Stint with Buddy Ryan's Eagles help mold Wade Phillips

IRVING, Texas - There were going to be changes. Book it. All the Cowboys had to do to make the playoffs was beat the Eagles on the final day of the regular season a year ago. They didn't. Not only did they lose, they lost 44-6, a dead-skunk-in-the-middle-of-the-road defeat that shook America's Team to its core.

Here's how owner and general manager Jerry Jones remembers the conversation with head coach Wade Phillips in the dazed aftermath.

"His quote when we met after we played in Philadelphia last year was, 'I've made up my mind that the best favor I could do this head coach is to get me the best [defensive] coordinator I know of. And I'm him, too. So I'm the coordinator,' " Jones recalled.

Well, that turned out to be a pretty good call. The Cowboys team that will host the Eagles in tomorrow night's first-round playoff game at Cowboys Stadium allowed 250 points this year, second-fewest in the NFL. They go into their rematch against the Eagles coming off back-to-back shutouts, including a 24-0 blanking of Philadelphia last week.

In yet another twist, the coordinator he replaced, Brian Stewart, now works for the Eagles as a defensive assistant.

And in the cloistered world of pro football, it's not surprising that some of the tricks Phillips learned along the way, some of the knowledge that he'll use tomorrow night to try to shut down the Eagles, was picked up when he was getting a paycheck from them as Buddy Ryan's defensive coordinator from 1986 to '88.

The son of legendary former coach Bum Phillips, Wade has said that his father and Ryan are the two biggest influences he's had in football.

When he came to Philadelphia, he was stepping out of his father's shadow for the first time. He had spent the previous 12 years working as an assistant for Bum in Houston and New Orleans.

Usually unemotional in interview situations, Phillips' eyes lit up when asked this week to reminisce about his Eagles tenure.

"Buddy Ryan, yeah," he said with a smile. "I've got a whole book on that. A whole chapter of the book anyway. Buddy was very aggressive. Defensive-minded. Very sharp on the 46 [defense] stuff, all defenses really. I enjoyed being around him. He was really a gifted mind as far as defense was concerned and hopefully I pulled some of those things from him.

"I've added some stuff from everybody I've been with. I went to Philadelphia to work with Buddy Ryan because his 46 was the hot defense at the time. I got an opportunity to learn Buddy's philosophy. We still use some things from that."

Even though Phillips now works exclusively with three-man fronts, he incorporates some of Ryan's principles, particularly in the area of pass rushing and how to break down pass protections.

It was during this time that emotions between the Eagles and Cowboys really began to heat up.

"Buddy got upset because we played them in a replacement game and Dallas players crossed the picket line. Danny White, Tony Dorsett and those guys played," Phillips recalled with a chuckle. "They beat us pretty good. And Buddy got real mad about it. I think we beat them every time after that."

Phillips was quick to point out, though, that he was gone before the infamous Bounty Game.

Earlier this summer, at Cowboys training camp, nose tackle Jay Ratliff and offensive tackle Marc Colombo got in a brief fight, not an uncommon occurrence at a time of year when days are long and hot and tempers can be short.

Asked about the best training-camp fight he'd ever seen, Phillips evoked Ryan's name, telling reporters about a time when the Eagles and Lions were working out together.

"It wasn't much of a workout," he said. "On special teams, they were blocking punts. It seemed like every drill was a fight. We didn't get much out of it."

He was asked if the Lions had been the instigators. "Not in our case, no," he said. "I think Buddy was encouraging them."

He's seen the rivalry from both sides now. "We were throwing more things in Philadelphia than they do here [in Dallas]," he joked. "No, it's passionate. Both sides."

Phillips said that the teams might get along a little better now than they did back then.

"I think it's team-to-team, player-to-player," he said. "It depends on the coach, too, I think. Buddy was a little hostile toward the other team. So that might have affected it a little bit."

As the seasons passed, Phillips continued to look for opportunities to increase his knowledge of defense. And that has paid off for the Cowboys this year.

"We've gotten stronger all year," he said yesterday. "We had five new guys starting on defense this year and them melding together, I think, was part of it. We just seem to have found our niche. Everybody is playing their role and doing it well."

He shrugged off the observation that adding defensive coordinator to his head-coaching responsibilities is a crushing load.

"I've done this 25 years I think, calling defenses," he said. "It's similar to what I've done for a long time. I think a lot of head coaches call offensive plays. So I don't look at it as that much different."

Something is different, though, and the players give Phillips a lot of credit for the way the defense has come together.

"I think a lot of people think Wade should have been fired four or five times by now. But the reality is, he's still here. And he's doing a tremendous job," linebacker Bobby Carpenter said. "I think a lot of the guys appreciate him as a coach. He's done it the right way. He hasn't blamed anybody else. As a player, you want to play for a guy like that. He's very compassionate toward the team and seems to put us in a position to win."

Added linebacker Bradie James: "We wouldn't be able to shut down people if it wasn't for Wade's scheme. We make adjustments. And when those adjustments don't work, he keeps it vanilla and turns us loose. That's the biggest key. The majority of us have been in this scheme for 3 years, and we can have fun in it."

Phillips hasn't talked to Ryan, now retired on his horse ranch in Kentucky, for a while. But he hasn't forgotten the lessons he learned during those three seasons. Lessons that might be used against the Eagles tomorrow night.

Lessons that helped make Wade Phillips the defensive coordinator that head coach Phillips decided he had to hire.