John Fitzgerald, who centered one of the NFL’s most feared offensive lines during the Dallas Cowboys’ championship era of the 1970s, has passed away at age 77.
Fitzgerald died Monday, April 14, 2026, according to confirmation from the Cowboys on Tuesday morning. His death came just two days shy of his 78th birthday. Neither the team nor his family revealed a cause of death.
A native of Southbridge, Massachusetts, Fitzgerald played fullback and competed in shot put at Southbridge High School in Worcester County. The raw strength he displayed in track and field would later become a hallmark of his NFL career.
At Boston College, he lined up on both sides of the ball for three varsity seasons, playing offensive guard and defensive tackle. His college career earned him a spot in the Boston College Varsity Club Athletic Hall of Fame in 1982, just after he hung up his cleats.
Dallas took him 101st overall in the fourth round of the 1970 NFL Draft. The 6-foot-5, 255-pound lineman spent his first year on the taxi squad while the Cowboys experimented with him on defense before switching him to the offensive line.
He worked as a backup guard during the Cowboys’ 24-3 Super Bowl VI victory over Miami in January 1972. Dallas converted him to center for the 1972 season, and he seized the starting role in 1973, holding it through 1980.
Between 1973 and 1980, Dallas ranked among the NFL’s top 10 offenses in total yards every year. The Cowboys cracked the top three in five of those seasons.
During his 12 years in Dallas, Fitzgerald never played for a losing team, a distinction that places him among a select few in professional football history. The Cowboys made the playoffs 11 times during his tenure, reached nine NFC Championship Games, played in five Super Bowls, and won two championships. Only in 1974 did Dallas fail to reach the postseason while Fitzgerald was on the roster.
Fitzgerald’s most lasting contribution came in 1975, when head coach Tom Landry reintroduced the shotgun formation—a scheme that had largely fallen out of favor. Fitzgerald’s precision snapping to quarterback Roger Staubach over a longer distance with consistency and speed made the strategy viable. The results were immediate: the Cowboys reached three Super Bowls over the next four years, winning Super Bowl XII in January 1977 with a 27-10 demolition of Denver.
Fitzgerald coined the memorable name “Four Irishmen and a Scott” for the 1979-80 Cowboys offensive line, which featured him at center alongside Pat Donovan at left tackle, Tom Rafferty at right guard, Jim Cooper at right tackle, and Herb Scott at left guard.
Hall of Fame running back Tony Dorsett praised Herb Scott, the left guard, as instrumental to his success. Donovan, part of Dallas’s famous 1975 “Dirty Dozen” draft class, played nine NFL seasons without missing a single game. Fitzgerald orchestrated it all from his position in the middle.
Despite his sustained excellence, he never received a Pro Bowl selection, a snub that many great offensive linemen have experienced throughout league history. His teammates, however, recognized his importance to Dallas’s offensive dominance.
He logged 137 regular-season appearances with 109 starts across his dozen years in Dallas, all spent with the Cowboys from 1970 to 1981. In the playoffs, he played 19 games and started 13, a postseason total that ranks 19th in franchise history.
The Cowboys placed him on injured reserve on Aug. 31, 1981. He officially retired on Jan. 11, 1982, with Rafferty taking over at center.
Dallas considers Fitzgerald among its all-time great centers, a group that includes Dave Manders, Mark Stepnoski, Andre Gurode, and Travis Frederick.
Football historian Kevin Gallagher called Fitzgerald the “trigger man for the Cowboys’ bold 1975 reintroduction of the shotgun formation”—an innovation that reshaped offensive football and depended on a center who could snap with precision.