Hall of Fame

CANTON, Ohio – Bob Lilly, once the cornerstone of the Dallas Cowboys' "Doomsday Defense," once the All-American at TCU, stood Saturday afternoon behind the podium during his enshrinement ceremony in front of the Pro Football Hall of Fame with hundreds of well-wishers looking on, stood there with clenched fists trying to control himself and, in the end, failing.

He cried. Out of happiness, but also out of a profound sadness, for two of the three most influential men in his life had died before sharing this grand, ultimate honor with him.

His father, John, who had been crippled in one leg but nevertheless had begun throwing a football to Lilly when he was only five, died in 1970, missing, too, his son's euphoria after the Cowboys' 1972 Super Bowl victory over Miami. And Abe Martin, for so many years TCU's head coach, who had made it possible for Lilly to realize his dream of playing football for the only college he had ever considered attending, had died last year. For these men his tears rolled down still-youthful cheeks.

LOUIS DELUCA / DMN

The display honoring Bob Lilly in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

But the third man, Cowboy head coach Tom Landry, was there. He had flown on a jet all night from training camp in Thousand Oaks, Calif., to present Lilly as the first player who had spent an entire career in Dallas to be included on the elite list of Hall of Famers now numbering 106. Lilly broke through his tears and thanked Landry for coming then said, regaining his composure, "(Ray) Nitschke (a former Green Bay Packer who was also in attendance) told me this would happen, but I didn't believe him."

Lilly's emotional day at the Hall came in his first year of eligibility for enshrinement after retiring following the 1974 season. The great defensive tackle, known for an almost supernatural quickness and the ability to bear-hug a quarterback despite being double or triple teamed, was inducted along with cornerback Herb Adderley, who had played for Green Bay ('61-'69) and Dallas ('70-72'); David (Deacon) Jones, a defensive end for the Rams ('61-'71), Chargers ('72-'73) and Redskins ('74); and Jim Otto, the only center the Oakland Raiders used for 15 years from 1960 to 1974.

As he had done on many occasions before, Landry called Lilly "a legend."

"The best coaching decision I ever made," Landry added, "was switching Lilly from defensive end to defensive tackle in 1963."

Lilly, the Cowboys' first player to be acquired in the draft, had never liked playing defensive end. In a telephone interview earlier in the week from the Waco office of his Coors distributorship, Lilly said, "I didn't contain reverses or quarterback rollouts very well as an end. I just didn't like sitting there and waiting around for a play to develop. At tackle, you just react and move."

Landry fondly remembered his favorite Lilly play, when the 7-time All-Pro had reacted and moved so fast that he turned Super Bowl VI into a slapstick affair for several long seconds. Lilly had rocketed through the Dolphin line near midfield much to the surprise of a panicked Bob Griese, who immediately began a hasty retreat back and forth across the field, deeper and deeper, like a Keystone Cop being chased by a hundred grizzly bear. Twenty-nine yards behind the line Lilly got his man, and he believes to this day that it was that moment that the Cowboys threw off their mantle as the team that couldn't win the big one. They went on, of course, to route Miami, 24-3.

"It was kinda comical when you watched it," Landry, grinning, said of the play. "That had to be the most unusual play I've ever seen in a game like that.

"I've never had anyone who was double or triple teamed so often, but he could move through the first man so fast then defeat the second. Anytime I think of Lilly, I think of the best player I ever coached."

For Lilly, however, the defeats stand out as much as the victories; and he still recalls with uncanny clarity what he considers to be perhaps his most tragic play as a Cowboy. It was on the day of infamy for Dallas, the Ice Bowl in 1967, the NFL championship game against the Packers in Green Bay. With Dallas leading 17-14, the Packers desperately needed a first down late in the game.

"There was this play where I was supposed to loop with the guard," said Lilly, who set a Cowboy record when he started 196 consecutive games and only missed one game in his career. "The ground was icy. It was a sucker play (to entice the running back through the hole). George (Andrie) was supposed to fill the gap and make the play, but he fell. I knew going up to the line that I shouldn't move. My instincts told me to stay there, but I moved and they gained nine yards, got the first down on the 1-yard line and scored the winning touchdown."

Andrie, the defensive end who was Lilly's roommate for 11 years, said it was typical for Lilly to remember such a thing because "he took a loss, like me, a lot more personally than some guys did. That's what made him a great player - he always went out the week after a loss and worked just that much harder."

Though the term "Doomsday Defense" had been coined in the mid-‘60s, Lilly believes the Cowboys didn't earn that monicker until after a fateful Monday night in 1970. On national television, the St. Louis Cardinals embarrassed Dallas, 38-0, playing as if Dallas had never sent a defensive squad onto the field.

"It was my lowest moment," Lilly observed. "How could you get any lower? We had been humiliated. After everybody cussed us out and the press had attacked us the next day, the defensive team had a meeting. We decided we were going to play our way and the hell with everyone else.

"Sometimes the Cowboys were so cautious on defense, so afraid of making a mistake. When that happens, you can't go for the ball. We decided we weren't going to quit."

Dallas won its last five games after that to go from a 5-4 record to a 10-4 mark, good enough to eventually lead them to their first NFC title. In those last five regular-season games, Dallas gave up only 36 points.

"That meeting, that was the real birth of the Cowboys," Lilly said.

Andrie said that, despite not being "a rah-rah boy," Lilly was the best kind of leader, one who "led by example."

"He was a good ‘ol boy, nothing like he was on the field," Andrie said. "But he was quiet. When things got down, he led by performance. He'd think, ‘Hell, there's a job to be done and I'm going to do it.'"

Indeed, the 6-5 former lineman credits his success , his 11 selections for the Pro Bowl as much to the mental game he played with himself as to his natural quickness and strength.

"I would never accept getting beat 1-on-1," he explained. "You just never let it enter in your mind that the other guy can beat you. Some of them probably should have beaten me, but I wouldn't let them."

Former Green Bay guard Gale Gillingham, whom Lilly ranks as about the toughest lineman he ever had to face, along with former Ram guard Tom Mack, still speaks in unequivocal praise of Lilly.

"He was the best I ever played against," said Gillingham, who now sells real estate in Minnesota after playing with the Packers from 1966 to 1976. "He was great in the pass rush because he had such long arms and used his hands so well. And, on the run, he'd butt you then pull. He wasn't that big, so you didn't have much to hit. He was so quick you couldn't just tee off. You had to leave the line under control, maybe give up a couple of yards then take him on.

"I had the toughest time ever during the Ice Bowl against him. They changed their shoes for the second half because of the ice, and I didn't touch him the entire half. If it hadn't been for our center, it would have been all over."

After scoring four touchdowns and recovering 16 fumbles from his debut in 1961 to 1974, Lilly retired because of a neck injury that was growing increasingly painful. The injury still plagues him "but it doesn't hurt anything at all like it did that last season. It got to where I couldn't sleep at night, and I had to have a shot before every game. I could have played another year; they had invited me back."

But Lilly is too proud a man to suffer the indignities of playing with faded skills in a tired body. His transition was remarkably untraumatic. With timing that was almost spooky, Coors made a distributorship available in Waco a mere month after his retirement and he got it.

"Fate's been good to me," he said. "Here I was coming from Throckmorton (150 miles northwest of Dallas) and I got to play at TCU, then as I left there two football teams started in Dallas (the Texans and the Cowboys) and I got to play with the Cowboys. Now I've got the distributorship. If that's not fate, I don't know what it is. I'm living in the country now, just 20 minutes from hunting and fishing and swimming. I'm living the life of Huck Finn and ol' Tom Sawyer."

Better than that, Bob. Huck and Tom will never be in the Hall of Fame.