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By Les Carpenter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 17, 2007; Page E05
IRVING, Tex. -- There are times in this office, the one built for Tom Landry, that convention disappears and the man behind the desk relies on something more instinctual, something born on forgotten Friday nights in the lonely part of Texas that stretches up against Louisiana.
"Country coachin'," Wade Phillips said.
Chuckling slightly, the coach of the Dallas Cowboys shifted in his chair, the sleeves pushed up on his team jacket, sipping from a super-size convenience store tumbler of coffee and looking every bit the linebackers coach at West Orange-Stark High School and nothing like the face of football's most glamorous franchise. It's an appearance that undoubtedly had a lot to do with why he's been fired from two NFL head coaching jobs despite winning 58 percent of his games. And it's why, until Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones called this winter, Phillips figured he was destined to live out the rest of his football life as an assistant coach.
sImage matters in the $7 billion National Football League. Coaches have a look, a pedigree, an expectation that they are bringing with them whatever scheme is the most popular at that moment. Owners aren't handing their teams to doughy 60-year-old men with gentle rural Texas twangs and a dedication to "country coachin'," no matter how fantastic the winning percentage.
Except for one little thing: the good ol' Big Gulp-drinkin' country boy, son of that crazy Bum Phillips and his 10-gallon hat, is whupping all those smart boys and their fancy systems. In fact, if the season were to end now, Wade Phillips, once washed up and almost certain to never get a head coaching job ever again, would be coach of the year in the NFC.
There's an excellent chance the 8-1 Cowboys, who play the Washington Commanders on Sunday, will be in this year's Super Bowl. And not even Bum could do that in all those years coaching the Houston Oilers and New Orleans Saints.
Which might stand as the greatest indictment yet of business as usual these days in the NFL.
"He's not a campaigner, he's not a politician," says former Broncos, Giants and Falcons head coach Dan Reeves, who twice hired Phillips as a defensive coordinator. "He's never going to sell himself to you. He's kind of old-school. He's not a self-promoter, he's not a fancy guy. You will never see him miked on the sideline."
And what's wrong with that? The Cowboys have been plagued over the years with a variety of head coaches, from milquetoast assistants to larger-than-life figures with egos big enough to fill Texas Stadium. The last approach, Bill Parcells, left last winter after four mediocre years and a locker room filled with players tired of his heavy-handed tactics. He said he was done with football and trundled off to Saratoga. So perhaps a little "country coachin' " isn't the worst thing to have around here.
The tangible effects of it could be seen the other day in the Cowboys' locker room as star wide receiver Terrell Owens held two news conferences -- one at his locker for television reporters and another outside the room for the print media -- and raved several times about the new coach "who allows us to be men."
When asked to elaborate, Owens, who detested Parcells, said: "He just allows us to be accountable for our actions all across the board. He's not trying to be a disciplinarian. That just sucks the life out of a team." Then he pointed at the group of writers gathered around. Parcells "was tough for them, so you know how it was for us."
This year, the Cowboys even had a family day. Everyone brought their children and let them run around the locker room. Jones stood up and told the team he never remembered them ever having something like this before. And everyone at once seemed to have the same thought: Parcells would have died.
"There's a lot of ways to get it done," Phillips said softly the other day as he sat in his office.
Something he took from his father was a love of star players making the big catch or the huge run. He sees a particular beauty in the spectacular play, understanding the effort that went into making it, and he admits that he often stops when one happens and revels in it just like a fan. And unlike Parcells, Phillips finds Owens amusing, tittering like everyone else when he hears his wide receiver referring to running back Marion Barber as "Marion the Barbarian."
"It's clever the things he comes up with," Phillips said.
Of course, this goes against all current thinking of what an NFL head coach should be. Coaches are supposed to be put off by players such as Owens, outraged at the extravagance. Phillips shook his head and grabbed his cup of coffee.
"I think you can be an individual and also be a great team member," he said. "Everybody doesn't have to be the same. You know Thurman Thomas who just went in the Hall of Fame -- if everybody wore blue tights, he wore red. But it didn't bother anybody. He was an individual but he was also a great team member and a great player. I learned that being around players: they don't have to necessarily be cookie-cutter and all the same. A lot of the great ones aren't. They are an individual but they also play for the team and everybody knows it."
Around Dallas, they don't know what to make of the new coach. His hiring was scorned and, while his style has allowed the Cowboys players to feel a new sense of responsibility, they are also undisciplined, with mounting penalties that come after plays have been blown dead. To control this, Phillips has asked each player to sign a pledge not to commit such fouls. And there is a sense most other coaches would have been far more draconian than a simple pledge.
Then again, Phillips is 8-1.
In the end, that's what matters most to folks around here. And with the winning comes a certain fame that Phillips has never become accustomed to. He was never much of a man about town. That was always his father with that big old cowboy hat he wore when he coached the Oilers and Saints. Folks would see the hat even before they recognized Bum. Wade, even in his previous head coaching jobs in Denver and Buffalo, always managed to fade into the shadows.
Then came that night after a win a few weeks ago when he walked into Pappasitos not far from Texas Stadium and the whole restaurant erupted in a prolonged ovation that shocked him because, well, things like this have never really happened to him before. Just like the man who walked up to him at a restaurant, moved his plate aside and placed a picture on the table to be autographed. And rather than explode, he simply took the pen and gave the signature.
"I thought, 'Well, people can be rude when they don't mean to,' " Phillips said. "The problem -- well it's not a problem -- my dad was the same way as I am in that I seem approachable. I think [with] some coaches [fans] would be worried about coming up to them. I appreciate [it]. Some of the people are very nice. I would rather they not move my plate over."
Then he stopped. Because in a way it all seems so ridiculous. He, Wade Phillips, twice fired despite going to the playoffs three of the five years he was a head coach, who after the firing in Buffalo went seven years without being called to even interview for another head coaching job, is now suddenly the toast of Dallas. All those teams before had bought into this idea that he was a bumpkin, and now suddenly they're standing for him at Pappasitos?
He looked around Landry's old office and chuckled again.
"Yeah, well, I think it's perception certainly," he said. "You get fired and then people think you're a bad coach. That's not always the case. They fire good coaches too. I think just the perception of getting fired in Buffalo [hurt, but] they were 29-19 and top five or six in the league those years."
Down south outside San Antonio, from his I.O. Ranch (so named because a previous owner won it in a poker game), the voice of 83-year-old Bum Phillips rises over the phone. "I think he did damn well," Bum said of Wade's previous head coaching jobs. Like his son, he's perplexed by the firings but lived long enough in the NFL to know this was the way of the business.
When Wade Phillips went in to see Jerry Jones and laid out his lifetime achievements, telling him how every time he took over a team it went from awful straight to the playoffs in the first season, Jones listened. "Now that impressed the football guy," Phillips said, referring to his new boss. "If nothing else I'm lucky, I got a rabbit's foot or something. Come in and go to the playoffs the first year. They were in the playoffs last year so I have to do better."
With that, Phillips stood up in his Cowboys jacket with the sleeves pushed up and blue coach's shorts and headed toward the meeting rooms for some more "country coachin.' " And maybe for the next few months the old hillbilly coach will keep fooling them some more, beating all those young, smart geniuses on his way to the Super Bowl at last.
And what will the perception be then?
http://cowboyszone.com/forums/newthread.php?do=newthread&f=59
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 17, 2007; Page E05
IRVING, Tex. -- There are times in this office, the one built for Tom Landry, that convention disappears and the man behind the desk relies on something more instinctual, something born on forgotten Friday nights in the lonely part of Texas that stretches up against Louisiana.
"Country coachin'," Wade Phillips said.
Chuckling slightly, the coach of the Dallas Cowboys shifted in his chair, the sleeves pushed up on his team jacket, sipping from a super-size convenience store tumbler of coffee and looking every bit the linebackers coach at West Orange-Stark High School and nothing like the face of football's most glamorous franchise. It's an appearance that undoubtedly had a lot to do with why he's been fired from two NFL head coaching jobs despite winning 58 percent of his games. And it's why, until Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones called this winter, Phillips figured he was destined to live out the rest of his football life as an assistant coach.
sImage matters in the $7 billion National Football League. Coaches have a look, a pedigree, an expectation that they are bringing with them whatever scheme is the most popular at that moment. Owners aren't handing their teams to doughy 60-year-old men with gentle rural Texas twangs and a dedication to "country coachin'," no matter how fantastic the winning percentage.
Except for one little thing: the good ol' Big Gulp-drinkin' country boy, son of that crazy Bum Phillips and his 10-gallon hat, is whupping all those smart boys and their fancy systems. In fact, if the season were to end now, Wade Phillips, once washed up and almost certain to never get a head coaching job ever again, would be coach of the year in the NFC.
There's an excellent chance the 8-1 Cowboys, who play the Washington Commanders on Sunday, will be in this year's Super Bowl. And not even Bum could do that in all those years coaching the Houston Oilers and New Orleans Saints.
Which might stand as the greatest indictment yet of business as usual these days in the NFL.
"He's not a campaigner, he's not a politician," says former Broncos, Giants and Falcons head coach Dan Reeves, who twice hired Phillips as a defensive coordinator. "He's never going to sell himself to you. He's kind of old-school. He's not a self-promoter, he's not a fancy guy. You will never see him miked on the sideline."
And what's wrong with that? The Cowboys have been plagued over the years with a variety of head coaches, from milquetoast assistants to larger-than-life figures with egos big enough to fill Texas Stadium. The last approach, Bill Parcells, left last winter after four mediocre years and a locker room filled with players tired of his heavy-handed tactics. He said he was done with football and trundled off to Saratoga. So perhaps a little "country coachin' " isn't the worst thing to have around here.
The tangible effects of it could be seen the other day in the Cowboys' locker room as star wide receiver Terrell Owens held two news conferences -- one at his locker for television reporters and another outside the room for the print media -- and raved several times about the new coach "who allows us to be men."
When asked to elaborate, Owens, who detested Parcells, said: "He just allows us to be accountable for our actions all across the board. He's not trying to be a disciplinarian. That just sucks the life out of a team." Then he pointed at the group of writers gathered around. Parcells "was tough for them, so you know how it was for us."
This year, the Cowboys even had a family day. Everyone brought their children and let them run around the locker room. Jones stood up and told the team he never remembered them ever having something like this before. And everyone at once seemed to have the same thought: Parcells would have died.
"There's a lot of ways to get it done," Phillips said softly the other day as he sat in his office.
Something he took from his father was a love of star players making the big catch or the huge run. He sees a particular beauty in the spectacular play, understanding the effort that went into making it, and he admits that he often stops when one happens and revels in it just like a fan. And unlike Parcells, Phillips finds Owens amusing, tittering like everyone else when he hears his wide receiver referring to running back Marion Barber as "Marion the Barbarian."
"It's clever the things he comes up with," Phillips said.
Of course, this goes against all current thinking of what an NFL head coach should be. Coaches are supposed to be put off by players such as Owens, outraged at the extravagance. Phillips shook his head and grabbed his cup of coffee.
"I think you can be an individual and also be a great team member," he said. "Everybody doesn't have to be the same. You know Thurman Thomas who just went in the Hall of Fame -- if everybody wore blue tights, he wore red. But it didn't bother anybody. He was an individual but he was also a great team member and a great player. I learned that being around players: they don't have to necessarily be cookie-cutter and all the same. A lot of the great ones aren't. They are an individual but they also play for the team and everybody knows it."
Around Dallas, they don't know what to make of the new coach. His hiring was scorned and, while his style has allowed the Cowboys players to feel a new sense of responsibility, they are also undisciplined, with mounting penalties that come after plays have been blown dead. To control this, Phillips has asked each player to sign a pledge not to commit such fouls. And there is a sense most other coaches would have been far more draconian than a simple pledge.
Then again, Phillips is 8-1.
In the end, that's what matters most to folks around here. And with the winning comes a certain fame that Phillips has never become accustomed to. He was never much of a man about town. That was always his father with that big old cowboy hat he wore when he coached the Oilers and Saints. Folks would see the hat even before they recognized Bum. Wade, even in his previous head coaching jobs in Denver and Buffalo, always managed to fade into the shadows.
Then came that night after a win a few weeks ago when he walked into Pappasitos not far from Texas Stadium and the whole restaurant erupted in a prolonged ovation that shocked him because, well, things like this have never really happened to him before. Just like the man who walked up to him at a restaurant, moved his plate aside and placed a picture on the table to be autographed. And rather than explode, he simply took the pen and gave the signature.
"I thought, 'Well, people can be rude when they don't mean to,' " Phillips said. "The problem -- well it's not a problem -- my dad was the same way as I am in that I seem approachable. I think [with] some coaches [fans] would be worried about coming up to them. I appreciate [it]. Some of the people are very nice. I would rather they not move my plate over."
Then he stopped. Because in a way it all seems so ridiculous. He, Wade Phillips, twice fired despite going to the playoffs three of the five years he was a head coach, who after the firing in Buffalo went seven years without being called to even interview for another head coaching job, is now suddenly the toast of Dallas. All those teams before had bought into this idea that he was a bumpkin, and now suddenly they're standing for him at Pappasitos?
He looked around Landry's old office and chuckled again.
"Yeah, well, I think it's perception certainly," he said. "You get fired and then people think you're a bad coach. That's not always the case. They fire good coaches too. I think just the perception of getting fired in Buffalo [hurt, but] they were 29-19 and top five or six in the league those years."
Down south outside San Antonio, from his I.O. Ranch (so named because a previous owner won it in a poker game), the voice of 83-year-old Bum Phillips rises over the phone. "I think he did damn well," Bum said of Wade's previous head coaching jobs. Like his son, he's perplexed by the firings but lived long enough in the NFL to know this was the way of the business.
When Wade Phillips went in to see Jerry Jones and laid out his lifetime achievements, telling him how every time he took over a team it went from awful straight to the playoffs in the first season, Jones listened. "Now that impressed the football guy," Phillips said, referring to his new boss. "If nothing else I'm lucky, I got a rabbit's foot or something. Come in and go to the playoffs the first year. They were in the playoffs last year so I have to do better."
With that, Phillips stood up in his Cowboys jacket with the sleeves pushed up and blue coach's shorts and headed toward the meeting rooms for some more "country coachin.' " And maybe for the next few months the old hillbilly coach will keep fooling them some more, beating all those young, smart geniuses on his way to the Super Bowl at last.
And what will the perception be then?
http://cowboyszone.com/forums/newthread.php?do=newthread&f=59
