IRVING, Texas - Wade Phillips may be fielding questions about his job security, but while the national media places him on the hot seat, his pass-rushing 3-4 defense has nearly become the most productive in Cowboys history.
The Cowboys are poised to lead the league in sacks for the first time in club history (since sacks became an official stat in 1982), sitting atop the NFL with 58 total sacks with one game to go. The next closest team, Pittsburgh, is a whopping 10 sacks behind. The Cowboys have been second in the category before (in 1983 and 1994), but never first.
Dallas would also need five sacks Sunday's regular-season finale in Philadelphia to break the club record of 62 in a season set in 1985. To Cowboys and NFL sack leader DeMarcus Ware, the high sack total is a validation of how well the NFL's eighth-ranked defense has been playing.
"We, just the defense in general, pride ourselves on just getting pressure on the quarterback, so us getting a statistic like that and being able to be one of the top teams to do that really shows that we were effective this year," Ware said.
Ware is also within reach of an historical achievement. The Cowboys linebacker, with 20 sacks going into Week 17, needs three more to break Michael Strahan's mark of 22½ set in 2001. But unlike that year, when then-Packers quarterback Brett Favre basically took a knee to give Strahan his final sack for the record, Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb is still fighting for a playoff spot and is unlikely to be as accommodating.
But if Ware wants the record, and if the Cowboys want to earn a playoff berth in this win-and-you're-in game, the Cowboys will have to get consistent pressure on McNabb, which is no easy task since the combination of his elusiveness and his offensive line has the Eagles sitting eighth in the league in sacks surrendered, giving up only 22 over these first 15 games.
"The thing is, you can get there, but that doesn't mean anything," said Ware, who sacked McNabb once in Week 2's first faceoff. "You've got to get him down, and it does frustrate you having a guy back there that when you beat one guy, you've got to go back there and beat another one to get him down, which is him."
While Ware has accounted for more than a third of the Cowboys sack total, he won't be able to do it all by himself. The Cowboys will need guys like nose tackle Jay Ratliff (who sacked McNabb once in that early-season game and has 7½ sacks on the season ), outside linebacker Greg Ellis (two Week 2 sacks on McNabb, eight total) and inside linebacker Bradie James (seven sacks) to corral McNabb, especially when he inevitably slips through someone's fingers.
"Obviously the goal is to try to bring him down, and if you don't, hopefully there's another man right there to finish the job," Ratliff said. "But just hold on to him long enough for the cavalry to come."
But the Cowboys would prefer to spare the cavalry by sacking McNabb on the first hit. To do that, the Cowboys pass rushers will have to stay in their lanes and make sound tackles so McNabb doesn't find a crevice to sneak through.
"When we get to him, we've got to make sure we break down and get a good shot at him and not really try to take a kill shot on him," Ratliff said. "When you take a kill shot on McNabb, you usually miss."
So maybe Santa will have a late Christmas present for the Cowboys on Sunday in Philadelphia (he can't like the Eagles much; he's had bad experiences there before) - three sacks for Ware to break the individual record, five sacks for the team to break the team record, but most of all, enough pressure on McNabb to vault the Cowboys into the playoffs.
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