by Rex Ryan
This is why people connect with us. It’s over the top sometimes, it’s emotional, but it’s totally honest. You want to know something really great about how we do business? After everything Mike Ditka went through with my dad in Chicago—the fights, the screaming, the pushing—he tried to hire my brother at one point in time. Man, you have to respect Ditka for that. Ditka was in New Orleans in the late 1990s and he had my brother come in for a talk. He told Rob, “I want an aggressive, kick-ass defense just like I had with your dad.” You see, Ditka knew that my dad wasn’t just a self-promoter, some guy just trying to make a name for himself. My brother and I aren’t, either.
Players see that what we’re talking about is totally honest. We’re putting it on the line. Players know the difference. They figure it out pretty fast if you’re not giving it everything you can. The other important thing about our approach is it gets everybody on the same page. That’s not easy in sports. Think about it this way: When you’re a head coach, you’re always going to have about half your team that isn’t exactly happy with you. It’s just reality. It’s the guys who aren’t starting. Every guy thinks he should be starting. Yeah, some of them get the logic of how it works, especially the veterans who have been around long enough to understand a role, but in their heart of hearts, every guy thinks he should be a starting player. You wouldn’t want a guy who didn’t want to be starting, who didn’t want to be out there trying to make a play. These guys have been starting forever. When they were in high school, they were the big stars. In college, they were either stars or they were certainly playing a lot. There aren’t too many guys who have made it to the NFL without being pretty prominent players along the way.
As a coach, you have to overcome that. Now, when you’re a defensive coordinator or a position coach, it’s a little easier. You can always be the good cop and the head coach is almost always the bad cop. It’s not that you’re selling the head coach out, but everybody knows the buck stops with him, so the coordinator doesn’t take all the heat. When you’re the head coach, it’s all on you—every eye is on you and every decision is on you. You’re not going to keep everybody happy in that situation. You can’t and you shouldn’t expect to. If you want everybody to like you, you’re not ready to be a head coach.
It’s like what Tennessee coach Jeff Fisher said in the 2010 season after he benched Vince Young in a game early in the season. Everybody asked Fisher if he expected Young to be happy with the decision. Fisher said no, of course not. You don’t pull a guy out of a game because you want him to be happy. Geez, what do you think is going to happen? The key is not trying to keep everybody happy, but to keep everybody respecting you. If the players think you are being 100 percent honest and 100 percent committed, they can’t question your intention.
Let me jump to 2010 for a minute to illustrate a point. When we were chasing Jason Taylor last off-season and trying to bring him to the Jets, I knew with certainty that Jason Taylor wasn’t interested in playing for the New York Jets. Are you kidding me? Do you know the history of Taylor and Jets fans? It’s hysterical. Taylor has always been talking trash to Jets fans. He talks to them in New York; he made fun of them in Miami. I mean, the Jets were probably the last team he could have ever imagined playing for.
And I knew he really didn’t want to do it. He wanted to go back to Miami and finish his career with the Dolphins. Back in 2008, when Parcells came in, they had problems right from the start. Parcells is big on the off-season program, and he’s right about that. You need to build your team in the off-season, guys have to get in shape, and the players have to buy into what you’re doing right from the start.
That off-season, though, Taylor was scheduled to be on Dancing with the Stars. Okay, I’ve never had to deal with this kind of thing. We did Hard Knocks in 2001 when I was in Baltimore and then again this last season with the Jets, but it’s a little different. You’re in training camp, so you’re working anyway. I don’t know how I’d deal with that, but I know this: Jason Taylor did it the right way with the Dolphins. Even before Bill Parcells was hired, Taylor told the team he was going to do that show. Plus, you’re talking about a 10-year veteran. You know what Taylor is by this time in his career, and a guy like that has a lot of pride in what he does. Just look at him, you can see the pride just by his appearance. I mean, the guy looks like a movie star. He’s tall, he’s handsome, he’s a thoroughbred athlete, he’s smart, he’s well-spoken—I mean, come on, how can you deny this guy a chance to do something special, to take a shot at fame like that? He’s not going to fake it and not be in shape.
But Parcells hates that stuff. He wasn’t the coach, but that didn’t matter. He still hated it, and it made their relationship just horrible. On top of that, the team was coming off a couple of horrible seasons. They were 1-15 in 2007. Taylor wanted a trade as things got worse, and Parcells just got more and more pissed. The Dolphins were telling him they won’t trade him. Taylor wanted out. We all knew it. Heck, if we didn’t have Terrell Suggs over there, I would have been begging Ozzie Newsome to go get that guy. This was Jason-Freakin’-Taylor, one of the best pass rushers in the game. He was the 2006 Defensive Player of the Year. The Dolphins finally dealt him to Washington just before the season, but that didn’t go well. In fact, it kind of backfired, because the Redskins ended up being bad and the Dolphins went 11-5. Hey, you can never tell in this league.
Taylor did one year in Washington and then they parted company when the Redskins wanted to redo his contract. By this time I was with the Jets, but Taylor wanted to go back to Miami. I knew what was going on because I was friends with Taylor’s agent, Gary Wichard. Bill Belichick up in New England was calling him every day, leaving him messages, hoping to get him to the Patriots. Tampa Bay defensive coordinator Jim Bates, who coached Taylor in Miami, was also calling him every day. But Taylor just wanted to go back to the Dolphins. Finally, they signed him, and you’d figure that was the end of it. But then they couldn’t get along again after 2009. I don’t get it, but what the hell, it’s not my problem. I just saw a guy who probably has a couple of good years left in him, who I could use as a super backup. So I pulled out every stop. I did all my homework on everything that had happened, and I was selling Taylor hard. I wanted him to know that I wanted him, I needed him. And then, well, I’ll let Jason tell the rest of the story:
When Rex recruited me, he personally made it a priority to come and get me. That meant a lot. Him knowing the history of the Jets and the Dolphins and him knowing the things I’ve said. He wanted me despite all that. He said: “I don’t care about all that, I want you on this football team. I need you on this football team.” It wasn’t like, “Oh, we’ll take you, here’s the veteran minimum.” I wasn’t an acorn that they stumbled upon. He made me feel special. That meant a lot. I’ve been an acorn before … I tell you what, if for whatever reason it didn’t work out and Rex went somewhere else, he’s one of those guys you follow. If for whatever reason he wasn’t the head coach here next year, there would be a lot of guys in this locker room who would want to follow him. He’s that kind of guy. He could be a special-teams coach and you’d want to be there.
Rex is real. He always says it’s blunt-force trauma. That’s how he delivers his message, blunt-force trauma. Some people don’t like it. Some people are put off by it. He’s boisterous, cocky, whatever people want to say, but he says it the way it is, he says what he believes and he believes so much in his players. Even if the housekeeper says that player is no good, if that guy is on the football team, Rex is going to believe in him. He’s going to make you feel you’re the best player at your position in the league. He has a very unique personality, a unique way of making people feel wanted, feel positive. The work environment is very positive. It’s laid back, but when it’s time to work, it’s time to work. I’m telling you it comes from the head guy. He treats you like men, there’s no babysitting here. If somebody has something to say, they can say it. He doesn’t tell you how to talk. When you take guys and let the
m become professionals, they become professional. When you take guys and you watch over them and treat them like children, don’t be surprised when they don’t grow.
There’s another very simple, key idea I believe in: In order to succeed in the NFL, you have to have fun. You have to live by your love of this game. It’s like I tell our players: Remember back to the first time you put on the equipment, the first time you put on the uniform. That first time you put pads on, you probably had no idea how they went on, how you were supposed to wear them. You didn’t know how to put the helmet on, how you pinch the ears out. But you went out and had a blast that first time. You were a kid and you were excited. That’s the type of team I want to have. I want to have guys be excited, where they can’t wait to come to practice, to get to the building or the stadium and enjoy playing a game. When I played, I couldn’t wait to get there. Even though this is a multimillion-dollar business, it should be the same way it was when we were kids. We have such an unbelievable opportunity here, and it’s a real blessing to get this chance. I get to be a kid every day. That’s what I want them to understand. No matter what the media says, despite all the outside pressures, this is still a game.
It’s like my mom told me after I didn’t get the head coaching job in Baltimore and I was so disappointed. She looked at me and said, “Are you going to let it bother you or are you going to go out and work as hard as you always have?” She was asking me a question, but she was making a point. This is a job I love—I couldn’t let something like that get me down. It’s good advice for anyone: Don’t let anything take away from what you’re doing. These days, everybody talks about how I have to get that next contract or get the next deal. That’s not the reason I’m doing this, that’s not what motivates me. It’s not for the contract, it’s because I love doing it. I come to work every day with a smile on my face. If you do what you love, then the money will follow.
It’s just like with Steve Bisciotti. That letter may have been a big mistake, but it was saying how much my heart is in what I do and how much joy I got out of it. People tell me that I was Bisciotti’s favorite coach on the staff and that’s the reason he made sure I stayed even when they hired John Harbaugh. If you look at it that way, maybe that letter helped. I didn’t get the exact job I wanted, but the people there respected me and knew what I was about. I can’t ask for more than that.
8. Loving Baltimore
The path to becoming a successful NFL football coach is long and arduous. It’s a test to see how much you want it. Over the first 12 years of my coaching career, I worked in six different places back and forth across the country. I started in Kentucky, then moved to New Mexico, back to Kentucky, back west to Arizona, then to Cincinnati, followed by a one-year stopover in Oklahoma. The whole thing at Oklahoma was unfortunate. John Blake was the coach there and he recruited some great players, but he didn’t have a winning record in three years, so they fired him and the whole staff.
Right after that, I took a job at Kansas State, knowing that I desperately wanted to eventually get into the NFL. Then, out of the blue, I got a call from Baltimore Ravens coach Brian Billick, who I knew a little bit. Billick was calling to interview me for the Baltimore defensive line coach job, and little did I know that I’d already interviewed for it. In Billick’s words:
The interview took place in a way he didn’t even know he was being interviewed. I had gone up to Montreal to do a coaching clinic when I was still an assistant in Minnesota. I don’t know why it was in Montreal. The guy before me was Rex Ryan. I had met Rex before, I had known Buddy, and we had some mutual coaching friends, so I was aware of Rex, but really I hadn’t spent much time with him. I get up to this clinic and there is like five guys, nobody there. So I’m sitting in the back of this big, old auditorium and the five guys are up in front. I’m watching Rex Ryan and he is coaching his ass off as if that room was filled with 1,500 high school football coaches. It didn’t make any difference to him whether there were five guys or 500 guys. The chalk was flying and he was coaching his butt off. It’s then that I said, “You know what, if I ever get to a position as a head coach, I’m going to hire this guy.” I was aware of Rex, so I just called Rex and offered him the job. I didn’t have to interview him. I didn’t even have to talk to him. I knew I wanted him on the staff.
Billick offered me the job, and I was back in the NFL, this time on my own. My wife and my two great boys moved to Baltimore, and life was sweet.
Now, this was in 1999, and when I first arrived in Baltimore there was a lot to work with. I mean, we had some terrific guys on defense, and in my first few years we would get a handful more. I also learned a few things about not only coaching a lot of talent, but about managing a variety of personalities. As our terrific general manager (and Pro Football Hall of Fame tight end) Ozzie Newsome put it: “That defensive line room was a strong room with a lot of strong personalities. It could have gone a lot of different ways. It’s a credit to Rex and all of them that it was so successful.”
As I recall, by my second year in Baltimore, we had this great nucleus of tough-ass guys in that room and throughout our defense. Ray Lewis had already been in the league for four years, and he was the man. He was already becoming the face of the Ravens. As a coach, you’re looking at your typical players and checking if they’re dedicated. You want to see if a player can handle the pressure, if he likes the contact, if he’s willing to hit and be hit. With Ray Lewis it’s totally different, because he’s looking at you—because there’s no question about his dedication; he wants to know if you like being a coach, if you’re buying into the long hours.
Now, Ray wasn’t the only guy like that, he was just the loudest and most obvious. When I got to Baltimore in 1999, that team was loaded with great pros, from Rob Burnett to Tony Siragusa to Michael McCrary. I’m not even talking about offensive guys like Jonathan Ogden and Jamal Lewis. Later, we got Ed Reed, maybe the greatest safety in the history of the game.
But when you coach guys like Ray Lewis, you’re not really coaching. With guys like that, it’s a partnership; it’s a joyful and ridiculously easy process. You show up every day and you can’t wait to work with them, because they’re going to take your ideas and go further with them than even you could imagine. The only thing you have to do with players like Lewis, Burnett, Siragusa, and McCrary is show them that you know what you’re doing and that you’re as committed as they are. If you do that, they’re with you 100 percent.
Burnett was from Long Island, a smart guy from a really great family who was also wise about people; he had street sense and intelligence. He had been in Cleveland and gone through all the crap when the Browns left there, and had come to Baltimore and become a Raven. He got the whole picture of how the league worked, how the team worked, how the coaches are supposed to handle players and how the players should carry themselves. Plus, he was just a grinder of a player. He didn’t do anything flashy as an athlete, which is why he was a fifth-round pick. But he did everything very well. There was no weakness in his game. If you have six or seven guys in your lineup like Burnett, your team is going a long way.
Then we had McCrary, who was one of these former seventh-round picks who came out of nowhere to make it. McCrary was from Virginia, and, like Burnett, he was from a great family, too. In the 1970s, his mother had sued a nearby day-care center that refused to let McCrary attend because he was black. It ended up being a major case about race in the United States, going all the way to the Supreme Court. As a kid and a teen, McCrary was pushed hard by his parents, even to stick with football when he wanted to quit in high school. Eventually, it all came together for him. Think about what a serious kind of kid you’re talking about—this is a guy who was taught from an early age that you don’t back down from anything.
McCrary got there in 1997 and became a Pro Bowler before I’d even met him in 1998, so I didn’t change anything when I got there in 1999. I just let him be him, knowing he was going to fly around and make plays. He made the Pro Bowl again
, getting 11½ sacks. He was going to hustle no matter what, and never quit. McCrary was important from another perspective, too. He had started his career in Seattle in 1993, when the Seahawks drafted him out of Wake Forest. The next year is when Seattle took Sam Adams with the No. 8 overall pick in the draft. I’ll get back to Adams in a minute, but I think having McCrary helped us a lot when Adams was a free agent in 2000. I’m sure Adams thought he was a lot better player than McCrary, but he also saw McCrary come to our place and have a lot of success, and that always makes an impression on a player.
Finally, we had Goose. Tony “Goose” Siragusa was something really special. I still see Goose all the time because he lives in New Jersey, which is where he grew up. He lives right around the corner from our complex. Really, this is a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy—salty, too, no doubt. I think he’s one of the few guys who swear more than me, and he ain’t much for political correctness, I’ll just put it that way. Goose is going to tell you exactly what he thinks. Like Burnett and McCrary, Goose wasn’t supposed to do anything in the NFL. He wasn’t even drafted coming out of Pittsburgh in 1990. He made it with Indianapolis that year and stuck it out with the Colts for seven years. Goose isn’t a guy with a whole lot of moves. In football-speak, he’s an all-out bull rusher, one of those guys who just pounds away at his opponent until the opponent quits. There’s no finesse to Goose. In fact, Goose couldn’t spell finesse if you spotted him the last six letters.
I mentioned Sam Adams. In 2000, we got Adams as a free agent. Now, Adams is one of the more talented men I’ve ever had the opportunity to coach. I don’t say that lightly. Sam Adams was different. He was just as talented as any of those other guys, if not more so, but Adams was also spoiled and selfish. He was the son of a great player in his own right, former New England guard Sam Adams, Sr. His dad had obviously given his son both the raw physical gifts that come with great DNA, and the knowledge of how to play. Adams was 6-foot-3 and anywhere between 320 and 350 pounds, depending on the season or just the time of year. He had a first step so quick that it was like he was a 260-pound guy playing defensive end. Between his quickness and his strength, he was scary-good.