Like he always does, Bum Phillips watched the Dallas Cowboys game Saturday night from his easy chair in Goliad. Although a 50-pound weight loss has Bum feeling chipper at 86, he doesn’t relish the lengthy trip to North Texas.
It’s possible no game, even those victorious Houston Oiler blood baths against the Steelers in the late 1970s, gave him as much satisfaction as watching the Cowboys dominate Philadelphia in the opening round of the playoffs. He didn’t need to see his son win a playoff game to know he’s an excellent coach, but he was sick of seeing and hearing the media shots taken at Wade over his playoff record.
Matter of fact, he’s sick and tired of the media period. And Bum has always been as media friendly as a coach could be.
“They have really been unfair to him and I don’t understand why,” he said. “Too many of them don’t understand the big picture or don’t want to understand it. I’ll tell you one thing, he’s handled all that stuff better than I would have. I would have told them where to stick it a long time ago.”
Although he’d never take credit for Wade’s success as a coach, and leading three different franchises to the playoffs underscores that success, Bum thinks he probably had something to do with his son’s ability to handle criticism. Not that he’s overly proud of how it came about.
“I was way too hard on him when he was my quarterback at Port Neches-Groves,” he said. “I fussed at him much more than I should have because I didn’t want anybody thinking he was getting special treatment. It got to the point one of my coaches said, ‘Bum, if I was Wade I couldn’t play for you.’ ”
Phillips, with considerable remorse, remembers a night in Orange when he went too far.
“We were down near the end zone, Wade dropped back to pass and wound up getting tackled for a big loss, instead of throwing the ball away. I called time out and he came to the sideline and asked what I wanted him to do. I said, ‘you messed it up, now straighten it out.’ I have long regretted that.”
Back in the present, Bum is extremely proud of the job his son has done in Dallas and how he’s tuned out the critics. While they rarely discuss the Cowboys, he’s a sharp enough football man to understand from afar the mine field Wade’s had to negotiate to have his team two wins from the Super Bowl.
Because he likes Jerry Jones, genuinely likes him, the elder Phillips sort of pulls his punches on being critical. But two things that clearly disturb him are the problems a cancer named Terrell Owens created in the locker room last year and the fact the head coach of the Cowboys has virtually no say over the team’s offense.
Bum is right on target, and that’s what so troubling about the lack of respect Wade has gotten from both the Metroplex media, and the talking heads in the national media. I’ve yet to hear anybody, including Jimmy Johnson, who would never accept having an offensive coordinator forced on him, dwell on the awkwardness of the situation.
Wade Phillips, as the head coach, has gotten showered with blame whenever anything went wrong. No matter if Jason Garrett made crazy calls that left you shaking your head, like the ones late in the Denver game, the knee jerk reaction was always “fire Wade Phillips.”
After the Cowboys struggled to win against a bad Kansas City team, to go 3-2 on the season, Dallas Morning News columnist Tim Cowlishaw came out the next day suggesting the only solution was to fire Wade on the spot and replace him with Jason Garrett.
“If Jones wants to keep that playoff streak from reaching 13 years, it’s his only chance,” wrote Cowlishaw.
What a nitwit! But that’s the Metroplex media mentality Wade’s had to put up with almost from day one. In their mindset, he doesn’t look like an NFL coach is supposed to look, project a tough enough aura, find enough fault with players when things are not going well or foam at the mouth enough.
Basically, he’s too nice and they don’t think nice guys can win.
On national shows like ESPN’s Sports Reporters, Wade’s been regularly ridiculed by writers with influence, like Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe and Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News. Few, meanwhile, bothered to take the owner to task for a litany of blunders that have consistently put his coach in third and long.
In a pregame interview with Jones before the Cowboys regular-season finale against the Eagles, Bob Costas’ first question was whether Wade was going to be fired if the Cowboys lost. Never mind that he had the second most wins in the NFL the last three years. Or that Dallas was coming off impressive back-to-back victories over New Orleans and Washington, and a near miss against San Diego when repeated failures to score from the 1 were the difference in a 20-17 loss.
Like everything else, that was Wade’s fault. He’s the head coach.
All of a sudden, however, following back-to-back demolitions of the Eagles, a lot of crow is being choked down by the pundits. Especially the ones who pointed out what a coaching mismatch the Eagles’ Andy Reid against Wade was.
Indeed, it was a mismatch. Only the other way. So now, Wade’s starting to get some love. Critics are crawfishing. The bandwagon is rolling and lots of folks are jumping on. Of course, they’ll jump off if the Cowboys lose Sunday in Minnesota.
To put it all in perspective, consider that the Cowboys were projected to finish third in the NFC East behind the Giants and Eagles. Coming off that season-ending 44-6 debacle in Philly a year ago, there were more questions than answers. Emmitt Smith was the poster boy for the doubters, with a celebrated 7-9 prediction on the Cowboys that called out the head coach and the QB.
You only missed by four games, Emmitt.
Now, in no small part because of a couple of Phillips-influenced defensive additions named Keith Brooking and Igor Olshansky, the maturation of Romo and the emergence of Miles Austin, the Cowboys are playing as well as anybody in the NFL. Oh, yes, let’s don’t overlook one helluva job by a head coach who never wavered in his beliefs or who he was.
Jerry Jones struck gold when he hired the unflappable son of a Bum, and it’s time to pay up. At least pay him more than the offensive coordinator.
Sports editor Bob West can be e-mailed at rdwest@usa.net
