Greg Landry, Scrambling All-Pro Quarterback, Is Dead at 77

Known for his legs as well as for his arm, he was the last Detroit Lions quarterback to make the Pro Bowl for more than 40 years.

Greg Landry, who in the late 1960s and ’70s became a forerunner of the modern dual-threat quarterback and, after a glittering All-Pro season for the Detroit Lions in 1971, made the Pro Bowl — the last Lions quarterback to earn that distinction for more than 40 years — died on Friday in Detroit. He was 77.

His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his son Greg Jr., who said the cause was not yet known.

Landry, who was considered one of the best players in the history of the University of Massachusetts, was selected 11th overall in the 1968 National Football League draft. He was the first quarterback taken.

He wore the Lions’ Honolulu blue and silver for 11 seasons, tallying 12,451 yards and 80 touchdown passes.

In 1971, his first year as a starter, Landry passed for 2,237 yards and 16 touchdowns, earning a first-team All-Pro nod and his only trip to the Pro Bowl. He was the last Lions quarterback to earn that distinction until Matthew Stafford was named an alternate for the 2014 Pro Bowl.

“There were a lot of quarterbacks that had good years after me,” Landry said in a 2006 interview with The Detroit Free Press. “It’s unfortunate that they’ve started to suggest, ‘Greg, you’re the last good quarterback.’ I appreciate the compliment, but I know some of those guys played pretty well.”

Unusual for an era marked by pocket passers, Landry did damage with his legs as well as his right arm: He rushed for 2,655 yards over his career, which concluded with stints with the Baltimore Colts and the Chicago Bears. In both 1971 and 1972, he ran for more than 500 yards.

He was not the only quarterback to scamper. Roger Staubach of the Dallas Cowboys, nicknamed Roger the Dodger, and Fran Tarkenton of the division-rival Minnesota Vikings, known as Scramblin’ Fran, often ran out of necessity, when a play broke down or when they saw an opening for a first down.

But with Landry, who was physically imposing at 6-foot-4, the Lions designed running plays for him, as would later be the case with current dual-threat quarterbacks like Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens and Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills. The Lions even took a page from college football playbooks and drew up option plays, in which the quarterback has the option to carry the ball himself after the snap or pitch it to a running back, a rarity in the N.F.L.

Landry showed off his burst early in his career, during the Lions’ rout of the Green Bay Packers in the opening game of the 1970 season. Closing out the game in relief of the starter Bill Munson, Landry called a quarterback sneak on third down with two yards to go at the Lions’ 13-yard line. Instead of gutting out a few yards for a first down, he burst through the Packers’ defense and galloped for 76 yards — the longest run for a Lion since 1951.

Despite his accomplishments, Landry made only one playoff appearance with the Lions, a 1970 wild-card matchup in which the Dallas Cowboys stifled Detroit, 5-0, a score more appropriate to a baseball game. In that game, Dallas held Landry to 48 yards passing and only 15 yards on the ground.

There were no Super Bowls in his future. “We were very good for four or five years, but we needed another player,” Landry told the Free Press, “and you could see us getting a little weaker each year instead of stronger.”

Gregory Paul Landry was born on Dec. 18, 1946, in Nashua, N.H., the second of four sons of Alvin and Felixa (Worsowicz) Landry. His parents were factory workers.

After graduating from Nashua Senior High School in 1964, he earned a scholarship to UMass. Over three seasons as the starter, he led the team to two Yankee Conference championships and twice led it in rushing as well as passing.

“Landry impressed everyone with his coolness under fire and his knowledge of the game,” Bump Elliott, his coach at the North-South Shrine Game, a showcase for collegiate talent played a month before the draft, told the newspaper The Detroit American in 1968. “He’s a real football student with good moves.”

In the N.F.L. draft, Landry was a member of the same class as several future Hall of Famers, including the Miami Dolphins running back Larry Csonka and the Oakland Raiders quarterback Ken Stabler.

In 1976, following three injury-plagued seasons, Landry passed for 2,191 yards, the 10th most in the league during that run-heavy era, and 17 touchdowns and was named the league’s Comeback Player of the Year.

Even so, the Lions went only 6-8, leading the team’s owner, William Clay Ford, to announce publicly that Landry was on the trading block, although no trade materialized that year.

Landry was eventually replaced as the starter by Gary Danielson, and in 1979 he was shipped to the Colts. He played three seasons in Baltimore before moving to the short-lived United States Football League, where he played for the Chicago Blitz and the Arizona Wranglers.

After his retirement in 1984, Landry was a quarterbacks coach for the Cleveland Browns and later for the Chicago Bears before becoming the Bears’ offensive coordinator from 1988 to 1992.

In 2000, he started a manufacturer’s representative business for automotive suppliers, which he eventually ran with his son Greg Jr. until 2021.

In addition to Greg Jr., Landry is survived by his wife, Jeannine Landry; another son, Joseph; his daughters, Kathleen Tomassetti, Beth Shilakes and Mary Gordon; his brothers, Michael, Andrew and John; and 18 grandchildren.

After three years away from the N.F.L., Landry returned to the Pontiac Silverdome on Dec. 16, 1984, two days before his 38th birthday, to play one last game for the Bears as an emergency replacement for the injured quarterbacks Jim McMahon and Steve Fuller. Landry completed 11 of 20 passes for 199 yards with three interceptions as Chicago steamrolled his old team, 30-13.

The spry legs that carried him to the Pro Bowl were no more, although the Bears’ head coach, Mike Ditka, did not leave him stationary in the pocket.

“After the third rollout,” Landry told The Washington Post, “I went over to the bench and told them, ‘Don’t call that anymore. At 38, I guess I can’t roll out and pass like I used to.’”