Books | Sports

August 28, 2011

Before They Were Legends

Before Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry won Super Bowls as head coaches, they were assistants together in New York. Ernie Palladino looks back.

Tom Flynn

Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry both were legendary NFL coaches. Before then, for a brief time, they both were assistant coaches for one fortunate franchise, the New York Giants. In the mid-1950s the two had free reign under Giants head coach Jim Lee Howell to direct their half of the gridiron: Lombardi, the offense; and Landry, the defense. Each departed the team for head-coaching jobs around the same time—Lombardi to Green Bay prior to the 1959 season, and Landry to Dallas in 1960—and in their collective absence, as their own careers ascended, the Giants gradually fell to depths from which they fully returned only after a quarter of a century of relative misery.







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