskins cut him during the 1975 training camp. He never played another NFL game.

Perhaps most interesting was Thomas’s arrival in Washington. He learned no one else was wearing his old number, which he had worn as a Cowboy, so he requested it, No. 33.

However, Washington had unofficially retired No. 33, and no one had worn it since Hall of Famer Sammy Baugh. The story goes that someone from the team informed Thomas that they had contacted Baugh, requesting if Thomas could wear No. 33, but Baugh refused.

Baugh, when hearing of this, strongly rejected the narrative, declaring he had not been contacted and that if Thomas wanted to wear No. 33, Baugh was fine with it. But, Thomas was given No. 47 and wore it both of his two seasons with the Redskins.

 

‘Landry Mile’ once kicked off Cowboys training camps with grueling conditioning test

From @ToddBrock24f7: The Hall of Fame coach used to put his players through a timed 1-mile run on the first day of camp. It is not remembered fondly by most.

One month from today, the Cowboys will be in Oxnard, Calif. and 2024 training camp will have begun, with the first practice slated for July 25.

It will almost certainly not kick off the way camp once did under head coach Tom Landry.

The Hall of Fame icon was a well-known disciplinarian. He took a hard-lined, businesslike approach to the game of football, and he expected his players to do the same. But Landry had come along in a very different era, when even the top players in the league typically held down regular 9-to-5 jobs during the offseason and arrived at camp having performed no real physical exertion (outside of, maybe, mowing their own lawns) since their last game six or seven months prior.

Beginning in 1960, during the Cowboys’ very first training camp, the coach kickstarted the summer session with a nasty conditioning warmup that became infamously known as the “Landry Mile.”

A mile-long run. In cleats. Timed. Backs and ends had to finish in under six minutes; linemen got an extra thirty seconds.

“The Landry Mile wasn’t anything real significant,” legendary defensive tackle Bob Lilly once said. “It was a test of conditioning.”

But even for some of the premier athletes of the day, it proved to be a grueling challenge.

“I had never run a mile in my entire life. I failed miserably,” Ring of Honor running back Don Perkins would recall decades later. “It’s been 50 years now, but I still remember walking and crawling most of the final two laps.”

And there were consequences for not meeting the timed benchmarks.

“If they didn’t hit the target,” former Cowboys exec Gil Brandt once explained, “they’d have to run a number of penalty laps the next morning at 6 a.m.”

The Landry Mile became an opening-day staple of Cowboys training camp, with names of the top finishers often printed in the local papers. Some details of the run would vary from year to year. One summer, it might take place on a track. The next, Landry might utilize the sloping hills of wherever the team was practicing.

But the players knew the tradition would be waiting for them when they reported. And they almost universally dreaded it.

“I hated the Landry Mile,” said defensive end John Gonzaga. “I told Tom Landry, ‘If they ever make the field longer than 100 yards, I’m going to quit.’ But he said I had to run the mile anyway. He said, ‘I don’t have any time for comedians.’ So I ran it.”

“We knew we could knock out a mile, but it still was intimidating,” Hall of Fame receiver Drew Pearson said. “What we heard of as a rookie coming in was, ‘You’ve got to make the Landry Mile.’ It added to what we heard the reputation of camp was about. It was going to be hard. It was going to be brutal.”

Players struggled. Players vomited. Players passed out. Some players contemplated quitting on the spot. At least one did.

“We had this one guy, I can’t even remember his name, who was having a rough time,” remembered longtime Cowboys staffer Joe Bailey. “He came to this turn on the run and just kept going, ran a straight line right back to the locker room … changed his clothes, and was gone. We never saw him again.”

“This isn’t for me,” Brandt remembered him saying. “I didn’t come here to run track; I came here to play football.”

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But even the track stars that made up some of those early Cowboys squads had difficulty with the long distance.

“Bob used to walk it,” Pearson once remembered of Bob Hayes, an Olympic gold medal sprinter who was recruited to play football. “Poor Bob. He could go 100, maybe run that 220, but he couldn’t run that damn mile for nothing.”

“I never came close to running that mile in six minutes,” admitted Perkins. “Bob Hayes and Bob Lilly never did either, so at least I was in good company.”

And there was extra pressure, beside the clock. Coach Landry ran the Mile, too.

“You had to finish between [tight end Mike] Ditka and Coach Landry,” Pearson explained. “Mike was really in shape back then. He had his own hips and could really run. He would set the pace. Coach Landry would really push the end of it. You had to finish in between those two guys.”

Not everyone did.

“Coach Landry ran it with us and beat me by about 100 yards,” recalled nine-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle Randy White. “OK, 200 yards. I thought, ‘I can’t even beat the coach running a mile. Maybe I can’t play.'”

While a poor finish in the Landry Mile was used to weed out the occasional prospect who was obviously in over his head, the coach generally found a way to let his stars slide with a sub-optimal time. White, Hayes, Perkins: everyone knew they’d never have to repeat the long-distance feat on gameday.

But it sure got the tough work of training camp started on a fitting note.

“It was not because he wasn’t in shape,” Brandt once said of Perkins. “He just couldn’t run a mile.”

The same could be said of many of the Cowboys’ all-time heroes.

The Landry Mile eventually took a backseat during the team’s notoriously demanding training camps as the coach sought new and innovative methods for working his players.

In 1969, for example, a newfangled conditioning technique called aerobics was waiting at Cowboys camp. That introduced stationary bikes to football, the idea of emphasizing oxygen intake during exercise having first been developed by an Air Force physiologist who was a friend of Landry and had written a wildly popular book about the topic the year before.

But the Landry Mile still lives on in the fabled history of the Cowboys, just one of the tactics famously used by one of the sport’s greatest coaching minds to help turn a ragtag group of upstarts into America’s Team.

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3 former Giants ranked among top 10 defensive coordinators of all time

Three former members of the New York Giants have been ranked among the 10 greatest defensive coordinators in NFL history.

Three former New York Giants assistant coaches are among Pro Football Network’s top 10 NFL defensive coordinators of all time.

Bill Belichick (No. 1), Steve Spagnuolo (No. 3), and Tom Landry (No. 8) were all listed in a recent poll by PFN’s Dallas Robinson.

Landry, most noted for his three-decades-long career as the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, began his career as a player-coach with Big Blue in the 1950s.

As the New York Giants’ defensive coordinator from 1954-59, Landry was a true innovator. He devised the 4-3 defense, adding a middle linebacker and creating the front alignment still used in the NFL today. As Dallas’ HC, Landry also invented the “Flex” defense, a gap scheme that allowed for increased flexibility.

Spagnuolo, a well-traveled assistant who is now reaching legendary status with the current Kansas City Chiefs dynasty after three Super Bowl wins over the past four seasons, began his coordinator career with the Giants.

Of course, that’s not all Spagnuolo has done in the NFL. During his first stint as the New York Giants’ DC (2007-08), Spags upset the previously undefeated New England Patriots, shutting down arguably the greatest offense in league history en route to a Super Bowl XLII.

Finally, Belichick — perhaps the greatest coach in the history of the league with a combined eight Super Bowl championships — tops the list, and rightfully so. He began his illustrious career as Big Parcells’ DC with the Lawrence Taylor-led Giants in the 1980s.

Working under Bill Parcells with the Giants from 1985-90, Belichick won Super Bowls XXI and XXV as the club’s DC. In Super Bowl XXV, Belichick’s defense shut down Jim Kelly and the Buffalo Bills, who led the NFL in scoring in 1990 and had put up 51 points against the Raiders in the AFC title game. His game plan from the victory is now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Anyone who was around back then for the 20-19 win over Buffalo in Super Bowl XXV knows the greatness of Belichick. What the Giants did in that game was nothing short of remarkable.

Others on the list include Vic Fangio (10), Monte Kiffin (9), Bud Carson (7), Dom Capers (6), Wade Phillips (5), Dick Lebeau (4), and Buddy Ryan (2).

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How 12 football head coaches fared as the replacements for legends like Bill Belichick and Nick Saban

Who replaced Bear Bryant, Don Shula and John Madden and how did they do?

During one of the craziest weeks of football in recent memory, we saw the end of an era for legends like Bill Belichick and Nick Saban.

Belichick, 71, and Saban, 72, are easily two of the greatest coaches that the sport has ever seen. Next season, college football will look very different without Saban coaching Alabama. Meanwhile, the NFL will also look very different without Belichick coaching the Patriots.

Both teams will have huge decisions about how to fill these massive shoes. While there are some interesting candidates for the gig in New England and the job in Tuscaloosa, can either live up to the reputation that Belichick and Saban built?

We looked back at some of the most legendary coaches in football history, both in the NFL and in college football, to learn how these replacements have typically fared.

The results are a fairly mixed bag but if there is one thing we learned, it is that it is not easy to replace someone as accomplished as either of these two Hall of Fame-caliber coaches.

Chiefs HC Andy Reid tied Tom Landry on NFL’s all-time regular season wins list

#Chiefs head coach Andy Reid tied Tom Landry for fourth place on the NFL’s all-time regular season win list on Sunday night.

Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid secured his 250th regular season win on Sunday night against the New York Jets. That mark ties legendary Dallas Cowboys skipper Tom Landry for the fourth-most all-time in NFL history and is yet another feather in Reid’s cap heading into the meat of Kansas City’s 2023 schedule.

Regular season wins are hard to come by in the modern NFL, and Reid has proven to be among the most adept coaches in the game at racking them up over the course of his career with the Chiefs.

The team’s victory on Sunday marked his 120th regular season win as Kansas City’s head coach, a mark that sits at second place in Chiefs franchise history behind the incomparable Hank Stram, who has 124.

With any luck, Reid will be able to beat Stram’s record later this year as Kansas City looks to defend its Super Bowl title.

Ranking 8 best assistant coaches in Giants history

From Marty Schottenheimer to Vince Lombardi, Giants Wire ranks the eight best assistant coaches in New York Giants history.

The New York Giants are closing in on a century of existence and many famous and powerful names have worn the blue over that time.

When it comes to head coaches, the Giants have had some great ones — Bill Parcells, Tom Coughlin, Jim Lee Howell, and Steve Owen — and some notable ones in Allie Sherman, Jim Fassel, and Alex Webster.

But what the Giants are really known for is grooming head coaches; men who worked for the club and went on to become some of the great head coaches in NFL history.

Here are eight of those names.

Win over Bengals would give Chiefs HC Andy Reid second-most postseason wins in NFL history

Andy Reid is set to pass Tom Landry for second place on the NFL’s all-time playoff wins list if he can lift the #Chiefs over the #Bengals on Sunday. | from @TheJohnDillon

Kansas City Chiefs HC Andy Reid is set to make history if he can lift his team over the Cincinnati Bengals this evening. He’s already one of the winningest coaches in NFL history and the postseason is no different.

After defeating the Jacksonville Jaguars in the AFC divisional round, Reid tied legendary Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry for second place on the NFL’s all-time leaderboard for playoff wins. With one more win, Reid would take sole ownership of second place in NFL postseason victories behind only New England Patriots HC Bill Belichick (31).

Reid is unlikely to be invested in this accomplishment at this juncture, as he is more likely focused on making a run at the Super Bowl. That said, the fact that he is in a position to surpass Landry in any category highlights the excellent track record that he has put together as a head coach in the NFL. He collected his 10th playoff win with the Chiefs in Kansas City last week and became the first head coach to get to double-digit playoff wins with two separate franchises.

Matched up against a bitter adversary that knocked him out of the postseason last year, Reid is sure to bring his best game plan of the season into the AFC Championship Game. A win would notch another impressive achievement to add to his already-lengthy resume of success.

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Jerry Jones wants Mike McCarthy to coach the Cowboys as long as Tom Landry and fans were in disbelief

Jones can’t be serious. Can he???

Still reeling from their latest humiliating playoff defeat, the Dallas Cowboys are busy picking up the pieces as they prepare for the 2023 offseason. But before Dallas dives into the thick of free agency and preparation for the 2023 NFL Draft, head coach Mike McCarthy had a few choice words while reflecting on the year that was during a Thursday press conference.

When McCarthy was asked about his future after two consecutive deflating defeats in January, he noted he had a vote of confidence from owner Jerry Jones. Scratch that — he seemed to have a full endorsement.

Per McCarthy, Jones apparently wants him to coach the Cowboys as long as the legendary Tom Landry, who was once at the helm of Dallas for almost three decades.

Uh, alright?

The absurdity of someone McCarthy lasting as long in Dallas as its arguably greatest-ever coach aside, it doesn’t look as bad when you note Landry’s initial resume. Under Landry, the Cowboys didn’t have a winning season during his first six years (!) in Dallas in the 1960s. But, eventually, the man famous for wearing a top hat on the sideline turned the Cowboys into a perennial powerhouse for the better part of his head coaching career until his ouster in the late 1980s.

In 2023, I sincerely doubt McCarthy matches Landry’s longevity, let alone comes close. The Cowboys, as constructed, are more or less ready to win titles now. Jones might say he wants McCarthy to lead his team for years to come, but most won’t so readily accept postseason shortcomings with squads that should theoretically fare better. Landry’s Cowboys were so horrid at the start because he was enlisted with the mammoth task of bringing them to their current relevance in the first place.

That is not the case for McCarthy. At all.

To continue coaching the Cowboys, McCarthy will probably have to learn how to manage a late-game situation in a tight playoff game properly. Something he, rather ironically, hasn’t done in decades around pro football.

But if Jones desires more extended mid-winter misery, by all means, McCarthy might be the perfect delivery person for such a mission. Of course, Jones could just be ensuring McCarthy stays comfortable in his current digs. But then again, this is the owner who kept Jason Garrett on for a decade despite just two whole playoff wins. So, I wouldn’t put it past him!

Washington Super Bowl Coach stands alone

As Sean McVay and Zac Taylor look to win their first Super Bowl Sunday, we shall never forget Joe Gibbs won three Super Bowls with three different quarterbacks.

How is it that one coach stands out in contrast to all Super Bowl champion coaches?

Vince Lombardi won the first two Super Bowls with Bart Starr as the Green Bay Packers starting quarterback. Don Shula and Miami won two with Bob Griese. Tom Landry steered Dallas to two Super Bowl trophies with Roger Staubach at the helm. Chuck Noll and the Pittsburgh Steelers won four Super Bowls in the 1970s with Terry Bradshaw behind center.

Tom Flores and the Raiders won two with Jim Plunkett as the leader of the offense. Bill Walsh was the head coach with Joe Montana the field general for three Super Bowl crowns for the 49ers. The 49ers won two more with head coach George Seifert coaching and Montana and Steve Young as signal-callers.

Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer both coached the Cowboys to Super Bowl rings with Troy Aikman taking the snaps from center. Denver’s Mike Shanahan as head coach and John Elway in the pocket for the Broncos won it all twice.

Tom Coughlin’s NY Giants took the crown twice with Eli Manning the on-field general. Last but certainly not least, New England’s Bill Belichick won six rings with Tom Brady as the quarterback.

Seifert is the only one above to win a second Super Bowl with a second quarterback (Montana and Young).

There is also Marv Levy and the Bills who went to multiple Super Bowls with Jim Kelly under center — and lost. Likewise, Dan Reeves led Elway and the Broncos to three Super Bowl appearances — they also lost all three.

Yet, there is one other coach to win more than multiple Super Bowls with more than one quarterback, Joe Gibbs of the Washington Redskins. Gibbs not only won more than one Super Bowl with more than one quarterback, he accomplished the feat three times!

Gibbs led Washington to Super Bowl trophies with Joe Theismann, Doug Williams and Mark Rypien winning Super Bowls XVII, XXII and XXVI.

Starr, Griese, Staubach, Bradshaw, Montana, Young, Aikman and Elway are already in the Hall of Fame. Without question Brady will be in the HOF and Eli Manning a 2-time SB MVP is likely to be elected to the HOF. Only Jim Plunkett is likely to not make the HOF.

By contrast, Theismann was only an All-Pro once (1983), and Williams and Rypien were never All-Pro. Rypien had a great year only in 1991. Williams though never even a pro-bowler, was a veteran leader and had huge moments like the playoff win at Chicago (1987) and a nearly perfect 2nd quarter in Super Bowl XXII, earning the MVP.

Joe Gibbs is distinctive among Super Bowl coaches with multiple wins, doing so with three non-Hall of Fame quarterbacks.  Hats off to Coach Joe, who is remarkably now age 81. The Washington franchise and fans were certainly blessed to have enjoyed Joe Jackson Gibbs as head coach.

Throwback Thursday: Giants upset Cowboys in 1980

In the latest Giants Wire Throwback Thursday, we head back to 1980, when the lowly New York Giants upset Tom Landry’s Dallas Cowboys.

The 1980 season was one of the worst in the history of the New York Football Giants. After a 41-35 road victory against the St. Louis Cardinals to open the season, Big Blue lost eight straight games before they would win another.

That win came in Week 10 against the Dallas Cowboys, a team they had lost 12 consecutive and 14 out of 15 games to. Their last win over Dallas had come in 1974, their last home win in 1970.

On Nov. 9, the Cowboys came into Giants Stadium with a 7-2 record and were headed back to their usual spot in the NFC playoffs. The Giants were headed to the bottom of the NFC East and a 4-12 season that would earn them the second overall pick in the 1981 NFL draft (which turned out to be Lawrence Taylor).

In a textbook case of “any given Sunday,” the Giants, coached by Ray Perkins and led by second-year quarterback Phil Simms, rose up and bit Tom Landry’s bunch in a shootout.

In a back-and-forth game, the Cowboys took a 35-28 lead into the fourth quarter. The Giants scored 10 unanswered points to close out the game — a 20-yard TD pass from Simms to tight end Tom Mullady tied the game at 35, and Joe Danelo’s 27-yard field goal with 27 seconds to play was the winner.

The kick was set up by a flea flicker from Simms to running back Leon Perry back to Simms and then downfield to tight end Mike Friede. The Giants ran three running plays after that to set Danelo up for the win.

The defense allowed 35 points but was the key to the game as they intercepted Cowboys quarterback Danny White five times, four of those resulting in points.

Two of the interceptions were made by Pro Bowl linebacker Brad Van Pelt, who had been publicly lobbying the team to trade him, preferably to the Detroit Lions in his native state of Michigan.

“I had forgot what it feels like to win,” said the eight-year veteran after the game.

Simms threw for 351 yards in the game, the most by a Giants quarterback since Fran Tarkenton had 327 yards against St. Louis in 1969.

Friede, who played just two seasons, both for the Giants, had the best game of his career with seven receptions for 137 yards.

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