DEATH OF PHILLIPS ‘ SO SAD’: ARGOS GM
Jim Barker will forever remember Lawrence Phillips’s final words to him.
They came in 2003 after Barker, then the Calgary Stampeders head coach, gave Phillips his walking papers.
“I was the l ast guy to coach him in pro football,” Barker, now the Toronto Argonauts’ general manager, said via telephone from Arizona on Thursday. “He’d been acting up again so I told him I needed to see him in my office.
“He came in and I said, ‘ You know, I’ve got to let you go,’ and he said, ‘I know.’ And then this kind of epitomizes Lawrence Phillips to me: He said, ‘Jim, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I do what I do.’ From a football standpoint, there was no one who worked harder at it … but ultimately it was the other things that brought him down.”
Phillips, 40, was found dead Wednesday in a California jail cell. Officials suspect he committed suicide.
In 2008, Phillips went to jail to serve a sentence exceeding 31 years for choking his girlfriend in ’ 05 and driving a car into three Los Angeles teens. He’d been in segregation since April, suspected of killing cellmate Damion Soward, 37, the cousin of former Toronto Argonauts receiver R. Jay Soward.
Phillips starred at Nebraska before going sixth overall in the 1996 NFL draft to the St. Louis Rams. He was cut in ’ 97 for insubordination and played with the Miami Dolphins and San Francisco 49ers before joining the Montreal Alouettes in ’02.
Phillips seemed a good fit in offensive co- ordinator Barker’s offence, rushing for 1,022 yards ( 5.5- yard average) with 13 TDs while adding 33 catches for 292 yards as Montreal won the Grey Cup. While Barker said there were some minor incidents involving Phillips late that year, he didn’t hesitate to sign Phillips once being hired as Calgary’s head coach — on one condition.
“I told him when I signed him the first time he was a distraction he was going to go,” Barker said. “When I got hired in Calgary, I felt like I knew his background and thought he wanted to do the right thing and maybe I could help him get the help he needed, but ultimately I didn’t do that.”
However, there was no denying Phillips’s physical talent.
“There probably weren’t 10 greater football players in my lifetime, just guys cut out to be football players,” Barker said. “The guy had a 27- inch waist. He was elusive. He was physical. He was everything you’d want on the football field.”
While saddened to hear of Phillips’s death, Barker wasn’t surprised.
“It shocked me when I first heard he got into trouble just because I always think the best of people,” he said. “It’s so sad because God gave him an incredible gift and unfortunately he couldn’t find a way to get it figured out.”