Meredith had a reputation of being a party guy off the field, and he thought football should be fun on the field, which led to conflict with Tom Landry on more than one occassion.
Inspite of his wild and crazy guy personality, he played through an amazing amount of injuries, including playing with fractured ribs. After the play that knocked him down and fractured his ribs, Meredith couldn’t get up and asked his teammates to lift him up to his feet, telling them he could play if he could just stand up. He completed the game.
In later years Landry would call Meredith the toughest player he ever coached. Teammate Lee Roy Jordan also said he (Jordan) had seen a lot of tough players, and Meredith was the toughest of them all.
I wonder how accurate the portrayal of Meredith was in the movie “North Dallas Forty.”