DALLAS--When the Dallas Cowboys cruised through the month of December and finished it with a lopsided victory against the hated Philadelphia Eagles, then opened the playoffs with another victory against those same Eagles, head coach Wade Phillips knew the monkey was finally off his back. After years of trying, he finally overcame the curse of not being a very good coach.

“For the longest time, December has been a thorn in my side,” said Phillips. “But this year was different. We had a great December. Then we followed it with a playoff victory! Thank God that monkey is off my back. By ‘monkey,’ I mean me not being a very good coach. It seems I am now. Or at least my assistants are. Whatever, I’m just glad I won a playoff game. That was starting to get embarrassing.”

As a head coach, Phillips was 0-4 in playoff games prior to Saturday’s 34-14 drubbing of the Eagles. Phillips, in his tenth season as an NFL coach, attributed his poor playoff record with poor coaching performance.

“I think when you look at my playoff performance throughout my career and see how poorly my teams have fared, it’s obvious that I’ve been a victim of circumstance: namely, that I haven’t been a good coach,” said Phillips. “Call it bad luck or whatever, but for some reason I was cursed with being kind of crappy at this job. But curses are made to be broken. Now we just have to win a couple more games to cement my legacy as pretty good coach who can win if he has enough great players.”

Phillips and the Cowboys still have a tough road ahead of them, starting with an upcoming game against the Minnesota Vikings. But a newly confident Phillips no longer feels as though he’s destined to lose. In fact, he “fully expects” his team to win the game.

“Oh, confidence is an amazing thing,” said Phillips. “If this happened last year I would have been imagining all the way we could lose. Now I’m just wondering how much we’re going to win by. I’m guessing probably 37-7 or something. I mean the Vikes will probably get one garbage time touchdown while I’m on the sideline drenched with Gatorade, but that's about it. Excuse me? Did you say I sounded overconfident? How many playoff games have you won, asshole?”

Phillips isn’t the only one on the Cowboys who shed a monkey off his back. Quarterback Tony Romo, never known for his clutch playoff performances, has been looking more and more confident with every big play.

“It’s nice to have that curse lifted and to have confidence in yourself,” said Romo. “In that sense, I can relate to coach Phillips. We've both had similar issues throughout our career and now we're experiencing success. Of course the fact that I've become a pretty great quarterback is helping him greatly. I'm still not a very good kick holder, though. Just throwing that out there for future reference.”

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