STILLWATER — Glenn Spencer knew Justin Phillips would be great, and he isn’t just saying that.
The Oklahoma State defensive coordinator and linebackers coach saw something in his redshirt junior outside linebacker early on. It took Phillips a while until it actually clicked.
Midway through a breakout year for Phillips, who is third on the team in tackles and tied for the lead in interceptions, Spencer said he isn’t surprised at all by Phillips’ production.
“In spring, I knew he had progressed and wasn’t making some earlier mistakes that he had made in his career before,” Spencer said. “Just his intensity and the approach to the game on a daily basis.”
That earnestness is what made the Pearland, Texas, native a key part of the Cowboy defense early on in his career. Even though he wasn’t consistent, he was willing to learn and climb the ranks of a deep linebacker corps.
Even now, Phillips and his fellow linebackers spend hours after practice watching film, and though Spencer said it is mandatory, they don’t just go because they have to. They want to.
“Once they’re in that room, then you have to see how locked in they want to be,” Spencer said. “I think they help each other. I hear them in there saying, ‘Hey, look at this stance or look at this split. When they do this, this is what happens.’ All of that is knowledge that helps you out on a Saturday.”
Although Phillips does spend a lot of time working toward improving each and every week, he does take time to think about the things outside of football. If he forgets, he has it tattooed all over his 6-foot, 230-pound frame.
Most of the ink covering his arms, legs and chest are numbers, crowns and roses – but two that stick out are the Houston Astros logo on his left bicep and the flag of Guyana on his right.
The flag is for his mother, Donna, who is a native of the South American country, while the Astros are not only his team, but also to represent his love for the city that Pearland is a suburb of.
When Hurricane Harvey wreaked havoc on southeast Texas in August, Phillips was busy in camp, locking down the right-side linebacker spot. His home wasn’t damaged, luckily, but he felt helpless.
“It flooded around our area and flooded around our street and our house,” Phillips said. “There was no damage or anything like that. It sucks being here and there are a lot of friends, family and relatives who are getting a lot of damage to them and you got teammates who have parents who are having it happen to them. It’s a bad feeling, but fortunately my family was OK in it. … I didn’t have a chance to get back there and my parents couldn’t leave because of all the flooding so everybody was stuck where they were.”
Although he is a high-flying linebacker on Saturday’s, the management major always makes sure to keep on top of everything. Spencer said that is the sign of a kid who gets it, which he says doesn’t always happen.
“Young players don’t realize that because they probably never have had to put the mental work in like you do in college until they got up to this,” Spencer said. “Schematically, they got to do different things to be successful. That’s a big part of the game. A lot of kids will hit a wall and they can’t get through that. A light will come on after awhile and they will know how important that success is for them on a Saturday. It’s how much they put into it.”
For Phillips, that’s a lot and it is evidenced by his stats as well as the Cowboy defense’s knack for playing above expectation. Against Texas, he was tied for the team lead in tackles with seven in a game that OSU coach Mike Gundy credited his group with the win.
He is making a lot of plays, but Phillips doesn’t like to judge his season based on those and doesn’t really grade himself, preferring to grade the defense as a whole and give credit to the defensive line for his two pick-sixes.
The defense doesn’t keep a tally of turnovers, but Phillips said he does get some ribbing about it occasionally, always making sure to point to the big guys up front who gave him the assist.
“It helps me out a bunch, I love it,” Phillips said. “They get a lot of pressure always, which makes the quarterback step up to where I can get them or he throws the ball and they tip it and I just get the ball. I appreciate them for it.”
Spencer said Phillips has matured a lot in his journey, becoming a defensive leader for him and someone that he can rely upon. Unlike Chad Whitener, who is the starting senior of the corps, Spencer said he gets to have Phillips for one more year.
With the progress he has made this season, Spencer can only imagine what will happen next.
“He still has a year and a half left,” Spencer said. “We will see what his final chapter’s like. I don’t think it is written yet.”