The Cowboys hit new lows last night and the rumor mill is in high gear, speculating on when Wade Phillips will get canned. The guys at PFT have been leading the charge for awhile now. The reasoning here is simple, and even Troy Aikman has weighed in along the same lines: Phillips doesn’t exercise enough discipline over the team to make sure they’re getting the effort required to win.
This line of argument seems sketchy to me. How much leverage can a coach actually exercise over a player nowadays? In the cases of guys like Randy Moss or TO, they face a situation where the player has to be on the field regardless of just about anything because their price tag is too high to justify them riding the pine. Likewise, the nickel-and-dime fines that coaches like Tom Coughlin use are, in my humble opinion, pointless. Coughlin actually had to back down on those a few years ago when players pushed back against it.
So what can Phillips be held responsible for?
An obvious one is the X’s and O’s. The game strategy and how the team is going to attack their opponent for that week. Another element is game management. Does he use timeouts and challenges effectively? How about going for it on fourth down? Or going for two? That sort of stuff. I’d say another element is his rapport with the players. Do players want to play for him? Or does he excessively antagonize them and make them uninterested in playing? More succinctly, is he Brad Childress?
Taking a slight detour, back in the 90’s when the ‘Boys were the best team in football, they were the best team regardless of the coach. Johnson won 2 Super Bowls. Barry Switzer won 1 and lost a championship game. Even Chan Gailey had some success with that team, though less because it was in decline by the time they got their turn at the helm.
All those coaches had success because that team was loaded with players who wanted to win. Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmit Smith are HOF’ers. They didn’t need to be brow beaten into preparing for games. They already had the motivation to be the best. That’s what it means to be a winner- there’s a pride in being the best guy on the field. The “swagger” that’s always referred to was a result of the combination of preparation and talent that team had. They worked as hard or harder than anyone else and in combination with their talent, they were all but unbeatable.
I don’t sense that with the current Cowboys squad. I sense a swagger, or used to anyway, but I always felt it was unearned. That they were punching above their talent level. I think this year has been the undressing. This team thinks they can just show up and win on Sunday. Consequently, the players don’t work as hard as they should. Obviously, Romo is the leader of the team. But who follows his example? What kind of example regarding preparation does he set?
Perhaps a better way to say all this is I don’t think this team takes pride in their performance. When they step out on the field, they expect the other team to cave because “Here come the Cowboys.” They don’t go out there with anything to prove.
So in this respect, I don’t think Phillips is responsible. He can’t motivate these guys to put in the effort. The players have to already have it. That’s how all of the great teams(not just the Cowboys) in football work. The coaches put the players in position to win, but the players have to be talented, disciplined and motivated enough to go out and do it on Sunday. This Cowboy’s team has none of that. Consequently, it won’t matter who is coaching this group of players. They will continue to lose.