Harrison Phillips isn’t a name most football fans would recognize unless they’re Minnesota Vikings or Buffalo Bills fans. The 6’3″, 307-pound nose tackle isn’t a flashy player by any stretch. He works in the trenches, doing the dirty work to ensure his teammates have a clean shot at the ball carrier.
Advertisement
Phillips doesn’t rack up a ton of stats that would make him stand out to the casual fan either. He’s got 6.5 sacks and seven tackles for loss in his three years with the Vikings. However, Phillips gets busy in other ways. During that same span from 2022 to 2024, he has recorded 207 tackles, which ranks third among all defensive linemen.
The big, burly Nebraska native loves the physical part of the game — and it makes sense, considering that’s his bread and butter. So when Phillips was recently asked whether he ever felt bad about laying the wood on an opponent, his answer didn’t come as a surprise.
“In the NFL, absolutely not. They get paid a sh*t ton of money to get tackled for a living. The only thing is that if you tackle somebody and you hear the noise of something, like you know you hurt them,” Phillips said.
“I hate that there are injuries in the game. It’s the worst part of the game. And I don’t care if you spit in my face and talk dirty to me. I don’t wanna injure you. I don’t believe in that. So no, these guys get paid a sh*t ton of money and I’m doing everything I can to help us win a football game,” he added.
Phillips doesn’t want to hurt guys, as in cause an injury, but he definitely wants to hit them hard enough to intimidate. Make them think twice before running through his gap again. Back in high school, though, his philosophy on the matter was a bit more understanding.
“In high school I did [feel about the tackling someone]. There were some kids in high school that, you know, they gave him the ball just so the kid could like have the football for once in his career and, you know, he shouldn’t probably deserve to get hit the way he did.”
View this post on Instagram
There can be massive talent and size gaps in high school. But like Phillips said, once you get into the pros and these guys are getting paid to stay up, there’s no sympathy apart from those rare injury situations. Players on NFL offenses get paid tens of millions of dollars to do everything in their power to stay upright and run that ball into the end zone.
Guys like Harrison Phillips are paid to do everything in their power to stop them. Two guys fighting over a patch of grass, and doing everything humanly possible to win that battle. That’s what football and tackling are all about and what has made football such a unique entry in the sporting landscape. And why it’s remained the biggest sport in America for the last half-century.
