A receiver is equipped with an adaptive phase-offset controller and associated timing-calibration circuitry that together shift the timing for a data sampler and a digital equalizer. The sample and equalizer timing is shifted to a position with less residual inter-symbol interference (ISI) energy relative to the current symbol. The shifted position may be calculated using a measure of signal quality, such as a receiver bit-error rate or a comparison of filter-tap values, to optimize the timing of data recovery.