E-GIANTS
Dave Klein was the Giants' beat writer for The Star-Ledger from 1961 to 1995.
He is the author of 26 books and he is one of only four sportswriters to have covered all the Super Bowls. Dave has allowed TEAM GIANTS to reprint some of his articles.

BYE WEEK TALES, ANECDOTES:
DID YOU KNOW TOM LANDRY
REMAINED A GIANTS' FAN AFTER
HE WAS FIRED BY JERR-AH JONES?

By Dave Klein
Tom Landry, one of the icons of the Dallas Cowboys' franchise and their head coach from 1960 through 1988, spent his playing days and assistant coaching time with the Giants.

And in an article in yesterday's Dallas Morning News, his wife, Alicia, offered testimony that he died (in 2000) as a Giants' fan. His widow said he was furious at the way he was treated by the team's new owner, Jerry Jones, who appeared at his door at the family home in Austin, Tex., to tell him he was fired. It was the same day that Jones, in a wholesale house-cleaning, also fired general manager Tex Schramm, the architects of all the glory generated by America's Team.

Alicia Landry said that Jones took away the family suite at the since-demolished Texas Stadium and barred their son, Tom Jr., from buying season tickets ever again. "With no explanation," she added.

She put more of her thoughts into words. "The Giants' organization [she clearly means the Mara family] is like family to us, and when they come to Dallas I always have dinner with Ann [Wellington Mara's widow]."

Way to go, Jerr-ah.

Your correspondent once spent a week in Dallas in the off-season interviewing players and Landry for a book entitled "Tom and the Boys," and one stop took me to another Landry home, perhaps just a temporary home (but tasteful without being garish) in the suburbs of Dallas.

He was more than cordial. We sat in the living room and Alicia brought drinks. She left us alone, but she did ask that when I got home I should say hello for her to Wellington, Ann and their children.

I did.

During the interview, I asked Landry if he thought he might have been named the Giants' head coach when they picked Allie Sherman in 1961. He smiled, a bit downcast. "The Cowboys became an expansion team in 1960," he said, "and Jim Lee [Howell] had requested one more year of coaching. The Mara family agreed to that.

"So when the Cowboys got their franchise, I was asked to become the first head coach. It was a question of going home again [Landry was from Mission, Tex,] and it was too good to pass up. I don't know if I would have taken the Giants' job if it all took place the year later, when Jim Lee left, but it would have been a tough decision."

Among Landry's tidbits:

"Do you know I invented the 'flex defense' [for which the Cowboys became famous, when I coached the Giants' defense," he said. "We just staggered the positions of the defensive ends and tackles, and I'll tell you this. If I had Andy Robustelli on the Cowboys along with that kid named Bob Lilly, there's no telling how good the team would have been."

Another one? "I used to drive to work at the stadium almost every morning with our offensive coordinator, Vince Lombardi, and along the way we'd talk about ways to stop an offense, or to stop a defense. He used to really annoy me because he had an answer for the most complicated plays I could dream up. Very often we'd be in the locker room and I'd draw up a defensive formation on the blackboard and I'd ask: 'Vince, how would you stop this one?' He would just take the chalk and make a few squiggles and I saw that it wouldn't work. And I would do the same thing with one of his pet offensive formations, too. So I guess it was really a case of going back to the drawing board."

Well, Landry is in the Hall of Fame. So is Lombardi. So is Robustelli. So is Lilly. So are others who played for Landry with the Giants, guys like Sam Huff and Emlen Tunnell, Rosey Brown and Frank Gifford. What a legacy Landry and Lombardi left – and sadly, neither one of them ever became the head coach of the Giants.

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The Giants have become affected by the NFL's Flex Schedule plan. .. Their Nov. 17 home game against the Green Bay Packers, originally a Sunday night game on NBC, has been moved to 4:30 p.m. on FOX. .. The open slot will be filled by the Kansas City at Denver game, now 8:30 p.m. on NBC.

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Somebody asked general manager Jerry Reese if he felt he could do a better job with personnel. His response? "Everybody here can do a better job."

Now that's clear enough, isn't it?

Check out Dave's website at E-GIANTS where you can subscribe to his newsletters which run much more frequently than what is available here.
- Team Giants

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