Wade Phillips, Disciplinarian: Can an NFL Head Coach Change His Spots?

Can a leopard change its spots?

Can a tiger change its stripes?

Can you teach old dogs new tricks?

Can Wade Phillips become a disciplinarian?

Wade Phillips thinks we (or I, anyway) have it all wrong. The Dallas Cowboys didn’t need a coaching change, they just needed their coach to change.

Phillips promises that next season will be different. He promises that he’ll keep the locker room under control. He promises consequences.

Sort of.

“If it means being more demanding, more whatever, I have to get it done,”

That’s right Cowboys fans, next season your head coach is going to gain control of your soap opera-like locker room by being more whatever.

I’m guessing it’s going to work. Why not?

“If you know a person to be a certain way and then all of a sudden you have an extreme change, I don’t know how well that’s going to be taken. I don’t know what he means by that.”

Neither do we, Bradie James.

I remember my fifth grade class, a long, long time ago. My class was completely out of control. The woman we had as a teacher was an extremely nice lady. She never yelled. She never punished anyone.

She was like a player-friendly head coach, only the fifth graders she was dealing with were far more mature than the average Dallas Cowboy wide receiver.

After the Christmas break, she came back and said she was done. She wasn’t allowing the talking. She wasn’t letting us get away with murder anymore.

Only, when she yelled at us, we knew it wasn’t her. We couldn’t take her seriously.

She had already shown us her true colors, anything else just seemed forced. Needless to say, she never regained control of our class.

I’m not sure what happened to her, but I’m relatively certain she’s still not a strict disciplinarian. I’m pretty sure she never got more "whatever".

Wade Phillips’ coaching style either works or it doesn’t. Maybe with the right team, it would work as a head coach. We know it works as a defensive coordinator. But you can’t change midstream.

The Cowboys players are just like that group of fifth graders, only presumably smarter. Presumably.

If we could see right through that nice teacher, they’ll be able to see right through any attempt Phillips makes at becoming a disciplinarian.

If you’re Jerry Jones, you can choose to stay with Wade Phillips for one more season, or you can go get yourself a disciplinarian.

You can’t do both.

What’s brewing in Dallas is a recipe for disaster. If you think this season was bad, wait until Wade Phillips tries out his new disciplinary tactics on Terrell Owens.

I’m sure that’ll go over real smooth-like.

But hey, maybe that’s what Jerry Jones wants.

Mike Shanahan, Bill Cowher, and Mike Holmgren will all be available next off-season. Why pick from the crop of wannabe head coaches this off-season, when you can pick from that group of hall of famers next season?

One thing’s for certain: If I were a Cowboys fan, I wouldn’t be looking forward to the 2009 season.

Sean Crowe covers the Patriots-Examiner">New England Patriots for Examiner.com and writes a bi-weekly column for Sports-Central.org.

He is a Senior Writer and an NFL Community Leader at Bleacher Report. You can email him at [e-mail]. His archive can be found here.