I would not have expected the death of Alicia Landry to make me respect Tom Brady that much more, but that’s sort of how the NFL’s championship weekend went around here, a thing those of us in Dallas have watched from afar for the last quarter of a century.
Alicia, 91, was the product of a different era, the wife of the man who coached the Cowboys their first 29 seasons while delivering long playoff rides like they were part of his job description. Tom and Alicia became a kind of local royal family, our Texas version of the The Crown filled with similar triumph and heartache but less backstabbing.
Coaches and managers don’t stick around for 29 years anymore, and they don’t make five Super Bowl trips in a decade’s time, so we really haven’t had any more Alicias. Jimmy Johnson didn’t even bother bringing his wife to Dallas, and we tend to learn very little about spouses before a new coach and family are already. moving in as replacements. Rick Carlisle has shown more staying power than anyone else (now in his 13th season here), and I suppose most Mavericks fans know his wife has a doctorate but little beyond that.
Regardless, after reading of Alicia’s passing, it was recollection of time spent with the Landry family that began my weekend. Long before I entered the journalism world, my father, as an executive with the Zale Corp., sold Landry a ring he had put aside for Alicia in case he ever won a Super Bowl. They weren’t close but developed a friendly enough relationship that, on my first day on the Cowboys beat in 1986, Landry asked me, “How’s Willis?’'
That may seem innocent enough to you, but it’s disarming when someone you’re going to cover with a critical eye asks right out of the gate how your dad’s doing.
As for Alicia, I knew her only through the fact that in pre-cellphone, pre-caller ID times, she answered the home phone, and I would ask to speak to Tom and she would sound pleasantly exasperated (if that’s a thing) to go get him.
As for those calls, Landry knew it was part of his job and willingly provided emotion-free answers. I even called one time (practically forced into it by our NFL writer Gary Myers, who probably got this from Gil Brandt) that the Cowboys were bringing back cornerback Manny Hendrix to help an injury-riddled secondary. It was marginal news. At best.
Landry said that no decision had been made, that it was something being considered. When the club went ahead and signed Hendrix two days later, Landry told Cowboys PR man Greg Aiello, in his deadpan way, “Give it to Cowlishaw first. He’s been all over this story.”
Landry was the NFL’s youngest coach when he began his Cowboys journey — George Halas, Paul Brown and, of course, Vince Lombardi were among his rivals — and stayed long enough to have critics saying the game had passed him by. Along the way, his five Super Bowl trips and 12 NFL/NFC Championship Games established the Cowboys as one of the most popular sports franchises in the world.
And that brings us to Brady.
He doubled Landry’s Super Bowl output when he earned a trip to his 10th Sunday afternoon at Lambeau Field. He already had surpassed Landry in conference title games (this was his 14th), and now Brady will face his seventh different Super Bowl opponent in Kansas City.
Brady has faced the Giants, Eagles and Rams twice.
The list of achievements boggles the mind, even when you limit them to how they apply to the Cowboys.
Tony Romo will call Super Bowl LV for CBS as the league’s highest-paid analyst. The last time Brady faced coach Andy Reid in a Super Bowl, Romo was one year, 8 months and 23 days away from his first NFL start.
A chart during Sunday’s AFC Championship broadcast showed Patrick Mahomes and Brady to be the most recent quarterbacks to play in three straight conference championship games. Roger Staubach was first on the list. Troy Aikman and Danny White were among the group of 12. The three Cowboys started 13 conference championship games between 1971 and 1995 — remarkable.
And still one fewer than Brady.
Now that he has changed teams and conferences, the news gets even grimmer. NFC playoff wins in the 21st century?
Brady 3, Cowboys 3.
And saving the worst for last, in the 25 years since that run of great Landry-fueled Cowboys success, here are the dismal NFC Championship Game totals:
Tom Brady 1. Dallas Cowboys 0.
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