All Do Respect: Players Believe In Wade, It's Time We Did The Same
DallasCowboys.com

Irving, TX. Monday, July 19, 2010. According to Weather.com, the temperature here Monday afternoon was 94 degrees, but felt like 102. It's a good thing Wade Phillips is used to the heat.

Normally I don't bother looking up exactly how unbearable it is on a given July afternoon. It's hot, that's all I need to know. But the sight of the 63-year old coach passing on the sidewalk as I drove to lunch made me wonder. I was about a mile away from team headquarters when I saw him turn around to head back, lifting his grey Cowboys t-shirt to wipe the sweat from his face. You couldn't pay me to go outside for a jog in the Texas sun this time of year, and I'm barely a third of Phillips' age. So don't let anyone tell you he's not tough.

If Phillips is willing to push himself so hard, we shouldn't keep up the generality that he isn't demanding of his players. They'll tell you differently, and the 40 practices he's scheduled in the month ahead don't suggest it either. Phillips' first training camp with the team in 2007 was lampooned as Camp Cupcake, and he self-labeled the next one as Camp Marshmallow. Phillips doesn't line up his guys for silly bull-in-the-ring drills - he doesn't want anyone to get hurt, and justifiably so - but he does ask them to work hard, and often.

That dedication has the Cowboys in the position they are now, just a few days before practices begin. If they're going to live up to expectations this year, it won't be without a commitment instilled from the top. Why should we believe the players are willing to put in the effort needed to become a champion? Because of the loyalty to Phillips that has been obvious since he took over. They should be practicing and playing just as hard for the coach this year as they have when his critics were most vocal.

Like when the speculation began that Phillips would lose his job should things get worse following that 2-2 start last year, which was answered by a four-game winning streak. Or when the Cowboys dropped two games in a row to start last December, then rattled off another four-game winning streak, including Phillips' first career playoff win, and the first for the franchise since 1996. During that run the defense, Wade's Defense, played better than at any point since this team was winning Super Bowls. The late-season rise was punctuated by Keith Brooking's strong rebuttal to the critics of team and coach, a number of other players vocally rallying around Phillips.

As has happened before, though, a new year will erase for many whatever sweat equity Phillips has built up in his previous three seasons. He'll surely be a target again soon, especially when the team loses a game. It's not fair, but it's inevitable, regardless of the fact he has a regular season career winning percentage of .600, including stops in Denver and Buffalo, and two interim stints with the Saints and Falcons.

His .688 winning percentage with the Cowboys is the highest in team history, higher than Tom Landry (.607), Jimmy Johnson (.550), Barry Switzer (.625), Chan Gailey (.563), Dave Campo (.313) and Bill Parcells (.531). Yes, some of the pieces were already in place when he got here, whereas Landry and Johnson were starting from scratch. But Phillips deserves to get credit, not for people to ask who's going to replace him. None of his teams have won a Super Bowl yet, but the Cowboys are in better shape now than they were when he took over.

In four decades of coaching, Phillips has mostly grown used to the constant nitpicking, but it does occasionally bother him still. Most of the time he dismisses the negative opinions as ill-informed.

Some of the complaints about Phillips are just plain mean-spirited, though, like the piece I read calling him a "portly Paw Paw" who would rather hand out milk and cookies than cuss a player who needed cussing.

People can be hateful, and if they don't know what they're talking about they'll just resort to personal digs, which Phillips has been on the wrong side of too often over these last three years. As a veteran coach, and a proven winner at that, he deserves more respect than he gets. Since losing over 30 pounds this off-season, it's wrong to call Phillips portly. As of Friday, though, he finally is a Paw Paw. Anna Phillips, the wife of his son Wes, a Cowboys offensive assistant, delivered the couple's first child just before the weekend - the last of which father and grandfather will get to enjoy for months, incidentally.

The pride on Phillips' face was obvious on Monday. It's the same look he has at the podium after a Cowboys win.

He's been smiling a lot more often than not.
 

[BACK TO ARTICLES PAGE]