Wade Phillips' Redemption Tale

In 2014, Broncos defensive coordinator Wade Phillips was working for The Scouting Academy. He'd been the interim head coach, for the third time in his career, during the fallout of Gary Kubiak's 2013 Texans collapse. The team interviewed Phillips for the head gig, but they chose Bill O'Brien instead. Afterward, Phillips made a funny Twitter account, and most everyone wondered whether the 68-year-old would ever coach again.

Chicken Parm tastes so good-I like it especially with Cheese

— Wade Phillips (@sonofbum)November 2, 2015

But when Kubiak found his way into the Denver job through John Elway, he hardly had a second thought in bringing in the only defensive coordinator he'd ever worked with. Phillips was returning to the place of his first head coaching gig as a coordinator.

Phillips has had a lot of reputations in the NFL. A quick-fix expert, he immediately turned around defenses in Buffalo, Atlanta, San Diego, Dallas, and Houston. Those defenses haven't always sustained that improvement. But it's clear that Phillips still had a firm grasp on what he was doing every time he walked into a new home.

In this case, Phillips matched up with the perfect general manager for him. Elway had the foresight to learn two things from Denver's loss in Super Bowl 48. One: Peyton Manning wasn't going to last forever. Two: He needed to build the kind of defense that tore quarterbacks apart.

Denver already had a great defense before Phillips signed on. What he did was elevate them even further.

The Broncos already had the on-paper talent to get this kind of production out of their roster. But, for whatever reason, former defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio wasn't able to get his defense to pressure the quarterback.

Elway knew the Broncos could get better. I don't think anybody predicted this would be the kind of historically great defense that could bully Tom Brady around. But the talent was all in place, including a pair of potential Hall of Fame ends in Von Miller and DeMarcus Ware, a deep pool of inside pass-rush talent, and Aqib Talib and Chris Harris—corners who can pressure receivers at the line of scrimmage.

And what we saw on Sunday was the culmination of all that talent. They harassed Tom Brady 23 times in 60 dropbacks. They forced a pair of turnovers, one of which keyed a touchdown drive deep in New England territory. They held up on the game-tying two-point conversion, forcing another hurried Brady throw.

It's worth remembering how simple Wade Phillips keeps his defensive gameplans/callsheets. E.g.: (h/t — Chris B. Brown (@smartfootball)January 24, 2016

They did all this, and beat a future Hall of Fame quarterback, with a relatively simple defense. They held up in spite of Manning's offense sputtering the entire game. The Broncos rushed for just 99 yards, and threw for just 176. Manning took three deep sacks and lost a fumble. Outside of the opening drive of the game, Denver looked completely lost on offense.

And it didn't even begin to matter. Denver went up against a banged-up version of the NFL's best offense and neutered them. Yes, Dion Lewis and LeGarrette Blount would have made a difference. Yes, a healthy Nate Solder could have helped keep Brady a little cleaner in the pocket. But the Patriots were left with little to exploit. They found some zone-coverage option route first downs. They tried to force the ball to passing-down back James White despite the fact that he couldn't actually catch a ball downfield. (White had just five catches on 16 targets, a ratio that would make Davante Adams blush.)

Sometimes the NFL overcomplicates coaching. They look for reasons to dismiss the old in favor of the new, because they know the "ceiling" of a coach.

Wade Phillips may be the textbook case of the Peter Principled head coach. He also just made a few simple tweaks and turned the Broncos defense into a unit special enough to carry this sputtering offense to the Super Bowl.