He was a first-team All-American wide receiver and primary target of a quarterback who went on to win the Heisman Trophy. He led the nation in receiving yardage in back-to-back seasons, faced off against Deion Sanders daily in Atlanta Falcons practices, worked as an intern for the Minnesota Vikings when Randy Moss and Cris Carter were there and coached the first receiver taken in the 2008 NFL Draft. He now works on Kansas University football coach David Beaty’s staff.

If you can’t identify that résumé, don’t feel bad. Jason Phillips, KU’s first-year wide receivers coach, is on the low-key side and doesn’t reference the big names and accomplishments of his football career unless you introduce them into conversation.

Phillips and Hart Lee Dykes of Oklahoma State were the first-team wide receivers on the 1988 Associated Press All-America team. The passes Phillips caught for the University of Houston that season were thrown by Andre Ware, trigger man of Jack Pardee’s Run-‘N’-Shoot offense. Ware won the Heisman Trophy in 1989, Phillips’ rookie year with the Detroit Lions.

“That was fun,” Phillips said in animated fashion.

At 5-foot-7, Phillips wasn’t a big target, just an easy one to spot because he was always open. His 4.34 speed had something to do with that, but not everything. Plenty of fast football players never learn how to use their speed. Phillips did, and when he stopped using that knowledge to catch passes, he started teaching others.

“It’s like a stick shift in a car,” Phillips said, sharing what he tells his receivers. “We want to play in third gear. When the ball’s in the air, we want to go to fourth gear. And when we catch the ball, we need to drop it into fifth. You need to see that in the way these guys play the game and run routes. You have to have that in order to be successful.”

Phillips, 49, said he doesn’t believe in prototypes and doesn’t necessarily steer off of high school prospects because he sees them dropping passes.

“I never really saw it as a disadvantage,” Phillips said of his height. “Obviously, scouts have measurables. I never was a guy who believed in the measurables.”

At the University of Houston, Phillips coached Donnie Avery, the first receiver taken in the 2008 NFL Draft.

“Here’s an unrecruited kid we signed purely on his 40 time at a combine we witnessed,” Phillips said. “He had four clips of video on his highlight tape, all which would be running by people. We red-shirted him because he couldn’t catch the football. So we had to work with him to get him to catch the football. And to get him to understand how to use his skills to run routes. Then he morphed into the first receiver taken in the National Football League.”

Especially at a place like Kansas, which picks much closer to last than first among Big 12 recruits, sometimes it serves a recruiter to find something he likes in a prospect, instead of insisting the athlete fit the Big 12 size-and-speed profile.

“It can be a guy who’s unexpected who could end up being that guy,” Phillips said. “For instance, my last year at Houston, it was Patrick Edwards.”

As a senior in 2011, Edwards caught 89 passes for 1,752 yards (19.7 yards per catch) and 20 touchdowns.

“And he was a walk-on,” Phillips said. “Every player needs a coach who believes in him. So if you see something there and develop that talent, and that player is willing to give you everything he’s got, and he’s attentive to the details, and he’s willing to work hard, and he’s willing to commit to the process, that’s the recipe for success.”

After playing six seasons in the NFL and three in the Canadian Football League, Phillips went into coaching. One of his first jobs was as a training camp intern for the Minnesota Vikings, where he was able to watch Moss and Carter go about their jobs.

Moss’ physical gifts — long and lean, fast and agile — were obvious, but it was the football student in him that most impressed Phillips. Carter’s veteran presence and work ethic rubbed off on Moss, Phillips said.

“Randy was very focused as far as his craft,” Phillips said. “Always very focused as far as getting better, competing. It was always game day to him in practice, which was fun to watch because he was a freak, for real.”

So was Neon Deion, aka Prime Time.

“We’ve remained friends, and I think it has a lot to do with the way we competed against each other in practice,” Phillips said. “I used to tell him, ‘Everybody calls you Prime Time. I call you Deion because I’m playing against Deion, I’m not playing against Prime Time.”

Phillips’ attention to detail, competitive spirit, speed and hands enabled him to become a first-team All-American. Showing his players films of the mentality he brought to practice every day might not be such a bad teaching tool, but so far, Phillips said, he hasn’t gone down that path with his Kansas receivers.

“I was thinking of showing some cutups, but we had those short shorts,” Phillips said. “So it would probably take away from the message because they would laugh at the uniforms and the short shorts that we wore. So we can’t really do a lot of visual.

“So I just try to tell them stories of what those guys were like on a daily basis, so these guys can understand it’s not just about showing up, you have to show up with a purpose and do things with a mentality.”

That approach certainly has served him well.