If you decide to pore over Wade Phillips’ coaching resume, you might want to pack a lunch.
It’s gonna take a while to get through.
Since starting as a graduate assistant at the University of Houston in 1969, Phillips has held 22 different positions. And over the past 45 years, he has made stops at one high school, three colleges and 10 different NFL franchises – including head coaching stints with the Denver Broncos, Buffalo Bills and Dallas Cowboys and interim gigs with the New Orleans Saints, Atlanta Falcons and Houston Texans.
Considered one of the best defensive coordinators in NFL history, Phillips has served the DC role eight different times with seven different big-league teams.
But the past two years he’s taken his experience to spring football – last year with the XFL Houston Roughnecks and this season as head man with the United Football League’s San Antonio Brahmas.
And while he has a Super Bowl ring as an assistant with the Broncos, he is one win away from walking off the field as a championship-winning head coach for the first time.
The Brahmas (8-3) face the Birmingham Stallions (10-1) on Sunday in the UFL Championship Game in St. Louis, and the team from Alamo City has Phillips’ fingerprints all over it; a smothering defense and blue-collar approach.
With his 77th birthday a week away, he stays in the game because the game is an integral part of his life.
“It’s coaching, you know?” he said. “It’s what I do. I mean, that’s what I’ve done. I’m probably not good at anything else. I like coaching, I like being around the players, I like the strategy of the game and the reward of winning. It’s a neat feeling and a cool feeling for everybody.”
Before joining the Roughnecks in 2023, Phillips’ most recent coaching job was defensive coordinator with the Rams from 2017-19.
But he showed he still knew how to draw up Xs and Os when he came to spring ball, leading the Roughnecks to a 7-4 record and XFL South Division title.
When the XFL and USFL merged to form the UFL, the Roughnecks were effectively disbanded. The nickname and locale remained, but the club was simply the USFL Houston Gamblers rebranded.
Phillips was then moved to the Brahmas, who limped to a 3-7 mark under Hines Ward during the 2023 XFL season.
Predicted to be an also-ran in the new league’s first year, San Antonio has the top-ranked defense in the league, is the only team to defeat Birmingham, and holds a 4-0 mark against the USFL Conference.
So, how different is coaching at this level versus the highest level?
Other than money, Phillips says it’s the same.
“It’s not any different,” Phillips said. “These are grown men and I try to treat them like grown men. But also, you preach character and I think it’s important that you have the right kind of players and right kind of people. So, I just emphasize certain things that I think will help them not just in football, but in life itself.
“But, no, it’s not different. It’s coaching, it’s organization, it’s organized the same way because you’re the head coach and everything comes to you.”
Stallions coach Skip Holtz has long admired Phillips, although he certainly hopes to flip the script on the 18-9 regular season loss his team suffered to San Antonio in Sunday’s rematch.
“With all the years of him walking up and down the sidelines and watching professional football, the success that he’s had, his character … it’s hard to do it,” Holtz said. “It’s very difficult to be a head football coach. I think it’s even more difficult to be a head football coach with the success that he’s had year in and year out. I think he does a great job. He’s done it with character. He’s a great man … I think he is. I have always been a fan of his.”
And if the Brahmas walk away with the UFL crown, will Phillips walk away from coaching?
Don’t count on it.
“They’ll probably run me off some time,” Phillips said. “But as long as I’m healthy – and that’s a factor at my age, I understand that – but as long as I’m healthy and can contribute, which I think I have, I don’t set a time limit.
“But I get older every day … I know that.”