Phillips Releases His Players With Confidence

As a man who has coached both Tank Johnson and Adam “Pacman” Jones during his time in Dallas, Cowboys’ head coach Wade Phillips knows all too well the dangers of a young football player with a lot of money and a lot of time, specifically their penchant for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Whether Pacman at a strip club or Vince Young at a--well, a strip club, the old adage that nothing good ever happens after midnight has been put to the test and proven time and time again by young NFLers, and there’s no reason to believe that this trend will cease anytime soon.

It’s certainly enough to give a head coach pause, one would imagine, when releasing his players from the confines of team headquarters into the wild, wild public for a long bye weekend, as Phillips did yesterday. In a story related in the Dallas Morning News today, Bill Parcells once had Keith Davis show his teammates a bullet wound, to give them an idea of the potential consequences of poor decision making.

Phillips said Thursday, though, that he has confidence in the younger of his players to enjoy their time off responsibly.

"You could worry every day about young people and we've got quite a few on our team," Phillips said. "You talk to them a lot about off-the-field things and how much that influences, and you don't know. We have a good group of guys and I don't specifically worry about that."

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