The Phillips Preseason Debate is Brewing

The aggressive Cowboys defense gave Henry little room to run. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

Did Dallas Coach Wade Phillips break the Pre-Season Code of Conduct Saturday night? The story has been crawling all over the Internet ever since Mike Klis of the Denver Post wrote this piece on Sunday morning. Matt Mosley ripped Klis for his story over at Hashmarks. Several other blogs have gotten into the debate, and I wouldn’t call myself a Broncos blogger without jumping head first into this supposed scandal.

First, I’ll let John Lynch say his peace:

I don’t know if Wade’s (ticked) off the Broncos fired him, but it sure looked that way… They came out and game- planned us, blitzing every play. They came after us. It’s no excuse for the way we played. But I think they might have broken the code of ethics for the preseason.

John Lynch is a seasoned pro – a wily vet, if you will, but if there’s an NFL player’s opinion I respect more than many others’ it would be Lynch’s. So there IS something to this. Next I’ll quote Tom Nalen just because it’s so freaking eerie to quote the long-silenced center:

They did blitz a lot but that’s not an excuse. After the first series, we should have been prepared for it. We’ll have to watch the film and learn from it.

I wonder what his voice sounds like…

Anyway, all kidding aside now. I have to say that I completely agree with these guys. The Cowboys came out and destroyed the Broncos. The Broncos played their base defense, a very conservative offense, and the Cowboys threw everything and then some at the injured group. There is an unspoken rule to playing these pre-season games, and one of them is “Don’t kill the other team.” The Cowboys took that rule and, for whatever reason, threw it out the window. And I have a feeling an old grudge by Ex-Broncos Head Coach Wade might have a part to blame.

THAT BEING SAID, I do NOT want to hear this coming from the players’ mouths anymore.

The fans like myself can gripe about it all they want, but if the players are making excuses for their performance then they aren’t going to work as hard to improve. Looking at the tape, I honestly didn’t think the team played as horribly as I had feared or read from the news stories the night before – a few catches here, a blitz pickup there and we’re having a completely different conversation…

But I want this game to light a fire under the team’s collective ass. Just like the Denver local game broadcasters said as the second half went underway, sometimes a team needs a little humbling to find that hunger and work that much harder.

Now that we’ve gotten our asses handed (and now that the team will actually be able to sleep in their own damn beds for a few nights), it’s time for the Broncos to buckle down and find the defense all their fans have been looking forward to all offseason long.

I really want to hear back from the readers on this one… this is a debate, after all.  Did Phillips lead the team too aggressively Saturday, or was the Broncos laying an egg more to blame?