In the depths of Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium on a Sunday afternoon in late November of 2000, Wade Phillips, then the head coach of the Buffalo Bills, smiled as he walked into a room containing the media gathered for his post-game news conference, a podium and his father.
O.A. Phillips, known by the nickname Bum and for his garish cowboy boots during his stints as a head coach in Houston and New Orleans in the 1970s and '80s, stood in a corner, subtly slipping a can of Budweiser behind his back between sips.
Wade, named last week to succeed Bill Parcells in Dallas, walked up to Bum, who said something quietly as he clasped his son's shoulder with his free hand. The younger Phillips looked at his father, smiled and glanced down at the floor.
"I sure appreciate it," Wade said, then turned and walked to the podium.
That afternoon, highlighted by Rob Johnson helicoptering into the end zone as he scored the winning touchdown against the Chiefs in front of one of the league's most hostile crowds, would prove to be the high-water mark of Phillips' three-year tenure in Buffalo.
The 21-17 win improved the Bills to 7-4, making a third straight trip to the playoffs a seeming inevitability.
Johnson's performance -- the first meaningful victory on the road against a quality opponent that he had directed since his much-hyped arrival from Jacksonville almost three years earlier -- looked a lot like vindication for Phillips' decision to make him the starting quarterback over Doug Flutie.
And Phillips had done it with a roster with few links to Marv Levy's Super Bowl teams. Jim Kelly was long retired, with Thurman Thomas, Bruce Smith and Andre Reed finishing their careers in strange new uniforms.
So much for appearances.
A week later in Tampa, it all came apart. After a quick start against the Buccaneers, one Buffalo defensive starter after another hobbled or was carried off the field. Faced with the added burden, Johnson faltered and the offense stalled. Short-handed, the defense collapsed.
Phillips' Bills would win only once more, a season finale in Seattle stripped of meaning by the four straight losses that came between it and that afternoon in Kansas City.
In between, his comment on ESPN before a Monday-night game in Indianapolis -- "Both teams are out of it, basically" -- enraged Bills fans, especially after the Colts went on to win 44-20, the first of three straight victories that put them in the playoffs.
More than that gaffe or the late-season losing streak, though, Phillips' Buffalo career ended because of the falling out between Ralph Wilson and general manager John Butler. The coach's refusal to fire disastrous special-teams coach Ronnie Jones was the official reason, but Wilson wasn't about to force an incumbent coaching staff on the new general manager. To do so might chase away the most sought-after front-office candidates, or so the thinking went.
Since the job wound up going to Tom Donahoe, maybe keeping Wade around wouldn't have been such a bad idea.
It's hard to argue that Phillips got a raw deal in Buffalo. He may have actually been better off getting canned when he did. The franchise's salary-cap problems doomed the 2001 edition, no matter who coached it.
It's also difficult to say, though, that either Gregg Williams or Mike Mularkey produced better results than Phillips would have.
While they were extending a playoff-free streak that reached seven seasons under Dick Jauron in 2006, Phillips was polishing his defensive-coordinator credentials in Atlanta and San Diego, with a 2-1 mark as the Falcons' interim head coach in between.
As low-key on the sidelines as his father was colorful, Phillips suffered from the superficial comparisons. His occasional sound-bite slip-ups, like referring to fumble-prone punt returner Chris Watson as "more of a punt catcher," along with his southern accent, led to inaccurate caricatures during his Buffalo tenure.
Phillips was more than smart enough to orchestrate some of the league's top-ranked defenses in Atlanta and San Diego, just as he'd done in Buffalo, Denver and Philadelphia. And to emerge from an almost-infinite field of interviewees to land the highest-profile job in the sport.
His hiring has drawn fire from some Cowboys fans and media, who charge that owner Jerry Jones wanted someone whom he can order around, a coach who wouldn't bristle at being forced to keep the radioactive Terrell Owens on the roster.
Maybe. But it might also be that Phillips is a perfect fit for a talented team that badly underachieved last season under Parcells, the prototypical taskmaster. There would certainly be a certain amount of irony -- and more than a little angst in Western New York -- if a guy fired after three seasons in Buffalo succeeds in Dallas, where the most hyped coach of modern times failed.
But then, I'm probably a little biased. When I was a kid in the late 1970s, the Bills lost quite a bit more than they won. So you had to have a second-favorite team to keep from developing an extremely negative world view. And mine was the Houston Oilers of Bum Phillips and Earl Campbell.
The last autograph I ever asked for was from Bum in 1983, as he stood in the end zone at Rich Stadium, wearing a ten-gallon hat and snakeskin boots before New Orleans. He had taken over that sorry franchise after being fired in Houston after the 1980 season, lifting the Saints to respectability, if not a championship.
Though I also grew up loathing the Cowboys as ardently as I pulled for the Bills and Oilers, I'd like to see Wade Phillips succeed in Dallas for reasons that have nothing to do with his father.
Having covered the Bills as a beat reporter through his tenure here, the things I remember aren't the cartoonish portrayals, but the loyalty he evoked from his players and the effort they consistently gave him. And he might be the last coach in the National Football League who hasn't had his sense of humor surgically removed.
After a meet-the-rookies session at a hotel in Cheektowaga on the eve of what used to be called mini-camp, before some publicist inflicted the term "organized team activity" on the world, Phillips was on his way out of the conference room to a meeting when I stopped him to ask about one of the recent draftees.
"Just one question," I assured him.
"OK, just one," he agreed.
The query was so vital, I've long forgotten what it was. But he gave an answer. Just not to the question I'd asked. This required a follow-up.
Phillips started to smile as he listened, then held up his left hand and lifted two fingers. Then he answered the second question anyway.
While their styles couldn't be more different, there are some parallels in the coaching careers of Bum and Wade.
The latter was fired despite coaching the Bills to the playoffs twice and never recording a losing record, ostensibly for refusing to fire an assistant. His father got axed in Houston days after the Oilers made their third straight postseason appearance and following his refusal to hire an offensive coordinator.
Neither fit the screaming, whistle-blowing prototype the football world slavers over, so the accomplishments and coaching acumen of both men has often been overshadowed, Bum's by his flair and Wade's by his lack of same.
In Dallas this week, Wade Phillips got something that Bum -- who retired just before the end of his fifth frustrating season in New Orleans Ð never did: a third shot as a head coach in the National Football League.
And at 83, Bum Phillips has yet another reason to be proud of his son.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | February 13 2007 |