by Rex Ryan
The other way that I would compensate is I’d listen very carefully. Again, it’s not that I ever really thought about it, I just did it. I listened to what people were telling me. That’s how I picked up stuff. With the TV and radio commercials that I do now, I have people read the copy to me and I repeat it back to them before we do the taping. It’s just a lot easier for me to get the information that way. If you talk to me, I can pick things up better than I can by just trying to read them off a white piece of paper with black letters.
That’s why I decided to tell people about my dyslexia when I got the job with the New York Jets. I also never hid it from the Jets when I interviewed. You can’t hide stuff like that as you get further up the line in this business—really, in any business. It’s one thing to be an assistant coach, where you’re not out in the public all the time or expected to be the face of the organization. You’re talking to players a lot, but you’re not in front of them every day doing a speech or some presentation. Being an assistant coach, especially a position coach, you can be a little anonymous (which is good sometimes … like after a loss).
When you’re a head coach, everything is on the table. Your life is an open book. That’s why I figured this was the right time to talk about it. Of course, you may be thinking, “Okay, Rex, it’s great that you admit you’re dyslexic, but how exactly did you get a college degree from Southwestern Oklahoma State, and a master’s in physical education while you were a graduate assistant at Eastern Kentucky? How did you even get through grade school?”
That’s a good question. When I first got started in school—first and second grade—they’d give us little spelling tests. I would get maybe one or two right, and sometimes none at all. It got to the point that if I got the first letter and the last letter right, then that was like me getting the one correct answer. As I went along in school, things got to be more and more embarrassing. I knew I wasn’t stupid, but when you keep failing tests, frustration mounts. So what I did to cope was skip school all the time. We were living in Toronto and my mom would be off working. I had a morning paper route and an afternoon paper route, so my brother and I would be out the door early. Then I’d go to school. If there was going to be softball or floor hockey or something fun during the day, then I would stay. If there wasn’t, I would go home and my mom never really knew. I would never get away with that today, because they’re checking all the time now, but back then it was easy.
The funny thing is, I really liked school, but I didn’t want to be there if I knew I was getting a test back. That was part of the embarrassment. The other way I dealt with it was that if somebody made fun of me, I’d just beat their ass. I was big, so people never really said much. I was still embarrassed, but I was strong enough to keep people from really hurting my feelings. I’m not saying ass-kicking is a great coping mechanism, but I can only imagine how hard it would be for a kid to feel helpless and not be able to stick up for himself. Quitting school might feel like a better option. When kids would be reading in class, I would just sit there kind of looking at the pictures, turning the pages to make it look like I was keeping up, hoping the teacher didn’t ask me any questions. If the teacher did, I’d make some joke or smart-aleck comment to get around giving the answer, because I didn’t know what I was talking about. At least I stayed in school enough that I could get through to graduate, and I had enough athletic talent to play ball in college. I was lucky.
These days, kids with dyslexia are given a bunch of different ways to learn or read books or take tests, which is great news. But that’s not how it was for me. Once I got to college, I remember how much reading there was and how much I struggled. I would try to learn the material as best I could. I tried to read and write my papers as well as I could manage, but I couldn’t actually make it all come together. There would be so many misspelled words, the papers would make no sense. If I had been allowed to do the tests verbally, I feel like they would have been a snap. I could explain all the material by talking to you. But writing it down or talking about what I’d read? Then, I was stuck.
At one point, I finally dropped out and came back to live with my mom. Rob stayed in school because he was doing fine. He could handle the reading and paper-writing, but I couldn’t. While I was with my mom, I took an English class at a local college. We were supposed to read 10 books, and I couldn’t read one of them. So we tried something. My mom read the books out loud and we would talk about the plot and the material in a lot of detail. When I had papers due, I told her what I wanted to say and she’d type them up for me. When I would go take a test, I would think about all the different questions the teacher might ask, and I’d write down notes on what answers I might use if I got these questions. Whatever the questions ended up being, I’d think about those notes and figure out a way to use them on the tests. The professor would sometimes say, “Rex, you had a different take on it than I had.” Well, I sure did—because I had memorized the first sentence or two of my notes and then I’d just try to make it work from there. That way I could BS my way through the test but still show I knew the basics. Now, the written tests never looked anything like my papers because my mom would help make the papers look good. My written tests, on the other hand, looked atrocious and were filled with mistakes because my spelling was so awful. But in the end, I was able to squirm by, and I figured out how to pass the course.
I’ll say it again: It makes me feel really good to know there are productive ways to teach dyslexic kids now. Back at Southwestern and into graduate school, I still felt like I was always struggling to get around the system, but today it’s all out in the open and kids are given a variety of ways to learn and be evaluated. Like I said, I was lucky. I had help and I took advantage of it the best I could. My mom didn’t know what was wrong with me, but I went to her to help me get through college. There are a lot of people out there who don’t have that kind of help. Either their parents aren’t around, or maybe their parents just don’t have the ability to help the way my mom did. That’s why it’s so important for people to figure out if they have dyslexia, or any other problem, and to get help with these things. It’s hard to rely on being lucky.
The funny part is that I ended up marrying an English teacher. She’s sharp, just like my mom. She can read a book in two hours, and I couldn’t do it in two years. Funny how that works. Hey, I got a master’s in marriage—I married the right one and I did that without any help at all!
7. Eat, Pray, Football
During the 2010 off-season I did a motivational video for a group called Victorprime.com. I along with four other coaches, Sean Payton, Mike Ditka, Mike Singletary, and Bobby Bowden, each picked one subject to talk about and then we broke it down in detail. The title of my section was “Give It All You Got.” This was right up my alley, because that’s what I’ve always done. Every job I’ve ever had, I’ve given it my all. I don’t think, what’s my next job? How long am I going to be here? When I’m in, I’m all in, and I’m completely devoted. It could be tarring roofs or coaching a bunch of midgets in New Mexico, regardless—I give it everything.
When my family moved to Baltimore, we bought a house right away, and we bought it in the best neighborhood we could find, with the best public schools we could find for the kids, because I wasn’t thinking we were just stopping over. I was all in with that job. I thought I was going to be in Baltimore the rest of my career. That’s what I wanted. It’s like that movie Eat Pray Love with Julia Roberts. Now, I know that it is a chick flick, but I get what it is about. A woman gets divorced and understands that her life isn’t what she wanted because she is not really putting herself out there. She’s not giving it all she’s got, so she gets out there and discovers her passion and finds happiness. That’s me. I put myself out there in my job and in my life. It might be something that some people find embarrassing, like dyslexia or my weight, but I’m going to embrace whatever I’m doing.
Now, sometimes when you love your job as much as I do, when you’re in deep with foot
ball the way I am, you can get yourself in trouble before you realize what you’re doing. Yeah, this was a good one: the time I decided to write a letter to Baltimore owner Steve Bisciotti. Now, before we get too far along with this story, you have to know that Bisciotti is one great guy. He’s a self-made billionaire. He’s good to people, smart, good-looking, snazzy dresser—the whole package. The best part is that Steve isn’t one of these owners looking for all the attention. He’s like Woody Johnson, looking to help the team, not looking to take the spotlight. You don’t see Bisciotti very much, because that’s not the way he does business. He’s not ignoring the team, not by a long shot. He’s around, he knows what’s going on, and he has a great feel for what they’re doing.
He also has a really interesting, crystallized way of looking at life. He says: “Ninety percent of wealth is good and 10 percent of it is bad. However, 60 percent of fame is good and 40 percent of it is bad.” In other words, if you’re playing the percentages of what’s going to be good for your life, fame is not the percentage play. That’s why he stays out of the limelight a lot more than other owners. I think he believes in hiring good people and letting them do the job without all this interference.
So anyway, we opened the 2007 season on a Monday night at Cincinnati, which most people probably think should be a gimme. The Bengals traditionally aren’t very good, but what people don’t understand is that for a number of reasons, they’re a tough matchup for us. They’ve got a good quarterback in Carson Palmer and they have Chad Ochocinco, who’s a pain in the ass to cover and just drives you nuts with all his talk and antics when he gets going. I love it, but you do want to shut him up. He definitely gets the juices going. At the time, they had T. J. Houshmandzadeh, who is a terrific possession guy, tough route runner, just an all-around good football player. So we went in there and lost 27-20.
This was a tough game. We gave up nine points in the first quarter on a touchdown and a field goal. The first one ticked me off. We fumbled the ball and Ochocinco, Johnson, whatever you call him, went deep over the top of our defense for a 39-yard touchdown. Then they get a field goal. We got a touchdown in the second quarter and then we traded field goals just before the half to put the Bengals up 12-10. No biggie. Their longest drive in the first half was 48 yards. Aside from the one throw to Ochocinco, they were just dinking and dunking against us.
We made some adjustments at halftime and we were just stoning them on defense. I mean, defensively we were on the fire. They ran 25 plays in the second half and gained a total of 50 yards. Yeah, 25 plays, 50 yards—that’s two yards a freakin’ play. We were ridiculously good. The only problem was that our offense was ridiculously bad that day. Hey, it happens, but unfortunately it’s true. We had six turnovers, four fumbles, and two interceptions. As a defense, you have to pick up the offense on days like that. When Baltimore won the Super Bowl in my second year there, the defense didn’t make excuses when we couldn’t score. Never happened. We just put our heads down and battled. That’s the way it has to be.
The other thing is that we had Steve McNair at quarterback, and I give Steve a lot of credit. Unfortunately, we got him at the end of his career, but he was one tough guy. McNair took more hard shots than any quarterback I have ever seen and still managed to get back up. He was like a linebacker at quarterback. In his prime, he was one scary dude. RIP Air McNair.
The turnovers hurt us in the second half of that Cincinnati game, there’s no question about that. On our first possession of the second half, McNair got sacked, fumbled the ball, and the Bengals returned it for a touchdown to get up 19-10. Finally, we got going in the beginning of the fourth quarter with a field goal, and we caught a break of our own when Ed Reed returned a punt 63 yards for a touchdown with about 12 minutes to go and we were up 20-19. The way our defense was rolling, all we had to do was avoid making another mistake.
We couldn’t. In fact, the last 12 minutes of the game were like a nightmare. McNair got a pass intercepted at midfield and the Bengals returned it to our 22-yard line. They caught us with a 15-yard run and then a 7-yard touchdown to Houshmandzadeh, who’s great in the red zone. They got a two-point conversion and went up 27-20 with 8:48 remaining. For the game, they’d scored 14 points on three plays where they gained 61 yards.
Still, we had time remaining and our defense even came up with a play. Haloti Ngata, our great defensive tackle, forced a fumble and Reed recovered it at the Cincy 24. Kyle Boller went in at quarterback when McNair got hurt and we eventually got down to fourth-and-goal at the 1-yard line. We just had to punch it in and we would be tied. Boller threw a touchdown pass to tight end Todd Heap, but Heap got called for offensive pass interference.
Then the Bengals got called for a penalty that gave us a first down again at the Bengals’ 6. We got back down to the 2 on second down and threw an incomplete pass. Then, on third down, Boller got intercepted when the ball deflected off Heap and a Bengals defensive guy. Talk about frustrating. This was one of those ridiculous gutwrenchers. Worse, our last three plays from the 2 or closer were all passes that went wrong. This is the kind of stuff that drives you crazy because you’re second-guessing yourself. Whether you’re a fan, a coach, or even an owner, you second-guess yourself like crazy.
After the game, head coach Brian Billick, both coordinators, and one coach from each side of the ball were going to ride back with Bisciotti on his jet. The idea was that we were going to get back faster because we didn’t have to load the plane or do all the TSA check stuff (not that it took a long time, because we had our own special gate, but it was still about a hundred people to get boarded and a lot of stuff to get handled). As a coaching staff, we figured it was best to get a jump on the whole process. We were pissed and we wanted to break down the film. It was a short week already because we had to play the next Sunday, so we were not sleeping on that flight.
Well, the trip got off to a crappy start when the driver took us to the wrong airport. We finally got to the right place and we were sitting on the tarmac with Bisciotti. We were talking about the game, the controversial calls, the turnovers, the plays at the goal line. Then finally Bisciotti says: “Rex, what the hell? We should have run the ball. We should have done all this kind of stuff.” Now, that was tough. Here’s the owner talking, so you don’t want to argue, but you have to be loyal to your head coach. Brian Billick was our coach, and he had Jim Fassel as the offensive coordinator calling the plays. I was not about to throw those guys under the bus. I just said: “Well, you know I’m not an expert in that type of situation. Our guys study film and always do what’s in the best interest of the team. You know I’ve got to get people stops, so I can’t concern myself with that, I’ve got to stop people.” I just handled it the best I can, and then Bisciotti shrugged and said, “So you’re just along for the ride.”
Just along for the ride? What, are you freakin’ kidding me? I’m just along for the ride? I was shocked, stunned, and pretty soon I was pissed, thinking: “I sleep at the office three days a week. I’ve been loyal to Brian. Some of the stuff I put a stop to could have really bit our team in the ass.” I didn’t know what to say, but I was not happy. So the first thing I did after we landed was to write Steve a letter and put it under his door. In that letter I told him, “I’m not even watching my kids growing up. Nobody is committed to this team as much as I am. Nobody. Along for the ride? That’s friggin’ bullshit.”
I told Mike Pettine, the Ravens’ linebackers coach and one of the guys I brought with me to the Jets when I got hired (he’s our defensive coordinator), about it and he said, “Oh, Rex, don’t do it, just go get the letter.”
I said, “Hell no, I’m not going to go get the letter. That’s how I feel.” I knew that Bisciotti got it, because the next day his secretary came running down to my office. Steve wasn’t in yet, but she had read the letter to him over the phone when he called in. And when Bisciotti arrived, he came in to see me and he said, “Rex, I said, ‘Are you along for the ride?’ Like, are you going home with us
on the jet?”
Oh. Well, that’s a little different. My head was spinning as I thought, “Oh my God, I just told off the owner of the team because I didn’t understand what he was saying.” I was pretty much a dumbass on that one, so all I could do was laugh at myself. I said, “Oh, sorry, Steve.” What do you say after something like that? We still laugh every time we think about that one. I don’t know if he was laughing at the time, because it kind of challenged him a little, but I did what I felt at the time was right.
Was I too emotional about what Bisciotti said? Sure, I could have taken a step back, but that’s not what you get with a Ryan. Like I said, I love what I do. I loved doing every job I’ve ever done. I truly mean that. You have to have a joy with everything you do in life. You can’t half-ass it and expect to get the most out of it. When I was growing up, my dad couldn’t wait to go to work. He loved his job and you could feel his passion for the job. My mom loved her job. Think about it: She was taking trips all over Ontario to these little towns in the middle of nowhere to find out how to teach kids. You don’t do that to get rich. You do that because you love it.
It’s like my brother Rob said: “If you hire a Ryan, we’re going to have emotion. We’re going to have fire. It’s not political and maybe it’s not the most politically right thing to do, but we care. Every once in a while you get a screwup, but it’s like I tell my players, ‘Look, guys, you’ve got to have my back on this, you’ve got to play your ass off, you’re going to have to do it.’ ”