Statman
Practice Squad
- Messages
- 176
- Reaction score
- 0
Tom Landry left college after a month to join the Army Air Corps during World War II. He was a 19 year old 2ND Lt. and a co-pilot in a B-17 bomber. He flew 30 missions over Europe, one time he had top crash land when the plane ran out of fuel.
Tom Landry was no wimp. This guy stood 6'1 and weighed 195 in his NFL days. He played both sides, an All Pro CB in 1954, a fullback on offense and he also punted. Even up to his mid 60's he was probably one of the best conditioned athletes every time the Cowboys walked on the field. If George Allen had ever succeeded in meeting Tom Landry at midfield, like he used to tell his team he wanted to do, Tom Landry would have utterly destroyed him.
Before every training camp, every member of the team was required top run a mile through some tough terrain. They were given 6 minutes to accomplish this. It was called the Landry mile. What made the run even more challenging was that Tom Landry would run the mile with them. Few succeeded. Tom Landry succeeded every single time.
In their own words:
The Landry Mile | Lewp's Weblog
Before he earned a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, before teammates pinned the “Manster” nickname on him, Randy White was a rookie with the Cowboys.
What awaited White that first day of training camp was a ritual everyone who played under coach Tom Landry endured: the Landry mile.
That wouldn’t be a problem for White. Heck, he was the second player taken in the draft. The Maryland star was an elite athlete.
“Coach Landry ran it with us and beat me by about 100 yards,” White remembered.
He paused
“OK, 200 yards,” he said. “I thought, ‘I can’t even beat the coach running a mile. Maybe I can’t play.’ ”
“We knew we could knock out a mile, but it still was intimidating,” 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.
“Again, it was just a mile and you knew you were in shape. But it was the intimidation, Landry running behind you, knowing he can’t finish ahead of you and that type of thing.”
Running back Don Perkins never completed the mile. Bob Hayes may have been the world’s fastest man at the time, but the receiver who will be inducted into the Hall of Fame later this summer struggled.
“Bob used to walk it,” Pearson remembered. “Poor Bob. He could go 100, maybe run that 220, but he couldn’t run that damn mile for nothing.”
Tom Landry was the Defensive Assistant for the New York Giants from 1955 to 1959. This was the equivalent of Defensive Coordinator. The Offensive assistant for the New York Giants at that time was Vince Lombardi. The Giants won over two thirds of their games and went to 3 NFL championship games.
Tom Landry invented the 4-3 defense. It was in response to Lombardi's new "Run to Daylight" offense featuring his new RB Frank Gifford.
The defenses in the NFL typically employed the Umbrella Defense, in which 6 players on the line would form a semi-circle around the center. Behind them was one guy called a "linebacker." Lombardi designed plays that called for Gifford to use his speed and run to the outside, to "daylight" rather than run through the middle.
In response, Landry took the two most outer linemen and positioned them behind the rest, calling them "outside linebackers". They would be ready for Gifford by blotting out the light. Eventually, Lombardi would find a way to succeed against this defense ands so Landry refined it to the "flex" defense he used with the Cowboys.
Tom Landry invented pre-snap offensive motion. He was the first to develop a passing game from the shotgun position. He invented the coaching position of Quality Control, designed to obtain information about opponents and way they can be gameplanned.
Tom Landry's Cowboys played in 7 NFL championships, 2 of them were before the NFL-AFL merger. He lost 5 and won 2. He never lost a championship by more than a TD and never won by less than double digits.
Landry's Cowboys played in 10 conference championships in a 13 year span from 1970 to 1982.
Tom Landry's birthday is the 11th of September.......9/11.
Tom Landry was no wimp. This guy stood 6'1 and weighed 195 in his NFL days. He played both sides, an All Pro CB in 1954, a fullback on offense and he also punted. Even up to his mid 60's he was probably one of the best conditioned athletes every time the Cowboys walked on the field. If George Allen had ever succeeded in meeting Tom Landry at midfield, like he used to tell his team he wanted to do, Tom Landry would have utterly destroyed him.
Before every training camp, every member of the team was required top run a mile through some tough terrain. They were given 6 minutes to accomplish this. It was called the Landry mile. What made the run even more challenging was that Tom Landry would run the mile with them. Few succeeded. Tom Landry succeeded every single time.
In their own words:
The Landry Mile | Lewp's Weblog
Before he earned a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, before teammates pinned the “Manster” nickname on him, Randy White was a rookie with the Cowboys.
What awaited White that first day of training camp was a ritual everyone who played under coach Tom Landry endured: the Landry mile.
That wouldn’t be a problem for White. Heck, he was the second player taken in the draft. The Maryland star was an elite athlete.
“Coach Landry ran it with us and beat me by about 100 yards,” White remembered.
He paused
“OK, 200 yards,” he said. “I thought, ‘I can’t even beat the coach running a mile. Maybe I can’t play.’ ”
“We knew we could knock out a mile, but it still was intimidating,” 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.
“Again, it was just a mile and you knew you were in shape. But it was the intimidation, Landry running behind you, knowing he can’t finish ahead of you and that type of thing.”
Running back Don Perkins never completed the mile. Bob Hayes may have been the world’s fastest man at the time, but the receiver who will be inducted into the Hall of Fame later this summer struggled.
“Bob used to walk it,” Pearson remembered. “Poor Bob. He could go 100, maybe run that 220, but he couldn’t run that damn mile for nothing.”
Tom Landry was the Defensive Assistant for the New York Giants from 1955 to 1959. This was the equivalent of Defensive Coordinator. The Offensive assistant for the New York Giants at that time was Vince Lombardi. The Giants won over two thirds of their games and went to 3 NFL championship games.
Tom Landry invented the 4-3 defense. It was in response to Lombardi's new "Run to Daylight" offense featuring his new RB Frank Gifford.
The defenses in the NFL typically employed the Umbrella Defense, in which 6 players on the line would form a semi-circle around the center. Behind them was one guy called a "linebacker." Lombardi designed plays that called for Gifford to use his speed and run to the outside, to "daylight" rather than run through the middle.
In response, Landry took the two most outer linemen and positioned them behind the rest, calling them "outside linebackers". They would be ready for Gifford by blotting out the light. Eventually, Lombardi would find a way to succeed against this defense ands so Landry refined it to the "flex" defense he used with the Cowboys.
Tom Landry invented pre-snap offensive motion. He was the first to develop a passing game from the shotgun position. He invented the coaching position of Quality Control, designed to obtain information about opponents and way they can be gameplanned.
Tom Landry's Cowboys played in 7 NFL championships, 2 of them were before the NFL-AFL merger. He lost 5 and won 2. He never lost a championship by more than a TD and never won by less than double digits.
Landry's Cowboys played in 10 conference championships in a 13 year span from 1970 to 1982.
Tom Landry's birthday is the 11th of September.......9/11.
Last edited:
