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Jon Machota 2h ago
Welcome to the NFL 100, The Athletic’s endeavor to identify the 100 best players in football history. Every day until the season begins, we’ll unveil new members of the list, with the No. 1 player to be crowned Sept. 8.
It was third-and-9 from the Dolphins’ 38-yard line with 13 seconds remaining in the first quarter of Super Bowl VI. The Cowboys were clinging to a 3-0 lead when Dolphins quarterback Bob Griese attempted to draw the Dallas defensive line offsides with multiple hard counts.
It nearly worked.
But as soon as Griese took the snap, he was in trouble.
Here’s how CBS play-by-play voice Ray Scott and color commentator Pat Summerall called what happened next.
Scott: “Griese forced to scramble. … He’s down inside the 10-yard line! And Bob Lilly has him!”
Summerall: “Griese, of course, is a fine athlete, but here’s one of the best ones around, No. 74 is Lilly.”
Griese lost 29 yards on the play, a Super Bowl record.
“It was amazing because I got there quickly,” Lilly told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 2019. “My goal was to grab my guy and grab George’s (Andrie) tackle before he could set up. Jethro (Pugh) would get his guard and Larry (Cole) was going to come through, but we both (Lilly and Cole) got through there just like that.
“Cole was over there, I was here, and it was kind of like a rodeo deal. We had him in the middle. Pretty soon, Bob Griese just turns around and took off fast, and I caught him and dragged him down. So I give Larry Cole a big part of the credit.
“Bob always says, ‘How’d you get me?’ Well, I had Larry Cole. He said, ‘I took off.’ Well, I said, ‘Bob, I’m faster than you are.’”
The sack went on to become the signature play of Lilly’s Hall of Fame career. The Cowboys went on to win their first Super Bowl in franchise history 24-3.
From 1966 through 1970, Dallas made the playoffs every season. The Cowboys reached the conference championship game three times and the Super Bowl once during that time. But they failed to win it all, so they were called names like “Next Year’s Champions” and “Bridesmaids of the NFL.”
Both bothered Lilly.
Another signature moment from his career occurred at the end of the Super Bowl the year before Dallas beat Miami. Many costly mistakes led to the Cowboys losing 16-13 to the Baltimore Colts. Lilly was so frustrated at the end, he flung his helmet at least 20 yards.
Legendary Cowboys coach Tom Landry mentioned that moment while presenting Lilly for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1980.
“He almost threw his helmet out of the Orange Bowl,” Landry recalled. “Well that demonstrated how much it hurt him to lose, and I knew right then that we had a great chance to win Super Bowl VI.”
After he finally won the Super Bowl the following year, the video of Lilly smoking a cigar in the postgame locker room became one of the most famous images in team history.
Lilly was the first draft pick in franchise history, going No. 13 in Round 1 in 1961. He played 14 seasons in Dallas, missing only one game. He had a career-high 15 sacks in 1966 and finished with 95.5 in 196 regular-season games.
He was the face of the original “Doomsday Defense.” Landry played Lilly early in his career at defensive end before eventually moving him to defensive tackle in 1964. Landry would call it the best decision of his coaching career. Lilly would go on to be one of the greatest defensive tackles in NFL history.
“When you have a guy that’s that big and that much of a player, whatever he wanted to do, he could do it,” former Cowboys teammate Dan Reeves said in an NFL Films interview. “Nobody could beat him off the ball. Centers would try to choke-block him and then the guard would pull and they couldn’t reach him. He’d be in the backfield and just cause so much havoc.”
Lilly was the first Cowboys player to be named All-Pro, the first to make a Pro Bowl, the first to be inducted into the Ring of Honor and the first to be enshrined in Canton, Ohio. It’s pretty easy to understand how he got the nickname “Mr. Cowboy,” which Lilly says was given to him by legendary Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach.
“I take it as an honor,” Lilly told the Star-Telegram, “but I do think there’s a lot of other players that certainly deserve that title if there’s going to be a title like that. I really don’t … I don’t know that I really like it. It makes me feel kind of weird because I’ve got so many friends that I think are great.”
The Cowboys don’t retire jersey numbers, but Staubach’s No. 12, Troy Aikman’s No. 8, Emmitt Smith’s No. 22 and Lilly’s No. 74 are the only ones players are not allowed to wear in the regular season.
“Regardless of whether Bob was double-teamed or even triple-teamed, he’d still beat you,” Staubach was quoted in the book, “A Cowboy’s Life.” “There were times when he didn’t even confront the opposition at all. He would either jump over them, go around them, or strategically outsmart them by making the play.”
“A man like that comes along once in a lifetime,” Landry added in the book. “He is something a little more than great. Nobody is better than Bob Lilly.”
Another key to his success was his eyes. According to The Athletic’s 2019 story on Lilly, he had 20/12 vision during his playing career. And though that presented advantages on the field, it also led to one of his greatest passions off the field: photography.
Lilly experimented with the hobby during his playing career and then became fully involved with it after his playing days, eventually opening a gallery in New Mexico.
“Football is like a triple-chess game,” Lilly told The Athletic. “Once you get about three or four years, if you’re very astute, you not only know what your defense is, but you know what they’re going to do. I think that’s the way photography is. It’s the little things. It’s the little things that catch your interest. It’s details. … You learn all these things over a period of time, just like football.”