Tom Landry's innovations on both offense and defense have stood the test of time.

Look at what Landry did offensively with the shotgun formation, with motion and with spreading the field. A lot of those ideas and concepts, which we now see every week in the NFL, came from Landry. They are the foundation of how many offenses are run, but teams didn't employ those offensive tactics until Landry began implementing them.

While people today talk about the 3-4 defense and the zone-blitz schemes, Landry developed the Flex defense, an innovation in the '70s when Landry was working both the offensive and defensive sides for the Dallas Cowboys. It was basically a gap defense that attacked the line of scrimmage and was really tough on offensive linemen.

When I came to Philadelphia in 1977, Dallas was the archrival. Landry's Cowboys were the marquee team -- America's team. Believe me, when the schedules came out, you put a star next to the games against the Cowboys because you looked forward to those games the most. They were the team we always tried to match up against.

Then-Eagles head coach Dick Vermeil would always say, "If you want to be the best, you have to beat the best." Everything we did was directed toward being as good as or better than Dallas. We always evaluated our team against the Cowboys because they were the model, as designed by Landry.

The stoic vision of Landry on the sidelines was synonymous with the Cowboys. They were a very methodical, business-like team. They were the first team to use computers and take a cerebral approach to breaking down a game. When you saw him on the sidelines, you couldn't tell if the Cowboys were up 40-0 or down 40-0. He was always in control of himself, his football team and his emotions. And clearly, his teams were always ready to play.

Landry was the consummate professional, and I'm sure he had a way to deal with the divergent personalities in the Cowboys locker room, from Thomas "Hollywood" Henderson to Roger Staubach. It might not be fair to designate one coach as being the very best because times and people change. But when you look at Landry's Cowboys in the '70s, there wasn't a better organization or team.