https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/10/23/nfl-week-7-doug-baldwin-roger-goodell-joe-thomas-dan-quinn-mmqb
Sham, on how the Cowboys nearly hired Marty Schottenheimer to replace Tom Landry before the team was sold to Jerry Jones in 1989: “Most people who revile Jerry Jones do it because of his dismissal of Tom Landry. I always say, let's see how much you know, because Tex Schramm wanted to get rid of Tom Landry. I wrote a book in 2003 called ‘
Stadium Stories,’ and one of the chapters I did was on Tex, and it was about six months before he died. I'd known him 35 years, but I spent a whole day with him, and he told me things that I didn't know. In 1986, Landry says to Schramm, ‘Get ready. Get the next guy. I'm thinking about [retiring].’ Landry hires the hottest young assistant coach in the NFL, Paul Hackett from the 49ers … He hired Hackett because Landry said get the next guy ready. Landry then proceeded to change everything Hackett did, and that was also the year that Herschel Walker got dropped in their lap in the middle of training camp. Landry then decides, without telling anyone, that he's not going to quit. And either ’87 or ’88 in the spring, Landry holds a press conference, and Schramm had Marty Schottenheimer in Dallas showing him houses. He thought he was going to hire Marty Schottenheimer to replace Tom Landry, who was going to retire. Landry has his press conference, and that's when Schramm finds out that Landry is not quitting. He says there's been a lot of speculation, but I want to tell everybody that I'm staying and I hope to coach into the ’90s, and we all thought he meant into
his 90s. That's how Schramm found out.”
