by Rex Ryan
I don’t know if I can emphasize enough just how good my dad was at motivating people to get out there and do what was required of them. I always admired that about him.
You watch war movies and they don’t show that stuff, the guys who are pissing down their leg, paralyzed by fear, scared to face the bullets because they’re worried the next one is coming at them. I’m not making fun of those guys. Thank God I was never in that position, so who am I to tell somebody in a war what they should do when real bullets are flying? But my dad wasn’t just facing those bullets, he had to tell guys what to do while they were facing them, too. He had to look at some guy who was scared out of his mind, wanting to run away, and get that guy to fight.
Not that my dad ever bragged about that. I only know this stuff because my dad’s friends from the war have told me. At 18, Buddy Ryan was a fully formed man ready to defend his country and the guys he was in that foxhole with.
Understanding that, now maybe you can understand why he took that swing at Kevin Gilbride, a guy he was working with not in the foxholes of Korea, but years later on the sidelines in Houston.
I hate to bring up the story, but it’s one a lot of people talk about with my dad. Heck, I remember it vividly because I thought everybody would think I’d do the same thing someday. I thought my brother Rob and I were never going to get NFL jobs again because of it.
My dad was defensive coordinator of the Houston Oilers in 1993. It was an incredibly talented team. Just loaded. But the team started 1-4, capped by a 35-7 loss to Buffalo. So my dad, and everybody else, was taking a lot of crap from the fans and the media. That’s the way it goes. But the defense came together and had only one game the rest of the regular season in which it allowed more than 17 points. It was an amazing run and the Oilers won all 11 games. Man, what I wouldn’t give to win 11 straight sometime. That’s not easy.
The problem for my dad was that he hated the Oilers’ offense, which was a version of the run-and-shoot, a four-receiver base offense that called for minimal blocking for the quarterback on virtually every play. It left the quarterback so vulnerable that my dad called it the “chuck-and-duck,” because he knew how defenses would attack it. Warren Moon, a future Hall of Famer, was the quarterback and Gilbride was the offensive coordinator. Moon used to take some vicious shots. The problem my dad had with Gilbride was that Gilbride often left the defense hanging out to dry. Instead of running out the clock when our team was ahead, Gilbride would often call pass plays. When they failed, the defense would have to go back on the field. My dad’s opinion was that he lost two starting defensive backs during the season because of Gilbride’s play calling. (The funny part is that my dad is sort of to blame for the use of the run-and-shoot—and all the other different types of three-, four-, and five-receiver sets used around the NFL—because those schemes were basically an answer to his heavy-blitz schemes.) I’ve met Gilbride, who’s now the offensive coordinator of the New York Giants and was when they won the Super Bowl in the 2007 season. He’s a pretty good guy and he’s certainly turned out to be a great coach. But you get on my dad’s bad side and that’s it.
So it’s in the final game of the regular season, on January 2, 1994, and Gilbride calls a pass play at the end of the first half with the Oilers winning. Backup quarterback Cody Carlson fumbles the ball and the defense has to go back out there. My dad starts yelling at Gilbride, who starts yelling back and walking toward my dad. So what does my dad do? He punches Gilbride in the jaw and the players have to break them up.
Now, that’s not normal, I’ll admit. But you have to know my dad. The really sad thing about the Gilbride story is that sometimes it overshadows the important contributions by my dad, like how he and Walt Michaels came up with the defensive plan that stopped the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III and led the Jets to victory in the greatest upset in NFL history. That’s the game that led to the merger of the AFL and the NFL.
They forget about how my dad invented the 46 defense, the scheme that made the Chicago Bears champions in 1985 and made them the greatest defense in the history of the game. They forget that the 46 defense forced unreal changes in how the game is played today. You know those pretty spread formations and all that cutesy wide-open offense that everybody loves? (Well, everybody except defensive guys like me, of course.) So much of that is an answer to the schemes my dad developed with the 46 defense.
People also forget about his time with the Minnesota Vikings, when he helped develop the Purple People Eaters defense. They forget that he helped three different teams (the Jets, the Bears, and the Vikings) get to the Super Bowl, that he was part of two historic teams and was a head coach for two different teams. Sure, my dad had some interesting moments, like the whole Gilbride thing and the “Bounty Bowl.” He wasn’t much for Jimmy Johnson, Tom Landry, or Don Shula, and they weren’t real big fans of him. Heck, my dad couldn’t even get along with Mike Ditka … and they won a Super Bowl together. That’s my dad; he wasn’t going to BS anybody.
But when they use the old expression for defensive linemen, “Let’s meet at the quarterback,” that’s my dad talking. He came up with that. He really was one of the great innovators in the history of the NFL. Two different times, my dad came up with strategies where the league had to hold emergency rules meetings in the middle of the season to adjust for things he did. He came up with the idea of guys faking injuries to get extra time-outs. He tweaked the competition with what he used to call the Polish Punt Team, putting 13 guys on the field at the end of games to prevent returns and burn clock time even if he got caught. Yeah, my dad never found a rule or fellow coach he didn’t want to challenge.
My dad is nearing 80. Now, if you look up his biography online, it will say he was born in 1934. Not exactly. My dad was born in 1931, but when he was breaking into the NFL, he kind of had to change the numbers a little. Even back in 1968, age was a factor. The NFL was already becoming known as a young man’s game, even for coaches. So my dad put down that he was 34 instead of 37. My brother Jim once gave my dad a hard time about it, pointing out that my dad’s real age was listed on Jim’s birth certificate. My dad just grumbled something at him in response.
Not that it much matters. Even at his age, Buddy Ryan could still be a defensive coordinator in the league and be one of the best. No question, he could still dominate. Not just that, he could still lead. My dad was tough: His personality, his language, the way he coached—everything about him was tough. I’ve always wanted to be just like him.
When people say, “Oh, Rex Ryan is just like his dad,” I’m proud of that. In Ron “Jaws” Jaworski’s book The Games That Changed the Game (which, by the way, is great for people who want to learn something about the game), a couple of people paid me some really nice compliments at the end of a chapter about my dad’s 46. (I told you it was that important!)
Doug Plank, the guy who wore 46 and inspired the name for the 46 defense in Chicago, told Jaws: “Rex has taken his father’s ideas and improved on them.… He’s created more new looks, more opportunities for his defenders to make plays. It’s still all about creating confusion in the quarterback’s mind, not just hitting people hard. Rex looks for favorable matchups. He’ll give players multiple responsibilities on each play, so when he moves people around, he has the capability of making it look like a totally different defense. The number of men he uses up front is constantly changing. He’ll get more movement from hybrid players rushing from a variety of different angles. Rex’s schemes rely on the threat of pressure coming, but that pressure isn’t always geared to overpowering the opponent each play.”
Then Jaws himself wrote: “I think Rex has expanded the scope of the 46 in ways his father could not have envisioned. Rex will take a linebacker from one side of the field and move him to cover a wide receiver—and rotate his down linemen in unconventional ways—with coverage concepts I’ve never seen before. Rex is vigorously responding to the many new looks he sees from offenses, figuring that he needs to be aggressive in order to
stay ahead. In that respect, he’s a chip off the old block.”
Or as Mike Singletary, the Hall of Fame linebacker who worked with my dad and learned to love him after some early tribulations, told Jaws: “It’s obvious Rex is carrying on his father’s legacy. He’s so much like Buddy, it’s frightening.”
Gentlemen, you don’t know how much that means to me. I’m not nearly as tough as my dad. I didn’t have to grow up like him. Thank God I never had to grow up that way. But he is who he is and I’m who I am. Am I a gentler version of Buddy Ryan? I would say so. But everything I am as a coach is based on watching him, learning from him, wanting to be like him. My mom, Doris, is a tough lady. Trust me, she’d be a nasty defensive coordinator, too. There’d be a lot of hurt quarterbacks if she was the one calling plays for the defense. However, when I was growing up, my twin brother Rob and I wanted to be coaches like my dad.
My mom and dad got divorced when my brother and I were two. They tried to reconcile one time, but it didn’t work out. My mom will tell you that she just wasn’t much for the coach’s life as my dad worked his way up from the high school ranks to the University of Buffalo. They met at Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State) after my dad got out of the service. One of my mom’s sorority sisters at the Kappa Delta House introduced them and my mom was “enamored with football people,” as she likes to say. Like my dad, she grew up in Oklahoma, just north of the Texas-Oklahoma border. Everybody loves football in that part of the world, and my mom still loves it. She’ll watch three college games on Saturday and then my games and my brother’s on Sunday. Like I said, she’d be a heck of a coach herself.
Anyway, my folks were married for about 10 years before they divorced, but the funny thing is that they get along great now. My dad calls my mom at 7:30 some mornings just to talk, forgetting she’s an hour behind him. They had some great times together. My dad loved to dance, and he made her laugh with all his snappy one-liners. He loved her enough that he converted to being a Southern Baptist and he even got baptized in the church before they got married. They tithed 10 percent of what they were making to the church even when they were making nothing. They didn’t allow liquor in the house.
But the coaching life wears on the wives, particularly if you have kids. I thank God for my wife, Michelle, and how supportive she has been, especially raising our sons. Like I’ve said, there are two types of wives in the NFL: ex-ones and great ones. I know firsthand. This business is about long hours, and that means not much support for the wife. Plus, when you’re a coach like my dad was, like I am now, life is pure joy for you. You’re doing what you love. Next to actually playing football, coaching is the greatest job in the world. You’re as happy as Tony Siragusa at an Italian meat market. But that’s not necessarily true for your spouse.
Here’s a story that will put it in perspective: My dad didn’t even know we’d been born until we were three days old. Seriously. Now, it’s not because he didn’t care. First off, you have to remember that cell phones weren’t around in 1962 and communication wasn’t quite as easy. My mom had gone back to Ardmore, Oklahoma, where she grew up, to have us so she could have more help, since my dad was traveling for work. Her mom, Alabama “Bamma” Ward, still lived there, as did most of the rest of Mom’s family. Because she was carrying twins, the doctor sent her there about eight weeks before her due date, since twins usually come early.
And that’s just what Rob and I did. We were born about six weeks early on December 13, 1962, while my dad was on the road trying to recruit players. My mom tried to get a message through, but he was traveling around and the message didn’t reach him right away, plus he wasn’t expecting us to be born that soon.
Eventually, my mom realized she just couldn’t do the coaching life. I don’t blame her. She had some goals of her own and she fulfilled them. Plus, she had double trouble when my brother Rob and I were born. She already had Jim, who was six, and then came the Ryan twins. Talk about wearing a mom out. I can only imagine. She likes to tell this story about one time when a friend of hers came over while she was giving us a bath. We were both screaming our heads off and my mom’s friend asked, “How can you stand it?” My mom looked at her a little confused and said, “What do you mean?” She had learned to tune out the noise.
At that point, my dad was coaching at what’s now known as the University of Buffalo. It was his first big break at the college level. He was the defensive coordinator there and he was working some extremely long hours. In fact, the other coaches were complaining about how much my dad worked and he just mocked them.
Buffalo was already the fourth or fifth place my mom and dad had moved to. After he got fired at Gainesville High, he went to Marshall High in Marshall, Texas. Then he got a college assistant job at Pacific (all the way in Stockton, California), then Buffalo. He had another stop at Vanderbilt down in Tennessee. That is part of the stress the coaching life puts on a family. When coaches get hired, it’s not like they do a lot of the packing. As a coach, you’re expected to drop everything and go to the next place because there’s always work to do. The place that’s hiring you is replacing some guy who probably left and they need you immediately.
That leaves the wives to do the packing and all the other details that go with moving. The wife of a coach better be a saint. And even if she is, it’s tough. We were in Buffalo when my mom had enough. She’s a smart woman and she wanted to do more with her gifts than follow my dad around the country each time he got fired and hired somewhere else. She got her degree from Oklahoma A&M and taught high school wherever my dad’s job took us. When we got to Buffalo, she finished her master’s degree in education. After she and my dad split up, she went to the University of Chicago and got her PhD in education administration in two years. Along the way, she was Phi Beta Kappa.
While my mom was at Chicago getting her doctorate, the three Ryan brothers went to Ardmore to live with Grandma Ward. Bamma Ward was great—tough, but great. How can you not love football if your grandmother is named Alabama? Seriously.
After my mom graduated, she got a job at the University of Toronto, working for the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. She taught and conducted some research there on the education of children from remote areas. Ontario is this huge territory in Canada, as big as Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas combined, and she was looking into the educational opportunities and performance by kids who spent hours each day just getting to school, like taking snowmobiles just to get to where the bus would pick them up.
Like I said, my mom has lived a great life herself. She was in Toronto for 19 years, then spent seven years as the vice president of the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, Canada. She’s worked for the World Bank and traveled the world to places like Indonesia, Australia, France, Germany, and Singapore—all in all, I think she’s had a really interesting life.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The three of us boys moved up to Toronto with her once she accepted the position there. Toronto was a great place to grow up—clean, safe, and fun. When we were young, Rob and I would jump on a bus to get to the train and take it into town to go watch hockey games or do whatever we felt like doing. I remember when we were 14 and the Toronto Blue Jays started up in 1977, we went to the first game. We didn’t have to have Mom cart us around or watch over us.
The only thing is that Canada isn’t really too big on football. They like it enough; you’ve got the CFL, after all. But as they like to say up there, they play both sports: ice hockey and road hockey. It was ice hockey in the winter and road hockey in the summer. When we were growing up, the biggest show on TV was Hockey Night in Canada. That was every Wednesday and Saturday night (it was before cable TV got big), and that was religion in Canada. It was either the Maple Leafs or the Canadiens on TV, and the whole country would watch. In fact, that’s why for all those years either the Leafs or the Canadiens would always play at home on Wednesday or Saturday night. You had to have the screaming crowd in the background to add to the excitement. We all learn
ed to play hockey. My big brother Jim still plays to this day, more than 40 seasons in the books. He’s proud to tell you he plays in an adult league in St. Louis.
Football was a little different matter, though. Like I said, they play up there, but it’s not exactly the same thing. You can be pretty physical in hockey and everybody expects that. As graceful as you have to be to skate and play a sport, it’s still a rough game. When my brother and I played football with that kind of aggression, the refs didn’t quite understand it. They once kicked us out of a game for hitting too hard. Of course, part of the problem was that we hit the coach’s son too hard, but my mom was standing there after they kicked us out, yelling at the officials, “It’s football!”
While we were in Toronto, my mom was great about my dad, too. We kept in close contact with him all the time. We even went down to Miami with her to be around my dad at Super Bowl III, between the Jets and Colts, back in January 1969. There Rob and I were, all of six years old, playing in the sand on the beach while Joe Namath was guaranteeing a victory even when he’s this huge underdog. Then we watched him and the Jets back it up.
And you wonder why I like bravado so much.
By the time we were 14 or 15, we were going back and forth a lot to my dad’s, and my mom realized the sports up in Toronto weren’t very well organized. We went to live with my dad so that we could take advantage of developing our skills, since athletics was really where our interests lay. I imagine my brother and I were probably a pretty good handful, too. Actually, I don’t imagine it; I know it. We gave the schools some fits. We hung out every minute together. I mean, every minute. We did everything together.
One year before we moved in with my dad, the principal of the school we were going to in Toronto called my mom and said, “We’re going to split the boys up in different classes.” My mom said to herself, “Well, that’s not going to work.” It didn’t. Rob and I are not identical twins, but we were pretty darn close back then and we looked an awful lot alike. We’d switch classes half the time, particularly if one of us had a test that we weren’t ready for and the other one could do it. We drove the teachers crazy pretty quickly. Finally, the principal called my mom back and says, “Well, this isn’t working, either.”