Grandson of Bum, son of Wade, Vikings’ Wes Phillips carving out own niche in coaching
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It was an annual occurrence in the Phillips household. Wes Phillips would beg his father to let him play tackle football and the answer would be no.
When Wes was growing up as the grandson of legendary NFL coach Bum Phillips and the son of Wade Phillips, a longtime successful coach who still hasn’t retired at age 75, he wanted to put on the pads before entering high school.
“I didn’t want him to play without better coaching,” Wade said. “I didn’t want just some dad coaching him. I wanted regular coaches. He wanted to play every year and said all his friends were playing, but I saw all those guys thinking they’re coaches but they’re teaching kids to run into each other and basically hurt each other.”
Wade said his son is “still mad” about not being able to play football earlier, although Wes, 43, claims to have gotten over it, mostly.
“Looking back, I wish I would have played just one year before high school to kind of get a feel for what it was like to get hit a little with pads on,” said Wes, who finally was allowed to play starting in the ninth grade, in 1993.
Nevertheless, it has worked out well for Wes Phillips. He went on to star at quarterback in high school and was a starter as a redshirt senior for Texas-El Paso in 2001. Now, he’s entering his 16th season as an NFL assistant and first as Vikings offensive coordinator under first-year head coach Kevin O’Connell. Training camp gets underway with rookies reporting Sunday and veterans on Tuesday. The first full-squad practice is set for Wednesday.
Though Wes Phillips didn’t get to play as soon as he wanted, his road to becoming a coach started early in life. Wes spent lots of time hanging around NFL teams with his dad, who coached in the league for 42 years as a defensive line coach, defensive coordinator and head coach. And he watched plenty of games with Wade.
“I learned a lot of football from him,” Wes said. “He was always real situationally conscious about timeout usage at the end of halves and the end of games, and that was something I picked up from an early age from just watching football with him. … I’ve grown up with being around NFL football players my whole life. It’s really what I’ve known.”
Bum, who died in 2013 at age 90, first put the Phillips family on the map in the NFL. After being a successful high school and college coach in Texas for 16 years, he entered pro ball in 1967 as defensive coordinator for the San Diego Chargers. He became famous as head coach of the Houston Oilers from 1975-80, leading them to two AFC Championship Game appearances, and then headed the New Orleans Saints from 1981-85.
Wade, after being a college assistant, joined his father as defensive line coach for the Oilers and then defensive coordinator for the Saints. He later became a coordinator for seven other teams and has had stints as a head coach for six teams, three on an interim basis.
Wade was head coach of the Denver Broncos from 1993-94, the Buffalo Bills from 1998-2000 and the Dallas Cowboys from 2007-10, and has a solid career record of 82-64. Wade was most recently on an NFL staff as defensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Rams in 2019, but he’s not done with coaching. He will serve next year as Houston’s head coach in the XFL, a spring league.
Wes got his first NFL job as a quality control assistant on his father’s staff in Dallas in 2007. He most recently was the Rams’ tight ends coach and passing game coordinator, and followed O’Connell to Minnesota after he had been the Rams’ offensive coordinator. Both were named to their positions shortly after the Rams, under head coach Sean McVay, defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 23-20 in February in Super Bowl LVI.
The Phillips and Shula families are the only ones in NFL history to have three generations of coaches — and now the race is on to see which might be the first family to have three generations of head coaches. Don Shula is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame as the NFL’s all-time winningest coach, his son Mike Shula was head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals from 1992-96, and Mike’s son, Chris Shula, 36, is pass game coordinator and defensive backs coach for the Rams.
“It’s a pretty neat deal to be able to have three generations in the NFL as coaches,” Wade said. “It’s kind of our family business.”
Wes and his wife Anna have three children, and there already are rumblings in the family that perhaps his son Mac, who is 10, could be a fourth-generation coach. For the more immediate future, Wade doesn’t deny that it’s a family goal for Wes to be a third Phillips to be an NFL head coach, although nobody seems to be in any rush. After all, Wes is entering his first season as an offensive coordinator.
“It would mean a lot to me only because I have so much respect for the position,” Wes said of becoming a head coach. “Maybe I’ll have an opportunity one day, but if I don’t, I could work for a guy like Sean McVay, I could work for a guy like Kevin O’Connell, for the rest of my career, and I’d be happy.”
O’Connell and Wes Phillips have been close since working together with Washington in 2017 and 2018 — O’Connell as quarterbacks coach and Wes as tight ends coach. They later were together for two seasons on the Rams, with O’Connell arriving in 2020, one year after Wes.
“From the time I met him, (I) immediately connected with him from the standpoint of how he watches tape, how he’s able to game plan, how he connects with players,” O’Connell said. “He’s got an unbelievable way about him in front of the room, teaching football, teaching things. … Obviously, with his family history, with his dad and grandpa, (it’s a) great line of coaches that he’s learned from. … I know the clock’s ticking until he gets great opportunities around this league.”
Vikings tight end Johnny Mundt, who played for the Rams the past five seasons, had Wes as his position coach the past three. Mundt said of Phillips: “His IQ is through the roof” and “he’s a great communicator.”
Mundt looked on in 2019 as Wes served on the same staff as Wade, who was the Rams’ defensive coordinator from 2017-19 until he was fired by McVay.
“To have two generations on that field at the same time was very special,” Mundt said. “You’d see them in passing and they’re cracking jokes to one another. … I definitely see some similarities (between Wes and Wade). He loves to joke around, but when it comes down to business, he knows what he’s talking about and he’s very direct.”
Bum Phillips was known for his one-liners, which he delivered in his Texas twang. He once said legendary quarterback Warren Moon “could throw a football through a car wash and not get it wet.” He said “there’s two kinds of coaches, them that’s fired and them that’s gonna be fired.”
Wade Phillips long has been known for his self-deprecating sense of humor. When he was head coach of the Cowboys, he once said, “We’ve got a lot of good players. If we had any coaching at all, we’d be in good shape.”
“Bum had more one-liners,” said Laurie Phillips, Wade’s wife of 53 years. “Wade thinks he’s a comedian, but I keep telling him he’s not. … Wes has a great sense of humor.”
When asked why he is an offensive coach while Bum and Wade made their mark on defense, Wes said, “My dad and Bum used to call me the black sheep of the family. Those guys had so much success running their style of defense. If I would have been smarter, I would have just learned that.”
Playing quarterback led to Wes gravitating toward the offensive side of the ball, but he still picked up wisdom from the defensive specialists in the family. Wes had a close relationship with Bum, and often would visit his ranch in Goliad, Texas.
“Bum was a unique character,” Wes said. “He had just a real common-sense way about him. I’ve tried to take some of that.”
Wes said he has taken much of his approach to the game from his father and grandfather.
“It was just their love of the game, the way they treat players, the way they treat coaching as really a teaching position,” Wes said.
When Bum was last an NFL coach in New Orleans and Wade was his defensive coordinator, Wes was ages 2 through 6. George Rogers, a star running back for the Saints from 1981-84, remembers seeing the little kid at practices or running around the locker room.
“It’s quite a family legacy they have,” Rogers said. “From Bum to Wade to his son, it goes down the line.”
When Wade served as Denver’s defensive coordinator from 1989-92, Wes was a Broncos’ ball boy. Wes remembers a Denver defensive linemen once taping him to the bench. Wade remembers Wes forming a bond with Steve Atwater, then a Broncos safety, who was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2020.
“I think Steve had Wes sign his football cards for him, so there’s a lot of forged signatures out there somewhere,” Wade said with a laugh.
Told what his father said, Wes said, “I’m going to have to say no comment with that. There may be a few out there with my signature on it.”
By 1993, Wade was named head coach of the Broncos and Wes’ days as a ball boy were over. He was a freshman at Smoky Hill High School in Aurora, Colo., when his father finally let him play tackle football for the first time.
Wes was a solid quarterback, but Wade began to think then that he would one day make a good coach.
“He was playing a game and he threw a pass for a touchdown and I said, ‘The guy was open early. Why didn’t you throw the ball earlier?’ ” Wade said. “He said, ‘Dad, there was a safety coming down and he was going to get it if I threw it then.’ And that’s when I knew he had a feel for football.”
Wade was fired after two seasons as Denver’s head coach and became Buffalo’s defensive coordinator in 1995. Wes then spent two years playing quarterback at Williamston (N.Y.) High School before earning a scholarship to Texas-El Paso.
Wes redshirted as a freshman for the Miners and then was a backup for three seasons before finally earning the starting job as a redshirt senior in 2001. That season he threw for 1,839 yards with 10 touchdowns and 11 interceptions.
Undrafted by the NFL, Wes played Arena Football in 2002 and 2003 for the San Diego Riptide. He then went into coaching.
Wes was a graduate assistant at Texas El-Paso in 2003, quarterbacks coach at West Texas A&M from 2004-05 and quarterbacks coach at Baylor in 2006. He moved on to the Cowboys when his dad was named their coach in 2007.
“We were really excited about that,” Laurie Phillips said. “Now I have to say that Wade jokes that, ‘I don’t think Laurie would ever speak to me again if I hadn’t have hired him.’ And I think that’s bordering on the truth.”
There was some talk then that Wes was hired simply because he was the coach’s son, but Wade said, “I knew he was a good coach, and so I hired a good coach.”
Wes said he already had established himself as a college coach when he landed his first NFL job.
“The nepotism thing is going to be a part of it when you’re hired by your dad,” he said. “I was a quarterbacks coach at Baylor and getting paid well. I could have stayed at Baylor and could have continued coaching quarterbacks, which I really enjoyed, but it was an opportunity to get in the NFL and I took a quality-control position and I just said, ‘Hey I’m going to earn it.’ ”
Wes did just that. When his father was fired by the Cowboys after the 2010 season, replacement Jason Garrett kept Wes on as assistant offensive line coach. After two more seasons with Dallas, he moved on to Washington for a five-year run as tight ends coach.
Wes was hired by the Rams as tight ends coach in 2019, and said he still “got the nepotism talk even then.” Wes called it special to once again be on the same staff as his father, who was 72 and perhaps then in his final NFL season.
“When my dad got fired in Dallas, people would talk about whether you’d ever like to work with your dad again, and I said, ‘Absolutely. In a heartbeat,’ ” Wes said. “We really enjoyed that year.”
After Wade was fired by the Rams, he returned to the family home in Houston. But he continued to pull hard for his former team while following his son’s career progression.
After being tight ends coach for two seasons, Wes had passing game coordinator duties added in 2021. And the Rams went on to win the Super Bowl at SoFi Stadium, their homefield in Inglewood, Calif.
Bum never got a Super Bowl ring, but Wade earned one as defensive coordinator when Denver defeated the Carolina Panthers 24-10 in Super Bowl 50 in February 2016. Six years later, Wade watched with his pride as the Rams defeated the Bengals.
“You think there’s nothing better than winning the Super Bowl, but there is something better and it’s your son winning the Super Bowl,” Wade said.
Now, Wade has traded in his Rams gear for the purple and gold of the Vikings. He’s planning on attending lots of Minnesota games this season. And Wes is excited about carrying on the family legacy.
“The NFL has been something I’ve lived with since I’ve grown up,” Wes said. “I always kind of envisioned being a part of it and now this will be my 16th year. So to still be here and have this opportunity in Minnesota, I still love it every day.”
