by Rex Ryan
We got McNair late in the off-season and he showed up as soon as possible. At the time, Jim Fassel was our offensive coordinator. Fassel, who had been the coach of the New York Giants when we beat them in the Super Bowl, was really good friends with Billick from way back in their West Coast days. Both guys had gone through Stanford and knew a lot of the same people. Fassel had been the head coach of the Giants for seven years and had his ups and downs with players there. Typical stuff. After he got fired in 2003, we hired him in 2004. As I said, our offense wasn’t very good in 2004 or 2005, but most of the blame went on the quarterback. There’s only so much you can do.
When we got McNair, there was a lot more expectation. Maybe we weren’t going to put up 30 a game, but we had a chance to run an offense that could complement our defense, control the ball, change field position, and keep the defense fresh. Well, we got McNair and Fassel was on vacation at the time. He came back for a few days and worked with McNair, then went back to be with his family. All right, I understand that getting time with the family is hard and vacations generally are pretty sacred. But this was a time when you have to look at your family and say, “We don’t get quarterbacks like this at this time of the year very often” and they have to understand.
I’ve never coached a quarterback directly, but everybody was expecting that Fassel would have this guy ready to go. Here you have a chance to work with a really smart veteran who had the potential to take us a long way as a team if he was just decent—and you passed up the chance to grind away with him for a few weeks? As you can imagine, a lot of our offensive position coaches weren’t real happy about that. Then we got into the season and the offense was just kind of limping along and not really improving. We opened with two solid games, then went three straight where the offense didn’t score more than 16. We held on to win two of those games. We opened the season 4-0, then dropped two straight before heading into the bye week. In the bye week, all of a sudden, Billick fired Fassel. I came to find out that Fassel was spending most of his time on the phone at that point, calling around trying to get a head coaching job. Assistant coaches couldn’t get in his office to work with him, so they were getting frustrated. It was ugly all the way around. You just can’t have that in the season. Look, I know what it’s like to get frustrated when you don’t get the job you want, but you don’t handle it that way. You’ve got to keep pounding away, giving your job everything you can. That’s how you’ll finally get what you really want.
After that, Billick took over the offense and we got rolling. That was a big year for Billick because the owner, Steve Bisciotti, was examining everything we did. We won nine of the next 10, and we scored at least 20 points in all but two games. The whole thing was really coming together. We finished 13-3 and had the No. 2 seed in the AFC playoffs. We had a bye before we played Indianapolis in the playoffs. It was all set up for a big showdown between San Diego and us. Then the setup came apart when we lost to Indianapolis 15-6 and San Diego lost to New England. That’s the year Indy ended up winning the title over Chicago, and man, was that frustrating. I truly believe that any of the top four teams in the AFC would have beaten the Bears. I know we would have beaten the Patriots that year in the AFC. We were staring right down the pipe of another title, but we couldn’t come up with a score on defense. We had a couple of chances to intercept Peyton Manning, but they slipped through our hands. If we had caught those two passes, we would probably have run them back. They were touchdowns, plays that would have completely changed the game. But I give Manning a lot of credit, because he didn’t force a lot in that game. He knew what our defense could do and he played for field goals instead of getting greedy. That’s a heck of a quarterback.
Billick got a contract extension after 2006, but things went backward in 2007. McNair got hurt and the offense was inconsistent again. Our watershed moment that season was probably the Monday-night game against New England in Week 13. The Pats were 12-0, on their way to 16-0 for the regular season before losing in the Super Bowl to the Giants. We were 4-7 at the time, not going anywhere, but our defense still had so much pride on the line. It was just amazing how hard we played that night. Early in the fourth quarter, we got a touchdown to grab a 24-17 lead. We held that great offense to a field goal for the next 12 minutes, and with us leading 24-20 with 1:48 remaining, when they were facing a fourth-and-1 situation. Right as the Pats are about to snap the ball, I called time-out. The ref hears it, but not in time to stop the snap. Tom Brady tried to sneak it, we stopped him, and our guys thought the game was won. But I called time-out. Oh geez. I thought we were in the wrong alignment and we ended up making a great play. I felt like an idiot.
From there, the whole thing really unraveled. Eventually, New England was facing fourth-and-6 and we got called for an illegal-contact penalty. We got them in fourth down again and Brady threw an incomplete, and we got called for another penalty that gave them first-and-goal from the 8. They finally scored on a pass that had to be reviewed. Brutal, just brutal. Our guys just lost it. Bart Scott got called for two unsportsmanlike penalty calls, including one for throwing a penalty flag in the stands. We got called for offsides on the point after. It was all coming apart. Strangely, we almost won the thing on a Hail Mary throw to Mark Clayton at the end, but that loss was just brutal. The Patriots had the greatest offense in the history of the game that year and we stopped them. We should have won.
After the game, everybody was asking Billick about the time-out. They didn’t realize right away that I called it. I felt bad for Billick, and he was classy about it with the media. He never said I was the one who called it. He never threw me under the bus. Eventually, they saw on the tape with one of the sideline cameras that it was me calling the time-out. I told our guys it was my fault. What can you do?
The season just petered out from there. We ended up losing nine straight at one point, including an overtime loss at Miami that was the only game the Dolphins won all year. We beat Pittsburgh in the final game, but they were resting most of their guys. The next day, on New Year’s Eve, Billick got fired. Really, we all got fired, technically. As a coach, you get conditioned to this happening, but this hurt a lot for me. Billick brought me into the league and he gave me a lot of freedom to do what I thought worked. He didn’t interfere and he didn’t second-guess. I appreciated that and I was loyal to him, even when some of our players would start complaining.
I ended up interviewing for the head coach job. I also interviewed in Atlanta and with Miami. I had a great interview with Bill Parcells; man, we hit it off. I loved talking to Parcells, but he had his guy with Tony Sparano, the offensive line coach of the Cowboys when Parcells was in Dallas. The Falcons hired Mike Smith from Jacksonville, who did a great job down there and had been with us in Baltimore. Smith and I came to Baltimore the same year, and he stayed for four years before going to Jacksonville with Del Rio. Smith is Billick’s brother-in-law. I like Smith—he’s a real upbeat, positive guy. I thought I had a better résumé at the time, but then again, you always believe in yourself.
Really, I thought I was the best candidate for the Baltimore job. I thought it was going to be mine. I really did. Again, I thought I’d never leave Baltimore—and maybe that worked against me. Over the next couple of weeks, the Ravens interviewed Jason Garrett and John Harbaugh for the job. They offered it to Garrett, but he turned it down when Dallas gave him a monster contract to stay as the offensive coordinator. Harbaugh was the special-teams coach in Philadelphia, and I had worked with him when I was at Cincinnati. I really like John, great guy, son of a coach, his brother was a terrific quarterback in the NFL for a long time (and recently took over as head coach in San Francisco)—the whole package. John is a really positive, organized, upbeat guy. I can see why anybody would like him. Plus, Bisciotti got a call from Bill Belichick telling him that Harbaugh was great. That’s a pretty great recommendation.
Meanwhile, they started talking to me about whether I would stay as the defensive coordinator if they hired someb
ody else. I told them Harbaugh was the only guy I would stay for, but I also expected them to help me get a head coach job somewhere else. I wasn’t going to be satisfied doing the coordinator job the rest of my career. Our general manager, Ozzie Newsome, was great about that. He said he would help, and he did. I think they announced Harbaugh’s hiring about 20 minutes later.
I admit it: I was bummed out by that whole situation. I was probably in dreamland about staying in Baltimore the rest of my career, but I just had a feel for it. I loved that situation and I gave everything to it.
I talked a lot to my family after that, and eventually I got my attitude right again. It’s like my mom said: What’s the best plan to get what you really want? Are you going to let this get you down or are you going to throw your all at it? To me, that’s not even a question. John was great to me after that, too, so it got to be easier. He really sought out my opinion and brought me in on a lot of decisions. He started hiring a lot of guys that I kept saying I would have hired, too, like Cam Cameron to be the offensive coordinator. I really liked what John was putting together, and there wasn’t any politics to it. We were really working together as a whole group.
Plus, running our defense in Baltimore was nothing but excitement. When I took over in 2005, three seasons earlier, we had Ray Lewis still at the top of his game, and we had Ed Reed. Again, you’re talking about two guys who are maybe the best ever to play their positions and two guys who put football above everything else. You’re talking about two players who are willing to put in the time and energy that coaches put in.
Moreover, Ray Lewis is the Baltimore Ravens. He is the face of that team and the heart of that team. I hear some outside people talk about Ray and some of the stuff he went through early in his career, and they have no clue what this guy is about. I’ll tell you one other thing: I didn’t even dream of taking Ray out of Baltimore when I left to go to the Jets. Yeah, there was a lot of talk about how we were going to make some monster offer to get Ray and Bart Scott. I wasn’t going to discourage that because I didn’t want to show our hand, but in my heart, I wasn’t going to do that.
Ray Lewis can play for only one team. That was my opinion. When it came down to it, I went to Bart Scott’s house at midnight of the start of free agency in 2009 and not to Ray’s, because that’s how I felt. It would have tarnished Ray’s image. You’re talking about a guy who represents fierce loyalty and passion. He carried that franchise to its championship in 2000. He carried it for all those years. Ray Lewis in the locker room is an amazing thing that people don’t see. He runs that locker room and sets a tone for how everybody is supposed to work. Trust me, it was tempting to want to bring a guy like that with me, but I don’t think it would have been the same. I think Ray would have been a leader, but it’s just not the same thing. It wouldn’t have been so natural for him. I think it would have been forced. It was like when I heard that Deion Sanders was telling Dallas owner Jerry Jones to get Lewis in free agency. It made sense, but I just don’t think it would have been easy for Ray to feel the same way about the Cowboys as he did about the Ravens.
He’s the most intense, passionate guy I have ever seen—just a warrior. If you’re storming the beach, he’s the first one on the beach and he’s going to make sure his guys are with him. It’s like the stories they tell about my dad in Korea. Ray motivated me as a coach. That’s how good a player he was. That’s how intense a competitor he was. He got there before I did, but they told me he took the team over right when he was a rookie. When I got there and then when I took over the defense, all he wanted to know was whether I was genuine and if I could help him. That was it. If you could do those two things, that resonated with him. If you’re a phony, Ray Lewis can see right through you in about two seconds. I saw it happen. He’d see coaches or players who weren’t with the program and he’d know it right away. When there was something missing with a coach, Ray just wouldn’t respond to that guy.
Let me give you a good example of the other side of it. When the Ravens hired John Harbaugh in 2008 and I stayed as the defensive coordinator, our team was looking for a strength and conditioning coach. I was in Hawaii at the Pro Bowl, just there with Ray, Reed, and the other Baltimore defensive guy who made it. When we were there, we met a guy who was working with Green Bay at the time. I knew him a little and figured he’d be a good guy to interview. I don’t know anything about strength and conditioning, but Harbaugh wanted me to talk to him, so I interviewed him. I thought he was a hell of a guy. He sounded good to me, but here’s what I wanted to do just to be sure: I had Lewis and Reed come for the second interview, because I wanted to see if he could stand up to them, if he could handle them. The guy never flinched. He was great, phenomenal. Now, some of his ideas were a little different because he had more of a baseball background, but you could see he was smart. So when it was all said and done, I asked Lewis and Reed what they thought. Ray told me, “You know some of the things were kind of strange and whatever, but I really like him.” I asked Ray why he liked him and he said simply: “He speaks from the heart.” Ray knew it right away. In the end, we didn’t end up hiring the guy because Harbaugh liked somebody else a little better, but it told me a lot about how Ray picked up on people and what he was looking for.
Of course, the best stories about Ray are from the games or practices, and there are a ton of them. Even after I left, there are stories I love about him. In 2009, there was that play during the end of the game in San Diego, when he shot the gap for a big stop at the end of the game. It was a conservative defensive call, but he saw the play and just blitzed on his own. The football intelligence and the physical ability—it’s unbelievable. But even in my first year working with him, I was just wowed every time I saw him in action. The way he hits people is unreal. We were in a “thud drill,” where you’re just supposed to form-fit the tackle, not go all the way through with the full hit. We had a running back named Eric Rhett, a loudmouth guy out of Florida who played in the league for a while, funny guy. I really liked him, because he kept things loose. Anyway, Rhett was running his mouth through the drill, just running it constantly, and all of a sudden it sounded like a gun went off. Pow! I mean, the hit Ray laid on him was unbelievable. Rhett’s feet went over his head and he landed literally on the back of his head. I looked over at Billick and said, “How’s that for a thud period?” It was unbelievable. To this day it may have been the loudest hit I’ve ever heard, and Ray would make those hits all the time.
Another time, we were getting beaten by Cleveland. It was a close game and it was still early on. As I said before, I’ve always believed that one big hit can change the momentum of the game faster than anything—faster than a turnover, faster than anything. Sure enough, Cleveland tight end Kellen Winslow (who’s a great receiver) came across the middle and Ray hit him. I mean, he leveled this guy. The ball went flying up and we ended up getting the interception. After that, the tone was set for the rest of the game. The Browns’ receivers would come across the middle and they’d be pulling off passes. None of them wanted to take a hit like that so, literally, Ray controlled that whole inside. If you came in there, you knew you were running into Ray’s territory and those brakes came on. I’ve seen more dropped passes inside those hash marks because Ray Lewis is standing there. That’s it—he wills himself into making plays.
When you work with people like that, it rubs off on you. If you do your job with joy, you’re going to bring joy to the people you work with. Ray was like that for me, and I wanted to be that way for the people I worked with in Baltimore.
Our last season in Baltimore—2008—was a great one. We were No. 2 in overall defense and went 11-5. Watching Flacco develop into a good quarterback as a rookie was really fascinating to me—especially the way Cameron handled him and nurtured him. It gave me confidence going into New York with Sanchez. The only downer to that 2008 season was losing to Pittsburgh in the playoffs. What a game, though—the hitting, the intensity, the big plays.
Honestly, as I
’ve said, I hate to lose. I enjoy winning, but at the end of the day, winning a game in the NFL just means you had a good day at the office. Losing, on the other hand—losing is really painful. But to this day, there are a few losses that I’ve had in my career that still really haunt me. One that I still haven’t gotten over is that last game at Baltimore, losing in the AFC Championship Game to end our 2008 season—and my tenure in Baltimore. As much as I couldn’t wait to become a head coach, I would have loved to leave Baltimore on top with a championship. But hey, what you don’t get just makes you hungrier.
9. The Perfect Owner
After the disappointing end to 2008 in Baltimore, I had taken a deep breath and was ready to look to the future. And for me, that meant pursuing a head coaching job for 2009. There were some good opportunities around the league, and I had a pretty good feeling that my dream of becoming a head coach in the NFL was about to come true. But once I sat across the table from New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, I knew exactly where I wanted to be.
Let me explain something about Woody Johnson. The man is completely dedicated to making the Jets great, even if that means doing something that seems to run headlong into another idea.
See, here was the idea I brought to the Jets when I interviewed for the job: I suggested we should go away to training camp. I believe it’s great for team building, great for the players to really focus on football, get away completely from all the comfort and distractions they have at home and really get to know each other. No problem, right? Well, I was pitching that idea to a man who just spent about $75 million to build the Atlantic Health Jet Training Center in New Jersey and opened it about five months before I sat down with him to interview. This wasn’t like some run-of-the-mill place. Trust me, the Baltimore Ravens have a great training complex in the suburbs of Maryland, but this place dwarfs even that. It’s so nice that Atlantic Health signed a 12-year contract just to put their name on the place. Think about that: They sold a sponsorship for the training facility, not just the stadium.