Remembering Bum Phillips, the unsung defensive innovator
Phillips spent time as a college assistant from 1958 through 1966, moving to the American Football League when Sid Gillman hired him to be the San Diego Chargers’ defensive coordinator in 1967. He stayed there through 1972, did a year with Oklahoma State in 1973, and reunited with Gillman on the Houston Oilers’ staff in 1974. He replaced Gillman as the Oilers’ head coach in 1975, going 10-4 in his first season and working his magic with a team that had won a total of nine games in the previous three years. Much has been said and written about Phillips’ ability to bring players together and instill a common belief system with different franchises, but there was far more to his success than the intangibles. Bum Phillips was a brilliant defensive innovator and strategist. He was hired by Bud Adams. John Mecum Jr. owned the Saints when he was hired, and Tom Benson later bought the team while Phillips was coach. Jim Mora replaced Phillips in New Orleans.
The two common concepts Phillips is often credited with bringing to football in general and the NFL in particular are the numbering system for defensive fronts and the professional version of the 3-4 defense. Phillips worked for Paul “Bear” Bryant at Texas A&M in 1958, and it was there that the current numbering system (one-technique, three-tech, five-tech, etc.) became common nomenclature.
“After coaching for a number of years and always trying to find something that would make football easier to understand for the average player, I came upon a system of defensive numbering that has proven very valuable to me since then,” Bryant wrote in his book, Building a Championship Football Team. (via Trojan Football Analysis). “In the past, I have used many different defenses. I always employed the technique of giving each defense a ‘name.’ Most of the time, the name had little in common with the defense, and this confused rather than helped the players.
“After discussing the possibility of the numbering with my own and other college and high school coaches while at Texas A&M in 1956, I finally came across a feasible plan for numbering defensive alignments. I must give credit to O.A. Bum Phillips — a Texas high-school coach — for helping work out the solution as he experimented with the numbering system with his high-school team.”
College and NFL coaches were working to make their fronts more diverse, from the old five-man fronts to the Tom Landry-conceptualized 4-3 defense to the first strains of the 3-4 defense as a base concept. As with most NFL innovations, the 3-4 gained traction in college football, and its primary practitioners took the 3-4 with them to the pros.
Phillips and Chuck Fairbanks are the two coaches credited with bringing the 3-4 to the NFL as a pure base defense. There had been elements of it before — as SI‘s Paul Zimmerman pointed out in a 1997 article, the Oakland Raiders moved defensive tackle Dan Birdwell around to different positions in the 1960s, and the Miami Dolphins of the early 1970s brought linebacker Bob Matheson in for certain defensive packages to enhance Bill Arnsparger’s defense. But it was Phillips for the Oilers, and Fairbanks for the New England Patriots, who took that principle to the next level.
His son, Wade Phillips, was also a coach in the NFL.
Some of his key players were:
Earl Campbell, George Rogers, Richard Todd, Ken Stabler, Eric Martin, Archie Manning, Rickey Jackson, Billy Johnson, Lynn Dickey, Dan Pastorini, Elvin Bethea, Bubba Smith, Robert Brazile, John Hadl, Rob Carpenter, Ken Burrough, Curly Culp, Jimmie Giles, Mike Renfro, Ted Thompson, Ted Washington, Toni Fritsch, Leon Gray, Mike Reinfeldt, Kenny King, Dave Casper, Hoby Brenner, Hokie Gajan, Dave Wilson, Derland Moore, Stan Brock, Brad Edelman, Morten Andersen, Wayne Wilson, John Tice, Dave Waymer, Bruce Clark, Brian Hansen, Joel Hilgenberg, Jack Del Rio and Bobby Hebert.
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