A year after being out of work, Wade Phillips is in the Super Bowl, turning the Broncos defense into one of the league’s best, and it’s all about flexibility.Phillips doesn’t run an overly-complicated defense. It’s about putting your players in the best position to succeed. That’s how Phillips described his scheme at a press conference this weekend. Asked about his scheme, broke down the philosophy. Here was his full response:
“That’s what our coaching philosophy is, really. I don’t understand the people that say, ‘Hey, this is our scheme and that guy can’t play in it. The guy can play. He’s a good player, but he can’t play in our scheme.’ Well, to me, there’s something wrong with your scheme. You adapt the scheme to what the players can do, not what you can think of. We’ve always done it that was.
“We started with (defensive end) Elvin Bethea, who is in the Hall of Fame now. We played a lot of the same things we play now, but he was so quick and so fast that we stunted him all the time. He was our second-leading tackler on the team as a defensive end. He was a great player, but we didn’t let him sit there all the time playing our technique you have to play, two-gap or whatever.
“I’ve had guys that play two-gap and played it well, so we played two-gap with those guys. I’ve had all kinds of players. You don’t hear all of these stories, but the nose guards that I’ve had — I’ve had four or five make the Pro Bowl. All of them are different. Ted Washington was huge. We played more in the middle with him but he controlled the gap. Jamal Williams, he was a powerful guy, so we offset him on the nose and played the same gap. Craig was undersized, and we stunted him to the same gap. It’s the same defense, but it’s different players. That’s what you have to do.
“We played Quentin Jammer, he was great at jamming a guy on the line of scrimmage. He wasn’t great playing off. In zone, man and everything we did, he jammed the guy on the line of scrimmage and played it. That’s what you do. That’s a simple way of telling you how you play with players you have and fit your scheme to what they can do. That’s the only way I can explain it, I guess.”
