Coaching Confidential: Inside the Fraternity of NFL Coaches

by Myers, Gary

  The NFL was in the middle of a 136-day lockout. The doom and gloomers were predicting that the 2011 season would be wiped out, but there was Rex just being Rex, which is what makes him so much fun and so different from all the other coaches in the league. The Jets had made it to the AFC championship game in each of his first two seasons, and now Ryan was predicting bigger things for the 2011 season, assuming there was a 2011 season. In the process of talking up his team, he somehow found a way to compare himself to Babe Ruth.

  In one memorable sentence, Ryan referenced Teddy Roosevelt and the Babe.

  “They talk about walk softly and carry a big stick. I love that. I agree with that 100 percent,” Ryan said. “But I guess I feel more like Babe Ruth. I’m going to walk softly, I’m going to carry that big stick, and then I’m going to point, and then I’m going to hit it over the fence.”

  Walk softly? Maybe. Talk softly? That wouldn’t be Ryan.

  Baseball legend has it that Ruth pointed to center field during an at bat in the fifth inning of the third game of the 1932 World Series and on the next pitch blasted the ball over the center field fence at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Up to the plate steps the Rexino.

  “It’s like he had the courage to do that. I think I’ve got the courage,” Ryan said. “Now granted, I can’t hit anywhere close to Babe Ruth and I’m not as good a coach as Babe Ruth was a player.”

  His Jets didn’t have the Babe’s back in 2011. They were too busy stabbing one another in the back as the locker room became dysfunctional and the team limped to the finish line with three straight losses to complete a disappointing 8–8 nonplayoff season.

  By then, Ryan’s annual declaration of greatness had turned him into the boy who cried wolf. Going into the 2009 playoffs, he insisted that the Jets should be the favorites to win it all. They won two playoff games on the road against the Bengals and Chargers and then lost the AFC championship game in Indianapolis. Going into the 2010 and 2011 seasons, he proclaimed the Jets would win it all. They came close again in 2010, winning road playoff games against the Colts and Patriots, beating all-time greats Peyton Manning and Tom Brady back to back, but then lost the AFC title game in Pittsburgh. Their 2011 meltdown and inner turmoil left Ryan questioning the way he handled the team; he admitted he was oblivious to the tension in the locker room.

  On the day he was introduced as the Jets coach, he promised a trip to the White House for his team, and he wasn’t referring to one of those tours where people line up for hours and never come close to meeting the president. He was talking about being the invited guests as Super Bowl champion. Ryan wanted it all for the Jets: the Oval Office, the Rose Garden, a green and white jersey for the president, the “J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets” chant reverberating through the halls of the West Wing. Basically, Mr. Ryan Goes to Washington.

  A few months after he took the job, Ryan woke up the Patriots in New England when he told Mike Francesa in an interview on WFAN in New York: “I never came here to kiss Bill Belichick’s rings.” Ryan’s players loved it. A few weeks later Ryan said, “I’m not intimidated by anybody. Does that mean I am disrespecting Belichick? No. I think he’s a hell of a football coach.”

  Ryan had waited a long time for his chance to become an NFL head coach, and he wasn’t going to hold back. This could be his one and only chance. In 2008, he had interviewed with the Ravens, Falcons, and Dolphins. Even though he was the defensive coordinator on Baltimore’s staff and had been with the Ravens for ten seasons, owner Steve Bisciotti, after firing Brian Billick, chose to go outside the organization and hire John Harbaugh. It was a blow to Ryan’s ego, but he accepted Harbaugh’s invitation to remain on the staff as the assistant head coach/defensive coordinator. Ryan had a good relationship with Bill Parcells, who was then running the Dolphins, and the Tuna and Ryan’s father, Buddy, really went at it when Parcells was coaching the Giants and Ryan was coaching the Eagles. But Parcells didn’t hire Rex in Miami. He chose Tony Sparano, who had worked for him in Dallas. (When Ryan needed a new offensive coordinator in 2012, he chose Sparano, who had just been fired after four seasons in Miami.) Atlanta went with Jacksonville defensive coordinator Mike Smith. He and Ryan had worked together for four years in Baltimore.

  When was Ryan going to get his opportunity? He was a hot candidate after the 2008 season in a year the Ravens made it to the AFC championship game, losing in Pittsburgh. On a Sunday during the postseason, when NFL rules permit assistants on teams still alive in the playoffs to interview for head coaching jobs, Ryan packed two interviews into one day in Baltimore the morning after the Ravens upset the Titans in the divisional round in Nashville. He first met with the Rams at the Ravens’ facility in Owings Mills, Maryland. The Jets contingent of owner Woody Johnson, general manager Mike Tannenbaum, and front office executives Scott Cohen and Joey Clinkscales had flown down on Johnson’s private jet and was waiting for Ryan in a conference room at Baltimore/Washington International Airport. His meeting with the Rams had run long. Ryan could not be rude and get up and leave. When the Rams finally ran out of questions, he called the Jets to say he was “flying” on the highway to get to BWI. The New York job was the one he wanted.

  “I was getting concerned that him being forty-five minutes late would make Woody agitated,” Tannenbaum said.

  Ryan was aware that you get one chance to make a first impression and being late for a job interview is not recommended. He walked into the conference room knowing he was fighting from behind. “I think I had to make up some ground initially,” he said. “I was just myself. I felt comfortable.”

  He compiled a sixty-two-page brochure with a color picture of himself on the cover with the title:

  Rex Ryan

  Head Coaching Candidate

  January 2009

  The brochure was filled with testimonials from Ravens All Pro linebacker Ray Lewis and other players Ryan had coached. One page caught the attention of the Jets. It was a large picture of the Super Bowl ring he had won as a defensive assistant with the Ravens in 2000. The Jets’ only Super Bowl came on January 12, 1969, when Buddy Ryan was the defensive coordinator and little Rex used to run around the practice field and hang out in the locker room. His interview with the Jets brass lasted three hours. Ryan left, and the Jets knew they had their man.

  “Woody, what do you think?” Tannenbaum said.

  “He’s exactly what you said he would be,” Johnson said.

  Tannenbaum considered that a positive review.

  The next week, the Ravens had barely pulled off their uniforms after the loss in Pittsburgh when the Jets offered Ryan their head coaching job. Shortly after they introduced him as their coach, the Jets presented Ryan with the Jets green warm-up jacket his father wore as an assistant coach. He felt an obligation to live up to the standards his father helped create in the Super Bowl year. The Jets knew he would be the face of the franchise, but they couldn’t have known all that would come out of his mouth.

  Ryan surely is his father’s son. Buddy stirred it up as the defensive coordinator of the 1985 champion Bears, often feuding with volatile head coach Mike Ditka, and is still the only assistant coach ever carried off the field after the Super Bowl. If he was brash with the Bears, he was off the charts when he became head coach of the Eagles. Buddy Ryan spoke in headlines. His press conferences as a whole were relatively mundane, but he would slip in a line or two that would get his players or the opponent or the media fired up. He was considered dangerous by the competition because he just didn’t care who he offended, and that appears to be a dominant gene he passed down to Rex and Rex’s twin brother, Rob, a longtime NFL assistant coach. Buddy often would get on his own players publicly. He once called Bears defensive tackle William “Refrigerator” Perry, taken in the first round, a wasted draft pick. Rex never does that. Publicly, he is always supportive of his players.

  “Obviously, the biggest mentor of my life would be my father, from a football standpoint, from being a dad,” Rex said. “It was the football thing that probabl
y bonded us more than anything. He is a guy I truly respect and love. We were the only kids growing up who never had a curfew. But if he said to be home at eleven, we were going to be home.”

  Ryan learned a lot about defense from his father, and he also learned to be true to himself and speak his mind even if that got him into trouble. The NFL is a buttoned-down league. So many head coaches are afraid to say which ankle the backup guard injured on special teams for fear of giving the other team too much information. Ryan starts off every one of his in-season press conferences by running down the injury report and actually gives useful information. Belichick in New England would rather give up the code to his bank account than hint at what might be ailing Tom Brady.

  Ryan changed the atmosphere around the Jets. He took over for Eric Mangini, a Belichick clone who set the record for number of times putting the media to sleep. He wasn’t much more entertaining in team meetings. There was a faction in the locker room that was happy to see him go when Johnson fired him after the 2008 season. Mangini’s problem was that he tried too hard to be Belichick. As a result, he came off as Belichick Lite. He was trying to be somebody he was not. Ryan has stayed true to himself, which means he is going to be occasionally outrageous. He tends to overrate his players, thinking he has the best at every position, but they love him for it.

  When Ryan was hired, it was culture shock for the Jets. Mangini had sucked the life out of the building with his paranoia. He even made Johnson feel uncomfortable, and Johnson was the man signing the checks. The same players who were brainwashed by Mangini and were afraid to speak their mind suddenly took on the personality of their new coach.

  “More than anything, I try to be myself about how I feel about the team, about the direction of the team, and know what I believe are my principles of what I think it takes to be successful to win,” Ryan said. “It is never going to change. I know what I believe in. I guess it comes off as being outspoken. It’s hard to describe. That’s just who I am. Being true to myself. I believe we can be a transparent organization. You are going to know more about us in good times and bad times. That’s okay. This isn’t rocket science.”

  Ryan has sworn off predicting any more Super Bowls for the Jets, but not because he has stopped believing in his team. He reluctantly acknowledges that predicting greatness put too much pressure on his players when his ultimate goal was to put the pressure on himself and take the focus off the players.

  He is still surprised that more coaches don’t stand up and say how they really feel. “I think the money you make in this business from coaching is so much more than it ever was,” he said. “Everybody is trying to hold on to their jobs. I wasn’t born into money. I never got into coaching for money. I got in for the competitiveness. I love competing. The money has just come with it. I never took the job to have security. I came to be a champion. I have no problem saying that is what I plan on doing. I have the courage to say it. If others don’t, it does surprise me. I understand maybe that they are trying to hold on. The old saying is you undersell and overproduce. I don’t believe in the undersell. Why would you coach? You are going to coach my team and you don’t expect to win? Are you kidding me? What kind of leader is that? It sounds like a guy that has got no courage, no guts.”

  Transparency is not how NFL teams usually operate, not when coaches truly believe that if one little piece of unwanted information is made public, it can be the difference between making the playoffs and getting fired. After acquiring Tim Tebow, the Jets did not run the Wildcat offense in the 2012 preseason games to prevent their opponents from getting a sneak preview.

  Ryan was in character as the star of Hard Knocks on HBO in the summer of 2010, dropping f-bombs for sixty minutes once a week for a month on national television. That turned off more traditional coaches such as Tony Dungy, and HBO bleeped out the curse words when it replayed the show in the afternoon. But in the evening, it was Rex Unplugged. He was foulmouthed. “I do a thousand interviews a year, and not one time did I ever cuss,” he said.

  It’s just different when he’s around his team. “This is how I talk to the football team in certain situations,” he said. “I certainly wasn’t going to change because Hard Knocks was there.”

  Ryan’s language may have caused an uproar, so it’s a good thing the cameras were not in the Jets’ team meeting room the morning after they beat the Bucs during the 2009 regular season. Shutouts are very hard to come by in the NFL, but the Jets’ defense was dominating Tampa and rookie quarterback Josh Freeman. The Jets won the game 26–3 for their third straight victory, improving their record to 7–6 and putting them in position to make the playoffs. Ryan still found something to be unhappy about. Linebacker Bart Scott’s third-down unnecessary roughness penalty prolonged a Tampa drive in the third quarter, leading to a Bucs’ field goal, their only points of the game.

  “I messed up the shutout,” Scott said.

  Scott, who had played for Ryan in Baltimore, was the Jets’ first free agent signing after Ryan was hired. They were like father and son, so Ryan knew he could handle good-natured teasing. Ryan stood at the podium with a plastic bag on his hand. It was a tradition he had brought with him from Baltimore.

  “Everybody was like, what’s in there?” Darrelle Revis said.

  He put the bag on the podium. Ryan then announced, “The dumb dick award goes to Bart Scott. Come down and get it.”

  Revis is laughing so hard telling the story that he can barely talk. Ryan then revealed what was in the bag. It was a facsimile of a penis. “It was huge. Everybody was laughing like, wow, I’ve never seen something like that before,” Revis said. “Bart came down and got it. It was hilarious.”

  Scott once received the award in Baltimore, so he knew it was coming. “It’s all good,” he said.

  He put it in his locker. “I think somebody stole it,” he said.

  Rex Ryan knew when he was hired by the Jets that he had two formidable obstacles to overcome: the Giants in his city and the Patriots in his division. He was considered one of the best defensive coaches in the league, a players’ coach, but that doesn’t always translate into being a very good head coach. The league is littered with successful assistants who reached the level of their competence as a lieutenant, but when they went out on their own, when they became the decision maker rather than the sounding board, they couldn’t handle the job.

  Ryan ultimately will be judged by Super Bowls, and the Jets knew that he was going to work hard at it. But he had fallen into the trap of coaches who lose their perspective when he was an assistant coach working for his father in the two years Buddy was the head coach of the Cardinals in 1994 and 1995. Rex was the defensive line coach his first year and the linebacker coach the second year before they all got fired because Arizona had only twelve wins in the two years. Rex and Rob were on the staff, and it was the first NFL job for each of them. Rex didn’t want anybody thinking he was cutting corners or getting special treatment because his father was the head coach. His wife, Michelle, was a schoolteacher working in Kentucky and was pregnant with their second child. Michelle worked all the way up to her due date. Rex was finishing a minicamp in his first year with the team at the Cardinals’ training facility in Tempe, Arizona, and then planned to join his wife in Kentucky and be with her when she went into labor. He feared that if he left minicamp, it would be a bad reflection on his father. “I never wanted any of that to come down on my dad,” he said. “Babygate.”

  He remained in Arizona, but he knew that it was a huge risk and that he really should be with Michelle. “Most people wouldn’t have even thought about it,” he said. “But I’m a coach. A real coach.”

  Michelle was already ten days late and could have the baby any day. Ryan had a flight booked for the day after the minicamp concluded. The phone rang the night before. “I never realized how stupid I was,” Ryan said. “My wife called, and her water broke.”

  Rex panicked. Michelle was by herself. Her parents were on their way but not there yet. Rya
n called Kevin Carty, one of his best friends. They coached together at Morehead State. Carty now lives in New Jersey and comes to a lot of Jets practices and games. He was within driving distance of Michelle. “Kevin, go get her,” Ryan said frantically. It was two o’clock in the morning. “He drove her to the hospital,” Ryan said. “I missed it by a day.”

  The Ryans already had a young son, Payton, named for Walter Payton, the Hall of Fame running back who played for the Bears when Buddy Ryan was an assistant in Chicago. Now they had a second son, Seth. It still bothers Rex that he missed the birth. “Seth is over it,” he said. Rex said Michelle understood because Arizona represented their shot “to get out of Division 1-AA.”

  When Ryan took the Jets job, his sons were already teenagers. Payton was in high school and preferred to remain in the Baltimore area, living with Ryan’s brother-in-law. It was tough on the family, but Michelle regularly went back and forth to see him. Ryan saw him only every now and then. Seth moved with his parents, and Ryan was a constant presence at his baseball and Friday night football games at Summit High School in New Jersey. In his rookie year, Jets rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez would show up to watch Seth play in his football games. Sanchez was basically the Ryans’ third son, but without a bedroom in the house.

  Ryan developed a close relationship with Sanchez as a rookie. The Jets fell in love with Sanchez, who had started only sixteen games at Southern California, when they worked him out two months before the 2009 draft. Before they put Sanchez through passing drills, the Jets had Kansas State’s Josh Freeman rated ahead of him. After working out both, Ryan thought Sanchez had a better arm and was more accurate. He was also impressed that twenty-four receivers showed up at Sanchez’s private workout for the Jets at his high school in Mission Viejo, California. Freeman had two receivers when the Jets worked him out at Kansas State. The start of a field hockey game on the high school field overlapped with Sanchez’s workout, and both teams agreed to delay the game until Sanchez was finished. That showed the Jets the respect Sanchez had earned. He sealed the deal over dinner. He picked a Mexican restaurant and ordered for the table. He was sure of himself, even with Johnson there with them. As the Jets contingent left and piled into a car, Sanchez jumped on a motorcycle.