Coaching keeps Wade Phillips young at heart
ATLANTA – Someone forgot to tell Wade Phillips the NFL is a young man’s game.
Older than most of his players’ grandparents and running the same defense he did back when Space Invaders was all the rage, Phillips should have no business being one of the hippest guys in the NFL. Yet the 71-year-old has somehow managed to pull it off.
He has more Twitter followers than a lot of players (177,000, @sonofbum). He’d probably still be holding court if the NFL hadn’t rescued him after the allotted hour at Monday’s media night. He might be the only person who was asked about Tom Brady, a sheepskin coat from the 1970s and his favorite rapper — and had answers for it all.
“I’m still with Drake,” Phillips said. “Because I started at the bottom, and I’m here right now.”
Longevity alone would make Phillips a marvel. He is in his 41st season in the NFL and has outlasted two of the 10 teams he’s worked for. Two years after being cut loose by the Broncos in what will go down as one of John Elway’s bigger mistakes, Phillips is back at the Super Bowl, this time with the Rams.
That obviously wouldn’t happen if he didn’t know his stuff. Even more impressive is that Phillips still manages to connect with players 40-some years younger than he is.
Talk to anyone who’s ever played for Phillips and watch their eyes light up at the mention of his name. He is a great teacher — he’s coached more than a dozen players in the Hall of Fame, with several more from the Rams and Broncos still to come — and operates under the philosophy that players will trust you as long as you treat them like men and tell them the truth.
“He’s dope, man. He’s the GOAT,” said Aqib Talib, who was willing to accept a trade from Denver to the Rams last spring largely because of Phillips.
“We’ve all got one thing in common, we’ve all got one thing we love: football,” Talib said of his bond with the septuagenarian. “That’s something we all love, so we’ve always got something to talk about.”
It doesn’t hurt that Phillips makes a point of staying up on the latest music and trends — Talib helps him with the music, and he learned about “Fortnite” from his then-6-year-old grandson. But the players would see right through him if he was doing all that just to score brownie points.
No, what resonates and makes Phillips so beloved is his realness. What you see with him — the corny one-liners, the self-deprecation, the love for his players, the pride in his father — really is what you get.
“I try to be myself. I try to have fun with everything,” he said. “I love what I’m doing. That’s the main thing.”
As the son of legendary coach Bum Phillips, the game has been a part of Phillips’ life for as long as he can remember. High school, college, the NFL — Phillips saw it all from an early age. It made coaching a natural fit, and his guiding principle has always been to make his father proud.
Which explains his choice of outfit for the Rams’ arrival in Atlanta on Sunday night.
Phillips got off the plane wearing a big cowboy hat and sheepskin jacket, just as Bum used to wear on the sideline. Though the hat was Wade Phillips’ own, the jacket was his father’s. It was the first time he’d ever worn it.
The outfit got a laugh — Talib called it the funniest thing he’s ever seen Phillips do — but the sentiment was real. No matter his age or his accomplishments, Wade Phillips will always, proudly, be the “Son of Bum.”
“Everything I learned, I learned from him,” Wade Phillips said.
Phillips is well aware of his age, and how could he not be? One of his friends refers to him as Wade 71 “because every article has my age in it,” Phillips cracked. He jokes that age is only a number, though his is a big one.
But he does not look his age, his face unlined and his eyes still crystal blue. Nor does he necessarily feel it. Being surrounded by 20- and 30-somethings tends to have that kind of effect.
“He’s so upbeat and so lively,” Ndamukong Suh said, unable to suppress a grin. “A lot of 70-year-old people don’t seem as upbeat or are moving around like that. So I don’t look at him as a 71year-old human being.”
At any age, with any team, Wade Phillips is an NFL treasure.