Jerry Jones “know[s] it's the best thing for the Dallas Cowboys to have Wade Phillips as our head coach.”
The owner said as much in his remarks during the Training Camp kickoff party on Tuesday afternoon, as reported by Tim MacMahon on the DMN Blog. This is a good thing; because I’m not sure if anyone else in Dallas is going into 2009 with anything other than apprehension with respect to our esteemed head coach.
This is also the least surprising statement since Bill Clinton finally admitted he got intern-happy in the oval office. Jones is a businessman, and expressing anything less than love and adoration for his head coach would be, well, bad business.
But does he really believe it?
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Actions speak louder than words, and Uncle Jerry’s actions have to this point fallen well short of his words. As MacMahon points out, Dallas has yet to offer Phillips an extension through 2010.
When asked about this seeming disconnect, MacMahon says, Jerry broke into “a soliloquy that boiled down to saying it's none of our business.”
Which means, basically, what we’ve known all along; that 2009 is make or break as far as Wade Phillips is concerned. This is one more year than a lot of folks (myself included) thought he would get, considering the level of talent on the roster, and what was an historically ugly end to 2008.
Indeed, the biggest (outside of the T.O. release, perhaps), and certainly the most unsettling surprise of the offseason was the original vote of confidence, shortly after the Cowboys were beaten mercilessly out of playoff contention in Philly.
Just thinking of that sixty-minute assault rains all over my “it’s-finally-football-season” parade; but I digress.
It is a new season, and there’s no reason we can’t be hopeful, at least for a little while. Hey, maybe Jerry’s right.
We should hope he is. And, to be sure, so should Wade.
