by Rex Ryan
At least we got to drink some beer.
Let me explain what a graduate assistant does, particularly at a small college: everything. You break down the film, you make copies of the game plan, you make sure the players aren’t getting in trouble, you pick guys up at the airport and you drop them off. You make sure the head coach has gas in his car. You don’t sleep. And you live on about $1,500, maybe, so you sneak every free meal you can possibly get. By the way, there’s next to zero chance of this turning into a long-term job. Unless somebody dies in the middle of the season, it’s a long shot. Still, when you’re just getting started, you’re cheap labor and you’re just there to prove to others (and to yourself) that you like the job and you can do it well. Every school has a line of guys waiting to break into coaching, so you can get replaced in about 10 seconds.
You have to love it and you have to want to be the best at what you’re doing in order to make it in the field. I went from Eastern Kentucky to New Mexico Highlands, a Division II school, for a year and got to be a defensive coordinator and assistant head coach at age 26. Then I went back to Kentucky and coached at Morehead State for four years.
Each time I took a new position, I loved it and I was getting more and more experience. When I went to New Mexico, it was a chance to run the defense. I was so excited until I got there and realized I had the all-midget team. Seriously, I didn’t have a single player over six feet tall. But I told those guys that it didn’t matter how big we were, we were going to lead the league in turnovers if we bought into what I was teaching them. Sure as hell, we did it.
Now, was I a great coach when I first started out? There’s no way in hell, because I didn’t have the experience. But that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered is that if I thought I was great, then I could be convincing to the players. I knew I was passionate about it, and I’m sure the players saw that and knew my heart was in the right place. How much did they learn from me? I was just starting, so I don’t know, but they knew I would give them an honest effort and an honest opinion.
It wasn’t any different for Rob. After his one year at Western Kentucky, he got another grad assistant job at Ohio State. To make some extra money on the side, Rob worked unloading trucks at a Burger King. Then he spent five years at Tennessee State, where at different times he coached running backs, wide receivers, and the defensive line. I kind of get a chuckle out of one of us coaching wide receivers. Yeah, the Ryan brothers working with graceful, elegant wide receivers; I can’t really picture that one.
The big break for us came in 1994. By this time, our dad had gotten back in the league. He took a break from the NFL for a couple years after the whole Philadelphia thing and in 1993 got back into it as a coach for the Houston Oilers. The Oilers won 11 in a row during the 1993 season but ended up getting beat in their first playoff game. Immediately after, my dad was hired by Arizona. By this time, we had paid enough dues in his mind for him to give us assistant coaching jobs. We were making about $80,000 and we were on top of the world. Now, I wasn’t making anything close to what I make now, but man, life was good. It’s crazy that way. When you’re doing something you love this much and you start to make decent money—it’s a dream. You don’t feel like you’re working at all. On top of that, Rob and I got to work with our dad every minute of every day. We saw how he worked with players, the way he was with other coaches, and how he designed game plans. We got to see our dad do the whole deal, live and in action.
I got to work with the linebackers and the defensive line. Rob worked with the defensive backs, which was great for him because we had the great Aeneas Williams, a really great cornerback who went to the Pro Bowl both years that Rob worked with him. Our first year, Williams led the league in interceptions with nine, and let me tell you, the overall defense was really good. We ranked second in the league in total defense, second against the run, and third against the pass. If we’d had any offense, we would have done a hell of a lot better. We scored only 235 points the whole season. That’s less than 15 points a game. But to show how strong the defense was, we lost four games by four points or less. Over the final nine games, we didn’t allow a single team to score 20 points in any game against us. Going 8-8 was pretty damn respectable.
The next year, we had quarterback Dave Krieg, who threw 21 picks, and we end up with 41 fumbles (a Krieg specialty). It was just a parade of guys hanging on at the end of their careers, picking up checks. The wide receivers were terrible. Running back Garrison Hearst was okay in 1995, but he was hardly special. On top of that, we were in the same division with Dallas, the New York Giants, Philadelphia, and Washington. The defense, however, was still terrific. We led the NFL with 32 interceptions and 42 total takeaways.
It was the Cardinals, so you just do the best you can on teams like that. The entire defensive staff got cleared out after that season. We still didn’t have a lot of contacts in the NFL and we didn’t have enough of a résumé to catch on anywhere else in the league just yet. I was lucky and caught on with the University of Cincinnati as the defensive coordinator for the next two years. Rob wasn’t quite as lucky right away, but he was still successful. He went on to Hutchinson Community College in Kansas. He was the defensive coordinator and watched over the dorms, or something like that. For all that, he made $20,000. It was worth it for him. He was a stud. Hutchinson led the nation in total defense, allowing 228 yards per game, led in sacks with 56, and set a national record by forcing 49 turnovers.
After that, Rob hit it big and was hired by Oklahoma State, Mom and Dad’s alma mater, as the defensive coordinator. He spent three years there and was even named Coordinator of the Year by The Sporting News during his first season. That’s because not only did Oklahoma State break a streak of eight straight years with a losing record (going back to the days of Barry Sanders) by going 8-4 that year, but they also beat Texas in one of the greatest turnarounds in college history. In 1996, the year before Rob got there, Texas just crushed Oklahoma State 71-14. In Rob’s first year, Oklahoma State won 42-16. It was the biggest reversal of scores in NCAA history.
Of course, Rob got a little help on that one. He and Dad sat down and looked at the cutups of Texas and came up with a plan. I’ll let Rob tell it in his own words, because he explains it best:
We’re playing Texas after I got hired and I came home and told my dad, “Shit, it’s going to be tough.” After what they did to us the year before, I was racking my brain trying to come up with ideas. Dad goes, “Well, bring home all the cutups.” So I brought all the cutups to his farm in Kentucky. Every night we’d watch a little bit more of them, and he’s like, “Well, hell, boy, maybe you ought to try and run that wide tackle 6.” I say, “Yeah, I don’t know.” I’m looking at it and he has something doodled on a napkin, but it wasn’t a wide tackle 6, I don’t know what it was. But we run it and beat the shit out of Texas with it. We made the greatest comeback, the biggest lopsided score in the history of college football from one season to the next, Oklahoma State beating Texas. It was a defensive front that they had never seen before. Really it was a napkin at our farm in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. Dad was drawing up the wide tackle 6, but it had never been a wide tackle 6 the way I had seen it. It had the same linebacker in our side, and I looked at it and took it. I’m like, “That’s not the wide tackle 6, Dad, but that looks pretty good,” against every one of their plays that they had. We ran it and beat the hell out of them.
By 1998, I had landed at Oklahoma as the defensive coordinator, so a few months later, Rob and I faced off. I’d love to tell you this was a beauty, but it sucked. My team lost 41-26. They must have cheated us somehow. That’s the only way they could have won. Either that or my brother gave them a hell of a lot better scouting report on me than I gave our guys on him. As badly as we played that game, we did finish sixth in the nation in total defense that season.
I lasted only that one year at Oklahoma before I got my biggest break of all. I was hired by Baltimore, and started what would end up being a dec
ade with the Ravens. My brother lasted one more year at Oklahoma State before getting hired by Bill Belichick in 2000 to join the New England staff. It was pretty good timing for both of us. Within one year, I was in the Super Bowl. Within one year of his return to the NFL, Rob was in the first of two Super Bowls. Then he went on to Oakland to coach for the Raiders for five years. I’m sure he could write a book about that experience, but I’ll leave that to him. After Oakland, he moved to Cleveland to work with his old buddy Eric Mangini, coincidentally the guy I replaced with the New York Jets. Hey, that’s the way it goes. We all understand that in this profession, and Eric didn’t hold it against Rob.
See, we all love this job. If you coach in the NFL, it’s pure joy because you’ve worked your ass off to get here. It’s brutal hours, it’s mentally exhausting, and it’s physically draining, but you love it. You love to compete at that level and you love the challenge of putting your best out there every week. For my dad, my brother, and me it runs in our blood. It’s the family business, just as if my dad had opened some store or business back in Oklahoma many years ago and asked us to come on board.
The best part is that the next generation of Ryan coaches is coming. My son Seth loves the game and is already talking about coaching. He’s talking about baseball, too, and either one is fine by me. He’s a smart kid and you can see it in how he plays. He really knows the game and knows what he’s doing. In school, he’s doing great in math already. He really has a mind for it and looks at the game in such a different way. If he keeps going and he really wants to get into coaching, if he has that ability, maybe I’ll try to get him in a lot faster than my dad did. At least I know he’s going to go to a Division I as a graduate assistant, not I-AA as I did. The thing about going I-AA was that I got to coach a position, I literally got to coach. My dad thought that was going to be great, giving me that practical experience. What you don’t realize is how Division I snubs their nose at I-AA. It’s all crap, because there’s plenty of great coaches at all levels of football, but that’s the politics of it.
Then there’s my older brother Jim’s son (and only child), James David Ryan III (my dad is James David Ryan, Sr., and my brother Jim is junior), who wants to become a hockey coach. James is a great kid, a tough kid. He went through this brutal form of cancer when he was 14. It’s called rhabdomyosarcoma. It developed behind his eye and it’s really aggressive. The tumor doubles in size every day, so he went from having what looked like a swollen eye to having this huge growth there in just a day or two. It was really scary. They had to operate right away, and then James had to go through a year of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. My brother still has the treatment schedule on the refrigerator door as a reminder of what they went through and how every day with his son is a blessing.
James is really close to both my sons. As soon as we found out James was sick back in 2007, we went there right away. James comes to visit us all the time now. James was playing hockey at the time, and he’s still on the Lafayette High School team, but he can’t really play as well. You put that kind of poison in your body for a year with chemo and radiation and you just don’t ever recover right. But despite everything he’s been through, he still loves the game and he wants to coach it. I think my brother Jim, even though he never got the coaching bug, understands the passion. He told James, “Don’t go into coaching because you see your uncles in the NFL and think this is how you’re going to make it to the NHL. You’ll have about one-tenth of one percent of a chance to make it and you’ll always be unhappy. If you do it because that’s what you love, then go for it.”
I can’t say it any better.
5. Father of My Own
Growing up with as much love and passion for my father as I did, one of the things I looked forward to most was being a father. And I couldn’t have asked for two better children.
My wife, Michelle, and I have two sons, Payton and Seth. They are both in high school—Payton’s a senior and Seth’s a sophomore. They’re great kids, the best, and so much fun to be around. Even though I’ve been involved in football for their entire lives, spending so much time away from home—the practice, the preparation, the travel, the games—I’ve always had a strong connection with Payton and Seth. They are gifts, and Michelle and I are so fortunate.
Having children of my own, I marvel at how different they each can be, too.
Payton is the oldest, a senior in high school this year. He’s quiet, as good-looking as they come, with long hair, lively eyes, and a great smile; but he is the more introverted of the two. He’s not into athletics, either. Payton follows the Jets and wants us to win, but he’s not the guy in the front row leading the cheers. He prefers a more disciplined approach to things, but only as long as it is something he truly cares about. He’s a black belt in karate, for instance, and was doing phenomenal training and was close to earning a second-degree black belt. Yet one day he decided he had enough and moved on to something else. Payton prefers to be anonymous and fly under the radar, and it’s an approach that works great for him.
My younger son, Seth, a sophomore in high school, is the complete opposite. He loves the crowd, is naturally very athletic, and is much more outgoing. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up coaching football when he gets older, because he just loves the game that much. The kid is fearless. He comes to Jets practices and runs routes against my guys—it’s pretty fun to watch a Pro Bowl cornerback knock him on his ass after the catch, but Seth bounces right up with a big smile. He might even talk some smack—imagine where he acquired that quality. When I was with Baltimore, Seth routinely disappeared down the hall and sat in the general manager’s office with Ozzie Newsome. What kid at that age has that kind of courage? One might think the general manager of an NFL team wouldn’t want to be bothered, but Ozzie always had time for Seth. Seth just wanted to talk shop.
When Payton was born, I told my mother-in-law that he would never have to fight a day in his life. I meant it. I was that emotional over my child’s birth and that protective of him from the moment he took his first breath. I was going to be there for Payton, and to this day I am. It’s the same with Seth. When I was a child, because I was a twin, I didn’t know what it was like not to have someone always with you, always looking out for you. But as a parent, I have discovered the rules have changed. I have learned that you can’t fight all of your children’s battles. I am still there for them, and that won’t ever change. Ever. They grow up, they make mistakes, they experience life, they make their own friends, and they find their way.
You think time goes by quickly? Have children. I can’t believe they are teenagers already.
I try to spend as much time with Payton and Seth as I can, but it’s difficult, especially during the football season. In July 2010, we spent a week on the Outer Banks in North Carolina and had so much fun. I rented a huge beach house for my coaches and their families before the start of training camp. It was just a great way to relax and connect before we returned to the 24/7 grind of football. It was so neat to watch Payton and Seth interact with everyone, playing and goofing off. From dawn to dusk, we always had something to do. We played golf, football, putt-putt, a game where you toss beanbags in a hole cut out in a wooden plank, and Boogieboarded in the Atlantic Ocean. One day we had a tripleheader: golf in the morning, putt-putt in the afternoon, and pizza on the way back to the beach house. Each night a different family was in charge of dinner. One night it was Mexican, the next night steak, the next night BBQ. The kids disappeared into the downstairs bedrooms and played video games; the parents sat around the table and talked and laughed, usually into the early morning. It was just an amazing week … the kind of family time you can’t get very often when you’re coaching.
Being a parent is tough enough, and the only way it works in the Ryan home is because of Michelle. I knew when we first met that I could fall in love with her. We were married in 1987. She’s smart, she’s talented, she’s sweet, and she’s loyal as hell.
Family means
a lot to Michelle, too. Her family lives in a small home in southwestern Oklahoma. Well, shortly after I’d been promoted to defensive coordinator in Baltimore, Michelle and I were out visiting her parents and we looked at Seth and Payton and said, “We think we ought to buy Grandma and Grandpa a new home.” They were excited and said, “Yeah! Let’s go get one!” So we left the boys to occupy Michelle’s parents, and she and I cruised around for a few hours until we found a house we really liked. When we got back that evening we told her parents about it. It was an absolutely great moment.
Last summer was Michelle’s parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary and we went to Europe and cruised the Baltic Sea with them. Of course, the boys and I weren’t real excited about it, but we pretended that we couldn’t wait. I am here to tell you we had a great time. I couldn’t keep track of the boys on the ship, but it was relaxing and a wonderful way not only for the boys to spend time with their grandparents, but for me to get away from football, too. I couldn’t tell you who we signed or what had happened back in New York. It was actually a lot of fun to have that break and enjoy some unique family time.
Football has always been a mainstay in my life, but at first, Michelle didn’t know much about it. She soon realized what it meant to me, and we have been a team ever since. Our support for each other has never wavered. There was one time when I was at Morehead State in the early 1990s and we were struggling badly. I bitched and moaned in the car on the ride home after one game, and Michelle stared at me and asked point-blank if I had given any thought to changing careers. We didn’t have a house payment, we didn’t have any children, and she pointed out that this was the best time to make a change. I looked at her and said no way. It was football or bust, and I knew I wouldn’t bust.