Dallas Cowboys coach's family made for football

The note taped to Wade and Laurie Phillips' doorbell advises visitors to "Push hard," but everything else about their North Dallas home exudes functionality and elegance.

The spacious living areas accented by dark wood floors. The separate casita guesthouse. And the hostess, who for an hour courteously discusses her 38-year marriage to the Cowboys' head coach.

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The only trace of a frown flickers when Laurie is asked about Wade's last playoff game as a head coach. It was a January 2000 loss by his Buffalo Bills to Tennessee on a disputed final-seconds kickoff return, dubbed the Music City Miracle.

"Are you talking about the Music City Mistake?" Laurie asks. "Yes, that was horrible. It was devastating. It was, 'Can't we just do it again? Can't we just take it back? Can't we fix it?' "

Today's divisional playoff game between the Cowboys and New York Giants at Texas Stadium can't rectify that result. But in terms of 60-year-old Wade's head coaching legacy, a victory today would constitute a do-over.

He insists today "doesn't have anything to do with me." Indeed, the stakes seem less personal to Wade than to Laurie and their two grown children. If only from a public-perception standpoint, Wade's 0-3 playoff record is a thorn in the paw they would give anything to extract.

They say they can't help but feel that way because of the example he has set at home and on the field throughout his 12-stop, 31-year NFL coaching career. By Wade's definition, football teams are much like families.

"You like for them to care about each other like you do in a family," he says, "and take up for each other."

His actress-dancer-choreographer daughter, Tracy, notes that her family's decades-long football "investment" is only natural, adding, "the outcomes of games and seasons proved oftentimes life-changing for all of us."

Wade doesn't say it, but his entire life and particularly this season have pointed to today. He grew up in southeast Texas as the son of high school, college and NFL coach Bum Phillips.

Wade toiled for seven NFL franchises, and as a head coach produced a solid 45-35 regular-season record at Denver and Buffalo. But until the Cowboys hired him last Feb. 8, Laurie says, she and Wade wondered whether he would get another opportunity "because sometimes good coaches don't get head [coaching] jobs."

Now, after a 13-3 Cowboys regular season, few in Texas Stadium will have a deeper sense of what today means to the coach than one of his assistants – son Wes.

"I think it could be validating," Wes says. "If things weren't to go well, some people are going to say, 'I told you so.' That's just the way it goes.

Laurie says she knew better than to date the star quarterback of Port Neches-Groves High.

The year was 1964. She was head cheerleader. The quarterback's father, Bum, was Groves' head coach. Laurie knew all about the Phillipses and football because her uncle coached with Bum. Her daddy, Wesley "Stinky" Nunez, had played against Bum.

"I said I was never going to marry a football coach," Laurie says, "because they were never at home and they didn't make enough money."

When Wade got a football scholarship to the University of Houston and Laurie enrolled at Lamar University in Beaumont, they exchanged letters but then lost contact for three years.

After graduating, she found Wade's letters. She was engaged, and Wade "could have been married for all I knew." Still, she wrote to tell Wade she was moving to Houston.

"I started showing her around because I knew all about Houston," Wade says. "Then I started showing her around Houston every day and every night.

"Finally, she called her fiancé and said, 'There's something wrong here. I'm enjoying spending time with this other guy.' "

As Laurie suspected four decades ago, Wade has been gone a lot. But he makes up for it in ways besides his current $3 million salary.

When he was the defensive line coach at the University of Kansas in 1975, he was a golfaholic. Laurie mentioned that she was home with baby Tracy every weekend while Wade played. Message received. Wade became an occasional golfer.

He gave up the sport when Tracy started performing in recitals at age 3. Later, he attended as many of younger child Wes' youth and high school games as possible.

"I always remember him being there when things were important," says Tracy, who lives in Hollywood and played a belly dancer in the movie Charlie Wilson's War.

When the kids were young, Wade and Laurie started a Friday date-night tradition. Typically, they go to dinner or a movie.

In New Orleans in the early 1980s, Laurie coaxed Wade into a country and Western dance class. He earned a plaque for most improved. At the Cowboys' Christmas party, they turned heads with their dancing.

"He even goes to chick flicks with me," she says with a laugh. "And then he gets in there and gripes, 'I'm probably the only guy in here.' "

The coach earns no husband points, however, for household repairs. Let's just say there is no chance of him fixing that doorbell.

"I'm not a Mr. Fixit around the house, for sure," Wade says. "I can't do plumbing or electrical or none of that stuff."

Wade's Valley Ranch office is predictably large but surprisingly lacking in décor. The exceptions are an aerial shot of Texas Stadium above his desk and a framed photo of his five sisters and Laurie.

He says Laurie typically decorates his offices, but she has been busy organizing their home and lives.

In his first Cowboys news conference, Wade spoke of cultivating a family environment based on "trust, loyalty and common purpose."

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones doesn't discount the family background that Wade brought to Valley Ranch. Not that a long marriage is a prerequisite for successful coaching. Tom Landry fit that category; Bill Parcells, Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer did not.

"You have an additional asset in a working marriage that you don't have if you're single," Mr. Jones says, "especially when you have a marriage partner who is involved in sports and, in our case, football."

In Wade's case, the partnership extends beyond Laurie. Wade's sisters live within driving distance, so the Phillips house and casita are full on home-game weekends. Bum, 84, and Wade's stepmother traveled from their Goliad ranch for the New England game in October but will watch today's game on TV.

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Assistant coach Wes Phillips, 28, has an office down the hall from his father, Wade, at Valley Ranch. "I think it's a very special time for both of them," says wife and mother Laurie. "And for me, as well, to have my baby boy working with his dad."

For the last 11 months, life has been hectic but rewarding, on and off the field. Tracy got her acting breakthrough. Wade and Wes, meanwhile, have worked side by side – just as Bum and Wade did from 1976 to 1985.

Wade got his first NFL job coaching the Houston Oilers' linebackers at 28 – the same age Wes is now. Wes played quarterback at the University of Texas at El Paso. He coached at UTEP, West Texas A&M and Baylor before joining the Cowboys as quality-control coach and offensive assistant.

"My dad was my high school coach; then he was my college coach," Wade says. "I knew him as a father and a coach. But then working with him, I knew him as an adult, and that was 10 special years from my perspective.

"And now I know what his perspective was. I can see he probably enjoyed it, too."

Wade escorts a reporter 15 feet down the hall, where another door placard reads "Phillips." He knocks and opens the door before Wes can answer.

Wes' office is maybe one-tenth the size of Wade's. There are no windows. A TV covers most of his desk, which is fine because Wes spends most of his time analyzing opponents' game tapes.

Besides working with his father and soaking up knowledge from the rest of the staff, Wes appreciates another perk. Every game, opposing coaches and players tell him how much they respect his father.

If Cowboys assistants get promotions in other organizations this off-season, there's no telling whose reputation will play a larger role in rebuilding the staff, Wade's or Laurie's.

At each NFL stop, Laurie has a Thanksgiving tradition of hosting the coaching staff and their families, with gatherings typically swelling to 50.

Wade says colleagues still talk about Laurie's Hershey bar pie, shrimp gumbo and shipped-from-Louisiana turducken – deboned chicken, inside deboned duck, inside a partially deboned turkey.

Since the Cowboys played on Thanksgiving, the postgame assembly numbered only 18, including Wes and his girlfriend, Anna McDowell.

Before the season, Wes cautioned that his workdays would be long, but he says he doesn't think Anna was prepared for midnight, 1 in the morning.

"If it was the other way around, I don't know if I could handle it," he says. "I'd probably be like, 'Hey, this isn't working out. I've got to see you.' "

After his parents' move to Dallas, Wes found boxes of photos he had never seen: Wade and Laurie in high school, their wedding, Polaroids from the early coaching stops.

Wade and Jimmy Johnson are the only coaches to lead the Cowboys to 13-3 regular seasons. But as fans arrive at Texas Stadium today, some will feel uneasy about the team's December struggles and the head coach's playoff record.

"Yeah, well, it's not me," Wade says. "I'm a coach, but it's not my record we're going in with. It's this team's record, how it's playing."

Not that he cares to dwell on it, but Wade points out that all three of his playoff losses occurred on the road.

In the 24-17 wild-card loss to Miami in 1999, Buffalo was stopped on the Dolphins' 3. The following year at Tennessee, the Bills took a 16-15 lead with 16 seconds left and were celebrating on the sideline.

But on the kickoff return, the Titans' Frank Wycheck passed the ball across the field to Kevin Dyson, who sprinted to the end zone. "Forward lateral," Wade says flatly. But watching replays that day, the referee said he could not conclusively tell whether the ball illegally traveled forward.

Laurie says one of Wade's qualities as a person and coach is that he is forward-thinking. "The good thing about football," he says when asked how he handles defeats, "is in most cases there's another game coming up."

An easier outlook for him to take, perhaps, than for his family. Who knew they would have to wait eight years for Wade's next playoff game as a head coach?

"He's pretty much put that game behind him, I think," Laurie says. "But when you bring it up, you still get that terrible ache in your stomach over the whole thing."

Cowboys fans may be unsure how much faith to place in their coach, but rest assured he will feel ample support today.

From turducken-fed colleagues across the country. From his coaching-legend father. From the son whose office is down the hall and the daughter who text-messages Mom after every big Cowboys play. And from his high school sweetheart.

For the Phillips family, it works both ways. For them, that always has been enough.

"My dad has always worked a lot, and football has always been important to him," Tracy says. "It has its place, and I love to see him succeed at what he does best.

"But I also know that when it comes down to it, we always come before football in my dad's heart."

08:22 AM CST on Sunday, January 13, 2008