Yes, he’ll have to co-exist with Jones and work with Garrett, an offensive coordinator painfully shy of NFL coaching experience. Yes, he apparently will have to put up with T.O. Maybe. Yes, he’ll be subject to the media barbs of being Jerry’s puppet.

The flip side is he has a reasonable chance of hoisting a Super Bowl trophy sometime in the next few years. He certainly has a better chance of doing it in Dallas than anywhere else he’s been. So, again, what does he have to lose?

Meanwhile, nobody who does their homework is going to question Wade Phillips’ credentials. You start with the fact that in his last six jobs — four as defensive coordinator, two as a head coach — losing teams were in the playoffs the very next year.

Find somebody else with that kind of track record.

Beyond that, he’s been in the NFL for 30 years, while working for and with the likes of Bum, Dan Reeves, Buddy Ryan, Marv Levy and Marty Schottenheimer. All of them were big winners from whom Wade gleaned key bits of coaching philosophy to blend with his own.

The bow on his coaching ribbon is that every place he’s coached, the players have been willing to knock down walls for him. He’s a true players coach — firm enough to not be overrun, but fair and square enough that players take it personal when representing him.

So let the critics and pundits say what they want. Jerry Jones finally got it right again. All the better that he had to turn to one of our guys from Southeast Texas to do it.

Sports editor Bob West can be e-mailed at rdwest@usa.net. His Sportsrap radio show airs Mondays at 8:05 p.m. on KLVI (560-AM).