MKRob Sports

After previously choosing not to comment on head coach Wade Phillips‘ status, owner Jerry Jones said winning down the stretch during this pivotal run would go a long way toward securing the head coach’s future in Dallas. “I don’t know that it’s any more so for Wade than it is for anybody else on this team,” Jones said this week. “You’re in coaching and then there’s a lot of pressure to win, so that’s there. But what we do here and how we get into these playoffs and get in with an advantage, have a (playoff) game here, get a bye, all of those are things that look good for Wade.”

Asked about Jones’ comments and given that he’s in the final year of his contract and the team has not exercised its option for 2010, Phillips, we hear, was a little prickly about the subject, saying, “I don’t know what the determining factor is. I’ve never known that. I didn’t know it when I was at Buffalo and went 29-19 there in three years that I was going to get fired. I thought I did a heck of a job. All I can do is try to do the best I can as a coach and I work hard at that. I don’t think I get a lot of respect for that, but that’s how it goes.”