Athletes - Tom Landry

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	Athletes - Tom Landry

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

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.

Landry became a defensive back in the NFL in 1949 for the New York Bulldogs, 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 31 interceptions in only 70 games, almost 1 every 2 games.

A long and impressive NFL 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 years (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.

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Athletes - Tom Landry

Pre-NFL years

A long and impressive NFL career

The 4-3 defense

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