by Rex Ryan
Anyway, as I was sitting there with Bisciotti, he asked me point-blank what had gone wrong and I had to give an answer. Well, when I told him what I thought the reason was, I felt like I was basically saying I was part of the problem because I was telling him something was wrong with the guy I was working for. I’m a team guy. I was part of that. As soon as I said it, I knew I had killed my own chances to get the job. I could feel it; it just wasn’t comfortable at all, because I had to be honest about what I thought. Sitting there, I felt like crying about the situation. It just went very wrong, so I knew I wasn’t getting the job. I also felt, at that point, that Bisciotti didn’t know the true me. I mean, I know he liked me and I always heard I was one of his favorite guys, but it wasn’t the same thing as truly having his respect. I think I earned it after that year, when I worked so hard to make sure that we could be as successful as we could after they hired John Harbaugh. I think Bisciotti really understood how dedicated I was and how honest I was about making it work for the team.
That’s why I think Bisciotti stood up for me the next year when I interviewed for the Jets job. Billick was trying to get the Jets job at the time and, trust me, Bisciotti had a good reason to hope Billick got the job. After Billick was let go, he still had three years and about $10 or $12 million left on his contract. If the Jets had hired him, Bisciotti wouldn’t have had to pay off that money—the Jets would have, or at least most of it. Yet there was Mr. Johnson calling Bisciotti to get the word on who he should hire, and Bisciotti said me. I can’t tell you how grateful I was to him for saying that.
When it came down to it, though, the final touch was Mr. Johnson. Again, he could have taken one look at me with my big belly, my kind of scruffy look, and not-so-classy way of speaking, and said, “What the heck? We’re going to hire this guy?” Instead, he listened. He listened to me. He listened to all the people who gave him information about me. I heard there wasn’t one person in the entire Baltimore organization who had a bad word to say about me. That was pretty amazing to find out. You’re in a place for 10 years and you don’t royally piss somebody off somewhere along the line? I was proud of that.
When I was sitting in that interview with Mr. Johnson, I realized something that was so uplifting: He was comfortable with my being who I am. I was open about everything, my weight, the dyslexia, everything I could think of. He was fine with it all. Here was a man who hangs out with the top people in New York society, the upper crust of the upper crust, and he told me, “Don’t sweat it. Be yourself.”
Do you realize how important that is for a guy like me, a guy who has been dreaming of getting here but struggling with some of the politics that comes with it? It’s an incredible burden getting completely lifted from my shoulders. I can’t tell you just how much that means. During the interview (and I did only one interview, which really surprised me. A lot of the time, they make you come back a second time), I explained to him my whole plan for team building. The thing he says to this day is that they had always talked about team building, how important it is and how much they wanted to do it. Yet I was the first guy who really came in with a plan about how to do it—what gets guys to fight for each other, what gets guys to understand and accept each other. It’s just like what I said at the start: I had my idea for doing it and Mr. Johnson understood how important it was to the team. He realized it was more important than trying to save some dollars, even when he had already spent a ton. That’s the kind of owner a football coach would want to be around. I heard some stuff before the 2010 season about how we didn’t want to sign Revis because Mr. Johnson didn’t want to spend the money. That’s crazy. He’ll spend it on whatever he thinks we need to spend it on, and he wants to hear from Mike Tannenbaum and me about what’s important.
Just like every other part of his life, Mr. Johnson is devoted. He helps run several charities and gets me involved with them, too. One time, my wife and I were at a charity event with Sting, Uma Thurman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michael Douglas, and some other big stars. I looked at my wife and said, “Who are the two people who don’t belong here?” We pointed to ourselves and started laughing. It was crazy. As the dinner went on, I was supposed to be the fundraising leader of our section. Really? Me? I was supposed to be leading Sting and a group of industry titans? Mr. Johnson would encourage me to be myself with all these people, have fun, laugh a lot, have a great time, and do something good. Mr. Johnson is devoted to terrific causes, like the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and others. But he’s not just donating, he’s hosting events at his place in New York. He’s active; he’s being a part of it.
He does the same things with us and the football team. You can feel that vibe every day, and it radiates through the whole organization.
10. Changing the Culture of the Jets
There’s a tendency for guys who become head coaches to say, “Okay, I’m going to run this my way. I’m in charge now.” There’s no question you need some of that. It helps to establish that you’re the leader, that the buck stops with you and that you make the final decisions. That’s the whole point to being put in charge. If you’re afraid of that, you shouldn’t have applied.
At the same time, the show is not all about just you. As the head coach, your job is to bring everybody together and make them understand that you’re there to help the team work as one unit. I know I’m a pretty good coach, but I can’t do everything myself. I’m not smart enough to do it all alone, so I need everybody pulling with me, working together to get it done—which is why after I got to the Jets, I changed some things right away.
The first thing was my office. When Eric Mangini was coach of the Jets, he wanted some distance between himself and his players. The head coach’s office in the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center has this floor-to-ceiling window that looks out over the rest of the offices and cubicles. But when I arrived, the windows were all painted over. I believe that people working there, the assistant coaches, the players, everybody should be able to look in and see the head coach; but for whatever reason, Mangini had them covered. I don’t know exactly why because I never asked him. I want my players and coaches to know they are welcome to come up to me anytime. I want them to see me and feel comfortable. Not only is the door open, the windows are open. I’m an open book for those guys.
I want my players to know who I am, just like I want to know who they are. I want there to be that connection as people. That’s valuable when it comes to figuring out how to motivate somebody. It’s valuable because I want that guy to fight for me, just like I want to fight for him. Again, I’m all in, everything is on the table. I want those guys to know about my family, that I’ve been married for nearly 25 years and that I have two sons. I want them to get to know my family. Now, I know there has to be a line somewhere, which is why I don’t go out with players. I don’t go drinking with them. I don’t go out to dinner. Sure, we have some big meetings and stuff, but that’s not what I’m saying. You can’t have it where some players get to be the coach’s favorite in the eyes of the other guys. That divides your locker room. It puts guys against each other, and that’s not constructive. I’m human—some guys I’m going to like better than others. That’s just life. But I don’t want to make it obvious to the point that it makes other guys uncomfortable.
I also don’t want it to cloud my judgment. This job isn’t easy from that perspective. You have to make decisions about guys all the time. Who’s going to be on the team? Who’s going to be cut? That’s the business side, and you can’t get around that. If all of a sudden I’m keeping a guy around because I like hanging out with him and not because he’s the best guy for the team, then I’ve screwed up. Staying within that, you want to bring guys in to really understand who you are as a coach. If they know what I’m really like, then it’s no problem for me to make stupid jokes like how Beyoncé wants me. I’ll say to the guys, “Yeah, tell her to quit calling me.” I’m just talking some trash to get those guys to crack up and relax a little. Hey, what does Jay-Z have on m
e?
Don’t answer that.
Anyway, the first thing I did was get that window taken care of. The next thing we changed was the media policy. With Mangini, the policy was basically that he talked and maybe Brett Favre, the quarterback at the time, talked. Other than that, everybody was supposed to stay shut. The orders seemed to be, simply: Don’t say anything. When Woody Johnson and Mike Tannenbaum were interviewing me, they asked, “What’s the policy going to be with the media?”
I thought, “What do you mean, ‘what is the policy?’ There is no policy.” Everybody can talk, the players, the coaches, everybody. I don’t want people to be scared to say something.
I just have one rule: When guys talk, it’s their job to mention at least two teammates and one coach every time they answer questions. The first time I did that was when I was back at the University of Cincinnati and I was the defensive coordinator, and I’ve kept it up ever since. It gets to be kind of a game with the players after a while. They’ll start talking about teammates and then we’ll say, “Okay, now you have to name three players, then four, then five.” Next, maybe we’ll say you have to throw in somebody who’s not a coach or a player. They’ll start by talking about the owner or the general manager, but then they get talking about a cook or a janitor. It gets to be fun, and they’re learning about everybody who works in the building. During the season, if we pick up a new guy, you’ll hear somebody say, “Okay, I got the new guy from Dallas.” It gets to be funny, something the guys laugh about. In its own way, it’s team building.
Now, when I first told the players about it, they looked at me like I was crazy, but then they went out and did it. As a result, they start reading quotes from teammates and they start thinking about what other people are saying about them. It also gets guys out of the “I and me” routine. It’s not about them anymore; it gets guys thinking outside of themselves and only what’s going on with them. They have to think about what other guys are doing and what’s going on around them. It helps them get a better picture of how they make a play, and they’re able to see that they have to depend on somebody else to do his job in order for them to do their job. Maybe Shaun Ellis will get two sacks one week and he’ll talk about how Robert Turner, who’s a backup offensive lineman, did a great job of getting him ready in practice.
The other thing it does is it keeps the tone positive. If you’re thinking about somebody other than yourself, then you’re not being negative and worried all about yourself. That’s something I can’t stand—negative thinking, selfish, greedy thoughts. But I’ll get back to that later, because it is very important to me. Say our quarterback, Mark Sanchez, has a bad day. He throws a couple of interceptions or misses some big throws. Heck, he had a game last year when he threw five interceptions but we still almost won the game. Hey, young guys are going to struggle, but having to talk about his teammates got him away from feeling sorry for himself. I’m not saying he would get stuck in that kind of negative thinking, but our interview rules are a tool to change a player’s way of thinking. If the reporters ask him what happened, he can say, “That’s unfortunate. I tell you, our defense is phenomenal. I felt like I really let our guys down. Braylon Edwards was open a couple of times, I just overthrew him. And then there was Thomas Jones, who rushed for 320 yards. There were just so many positive things.” That’s all you have to do. You’ve taken something completely negative and done nothing but make it a positive thing by talking about your teammates. It’s such a simple thing, and it really builds up everybody else.
I even had the assistant coaches do the same thing. Our defensive coordinator, Mike Pettine, talks about Dennis Thurman, who talks about Jeff Weeks, who talks about Bob Sutton. Trust me—when somebody says something nice about you, it changes your whole viewpoint. On those tough days when you’re having a hard time, instead of saying, “Man, why am I going to work?” and feeling down, think to yourself, “I can’t wait to get there.” If somebody consistently says something good about you, you want to give that to somebody else. That’s how it spreads. It’s unbelievable.
I’ve never told the media about this and I don’t know if they’ve noticed. I’m sure some of them have, but it’s not like I’m trying to trick those guys. Again, the media has a job to do. In New York, everybody believes that the media is trying to trick you or trap you. Maybe that’s true for some of them, but it doesn’t really matter. What I do know is that all of those reporters are looking for quotes and they just want some cooperation. You give them some courtesy and that goes a long way. If you tell them they can talk to anyone they want to, what are they going to complain about? You’re making their job easier, and it’s not such a hard thing to do. In the meantime, you can do some team building.
The other thing you need to understand about letting people talk is that it’s part of letting them become professionals. Are guys going to say the wrong thing from time to time? Sure, that’s how you learn. I want our guys to be more than just people who mimic what I’m saying or just say whatever I tell them to say. I want them to think. I want them to have ideas. I want to bring that guy out so he’s part of what we’re doing. The only way to do that is to let guys actually talk. They develop. Look, my owner tells me to be myself. He wants me to say what I feel. Should I tell the players something different? This is what the owner signed up for, although he probably wishes he didn’t sometimes.
The other thing I changed were the ongoing, absurdly late nights. I heard stories about how they used to call for meetings at 4 A.M., and it wasn’t a rare thing. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know why they did or didn’t do that, but it was made quite clear by Woody Johnson that he didn’t want that anymore. He didn’t feel it was productive. I’ll let him tell it in his own words:
Eric Mangini is different. He is kind of the mad scientist, as well. I guess it was something that we didn’t really know each other as well as we thought when we hired him. That’s one of the reasons we went through the kind of search process we did when we hired Rex. It was so elaborate so that we really understood what we were getting into with every candidate. One of the things I was very sensitive about was making sure we didn’t keep our coaches in the office unnecessarily. There was so much time spent there that they wouldn’t be spending time sleeping or doing something other than football, like spending time with their families or whatever it may be.
Rex assured me and we saw that in Rex—he was going to do his job and go. He’s not going to have four-in-the-morning meetings with his staff and make his coordinator wait for him. No, thank you. His management style is more akin to my own, which is “do the job and let’s go.”
When I was the defensive coordinator with Baltimore, I used to notice something. All the assistants would stay until I was done, even though I knew they were finished with their work. Like in most work environments, nobody wanted to leave before the boss. Well, after a while, I’d start leaving the facility, then just head to the mall down the street from our place. I’d go for a snack, or just kill an hour and then I’d come back. All of my assistants would be gone. I could get back to finishing whatever I had to do, and they’d get some rest.
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Now, I could go on and on with all the little things we changed with the Jets, but that’s not really the answer. Again, it’s not always about what you change. It’s about having the guts and the knowledge to leave certain things the same—to keep people who can help you—even if those people wanted your job.
As I said, when the Jets interviewed me, they also interviewed three guys from the staff: offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer; offensive line and assistant head coach Bill Callahan; and special-teams coach Mike Westhoff. You could have made a really good argument for any one of those three guys if the Jets had wanted to hire them. Schottenheimer is going to be a head coach in this league one day very soon, and I’m pushing for him. He’s a great offensive mind and his demeanor is great. You can see how much he soaked up from his dad, Marty Schottenheimer. Schott
ie doesn’t ever overreact when things are going extremely well or extremely bad. He completely keeps his composure.
Callahan was the head coach in Oakland the year they went to the Super Bowl against Tampa Bay. Before that, he had been the offensive coordinator for the Raiders under Jon Gruden, running Gruden’s version of the West Coast Offense. He made it to the title game in his first season. The next year, things fell apart, but that’s because that team was so old and all the leaders got hurt, guys like Rich Gannon, Bill Romanowski, Jerry Rice, and Tim Brown. Look, my brother was out there for five years as the defensive coordinator. I watched that team closely and I wanted them to be good—not better than our team in Baltimore, but I wanted them to be good. That team just fell apart in a hurry, and they had some really negative guys on the roster. That’s the big reason why the Raiders struggled for years. Callahan was the first guy to take the blame for that, but after you go through coaches like him, Norv Turner, and Art Shell, you start to realize it’s not just the coach. Again, that’s part of the deal in coaching. It’s not like they’re actually ever going to fire the players. You hear owners and GMs talk about dumping the players all the time, and maybe they get rid of one or two guys, but that’s only after the coach goes first. Trust me, we all get it.
The point is that I have a chance to have a guy like Callahan on my staff and I’m going to keep him. He’s been involved with offensive football for close to 30 years. He was doing a great job running the show in Nebraska after he left the Raiders. If they had just been a little more patient in Nebraska, it would have been amazing. He came to the Jets in 2008 and started working with our young guys, like Nick Mangold and D’Brickashaw Ferguson. That’s why we have one of the best lines in the league. I’m not messing that up. That’s the culture of the team you want to keep intact.