Play Like You Mean It

by Rex Ryan

  The trouble was, other teams such as Seattle (No. 4 pick), Cleveland (No. 5), and Washington (No. 13) expressed serious interest in Sanchez as the draft drew closer. At No. 17, we were sure there was no way Sanchez would be available when it was our turn to select.

  Quarterbacks, of course, are the face of a franchise. They usually make the most money and are placed under the most scrutiny. In the 10 years from 1998 to 2008, a quarterback was chosen first overall eight times in the NFL Draft. That equaled the number of times a quarterback was picked No. 1 in the previous 30 years combined.

  Honestly, quarterbacks weren’t in high demand in 2009. Stafford, Sanchez, and Freeman were considered first-round selections, but NFL staffs had to dig a lot deeper to find other early-round quarterback gems.

  That’s why the pressure was on Tannenbaum. We wanted Sanchez, and Mike needed to make a deal that would give us the top-five pick required to draft Sanchez. Tannenbaum worked his magic and turned to an unlikely source—Eric Mangini, the coach he fired after the 2008 season—to make the blockbuster trade that allowed us to draft Sanchez.

  Tannenbaum and Mangini remained on good terms and their professionalism allowed both to do what they felt was best for their teams. This was business. On the day the draft started, Tannenbaum pulled off a five-for-one deal with the Browns to give us the fifth overall pick. Many in the media called us the splash team of the draft, and that was our intention.

  To acquire Sanchez, we traded our first- and second-round choices (No. 17 and No. 52), plus three players—defensive end Kenyon Coleman, quarterback Brett Ratliff, and safety Abram Elam.

  Only Coleman was projected as a starter for us. We liked Ratliff, too, and he had the potential to be our quarterback of the future. But I believed in Sanchez and was prepared to make him the Jets’ highest-drafted quarterback since Joe Namath was selected first in the 1965 AFL Draft.

  The NFL Draft took place at Radio City Music Hall in New York City and consisted of seven rounds. It’s always a big event that attracts the die-hard fans. It’s a party. The 2009 draft was televised by both the NFL Network and ESPN and was the first to have cheerleaders. The Detroit Lions, who became the first team in NFL history to finish a season at 0-16, used the first pick in the draft to select Stafford, as expected.

  The next three picks—Baylor offensive tackle Jason Smith to the Rams, LSU defensive end Tyson Jackson to the Chiefs, and linebacker Aaron Curry to the Seahawks—were announced, though it seemed to take an eternity for each team to hand in their cards. Thankfully, it was finally our turn, and Sanchez was our man.

  The media called it an aggressive move; I called it a smart one. Mark was at his agent’s offices in Irvine, California, at the time and was watching the draft on television. He busted into a wide smile, pumped his fist, and pulled on a Jets cap. I don’t know who had the bigger grin—Mark or me.

  I also knew there were teams that were bluffing during our negotiations to trade up for Sanchez, asking way too much in return. We were on the telephone with St. Louis Rams general manager Billy Devaney. I’ve known Billy for years, and he tried to hire me once. Billy suggested they may have an interest in Mark and asked me, “Rex, if that happens, what are you going to do?” I told him I was scheduled to take the next flight out, heading to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and I was determined to talk Brett Favre into coming back to play for the Jets.

  If we hadn’t traded up, our plan was to select Florida receiver Percy Harvin. And then I was going to head straight to Mississippi to get Favre to come back to New York. Instead, I have the quarterback who will be here with me for the next 10 years, count on it.

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  Honestly, Mark and I are a lot alike. He feels a constant need to prove his doubters wrong, all those people who believe he needed to remain in college for his senior season. I am the same way.

  When I kept getting passed over for head jobs and finally was hired by the Jets, I told the team, “You know what? I am going to take it out on the NFL.” Sure, I held a grudge. I told anyone who would listen, “My guys are going to be better than they have ever been, and that’s a fact. We’re in a preseason game against Atlanta and don’t think for a second that I had forgotten what I had promised. Get frickin’ ready, because I am going to show you.” That’s just who I am. Mark Sanchez is the exact same way.

  I told Mark when we drafted him, “Hey, buddy, get ready. We’ll be together for 10 years.” And the funny thing is that 10 years would nearly be a record with the Jets for a head coach. I am the Jets’ 14th head coach since Coach Weeb Ewbank lasted 10 years (1963 to 1973) as the top man for the Jets. In fact, only Walt Michaels (1977–82) and Joe Walton (1983–89) coached longer than five consecutive years.

  The pressure in New York City is different. The New York media will kill you if you’re not successful. If I wanted security, I could have gone to St. Louis or somewhere else more forgiving and out of the glare of the major media outlets. But, no, I came to New York City because I am competitive, and that’s what I told Mark. We are going to do it; we are going to make this work.

  Among the things I love most about Mark is that he’s focused, he’s funny, and he keeps it light.

  One night after Mark, Mr. Johnson, and I ate at a Mexican restaurant—my assistants call it “Rexican” since it’s my favorite food—we headed out the door. There was a gorgeous, high-end motorcycle parked out front. What did Mark do? He straddled the thing like he was going to crank it and ride it home. I was thinking, “Oh, shit, we can’t have this.” But Mark was just having fun. He climbed off and admired it, making sure he left no smudges on the machine. That’s him. He has a quick wit and doesn’t take himself too seriously, yet he’s competitive as hell. He’s one of those “I will show you” kind of guys.

  The guy always thinks of others, too.

  I weighed 310 pounds at the start of the 2009 season and have actually gained 30 pounds since the Jets hired me. I have tried every diet known to man over the years, including a liquid diet during the 2009 training camp. I dropped 20 pounds but quickly gained it right back. I knew I was too fat, so I decided to have a lap-band procedure. It’s not an invasive procedure, but it can be dicey. A plastic band is inserted and encircles a patient’s stomach, effectively shrinking it and curbing the appetite. After I had lap-band surgery at NYU Medical Center in March 2010, Mark was the only player who telephoned and stopped by the house to see how I was feeling. I wasn’t the only member of the Ryan family that Mark cared about. He never missed one of my son Seth’s high school freshman football games. He came to every single one, sitting in the bleachers like any other fan.

  Of course, the Jets also made sure Mark could buy a ticket to Seth’s games! In June 2009, Mark became the highest-paid player in Jets history. He signed a five-year contract that included a team-record $28 million in guarantees.

  It was a credit to Tannenbaum and Mark’s representatives—David Dunn and Mark’s brother, Nick Sanchez—to get the deal done so quickly. Sanchez also handled the announcement of his contract with his usual grace and style. He said his contract was accompanied by a lot of responsibility, just like being the quarterback for the New York Jets. The bottom line was that Mark wanted to make sure he could be in training camp on time and compete for the starter’s role with Kellen Clemens. He was just the second of 32 first-round picks to sign, which is rare for a quarterback picked that high.

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  It should come as no surprise that Sanchez’s family helped prepare him to be a success on and off the field. Mark’s father, Nick Sr., a fireman and former army sergeant and junior college quarterback, taught his three sons the importance of leadership and put them through a rigorous workout routine to prepare them for sports. Mark’s mother, Olga, focused on teaching them the importance of manners and generosity. As an infant, Mark attended the football games of his oldest brother, Nick, in a stroller. He was the water boy when his brother Brandon played. Mark’s parents made it a point to make sure their sons
could be best friends for life.

  Sanchez is what our quarterbacks coach Matt Cavanaugh calls a “people pleaser”—an engaging, but maybe sometimes naïve, person who wants to help everyone and make everyone happy. In an interview, Cavanaugh once very correctly told Greg Bishop of the New York Times: “Quite honestly, I tell him sometimes you better learn how to say no. Sometimes, he gets distracted, and we’ve got to pull the reins in. You’re known and admired because of the game you play. You don’t want to forget that.”

  —————

  Mark also has openly embraced being a role model for children, especially those who share his Mexican-American heritage. At USC, he had a rabid following, with fans often wearing Mexican luchador wrestling masks and sombreros, and chanting “Viva Sanchez.” As Ohm Youngmisuk of the New York Daily News wrote, “Sanchez represents so much more than the latest Hollywood quarterback from Southern Cal who likes to surf, play the guitar and sing James Taylor songs to his mother.”

  Other quarterbacks of Mexican descent have played in the NFL, including Tony Romo, Jeff Garcia, J. P. Losman, Joe Kapp, and Jim Plunkett. Yet Sanchez is the only person of Mexican-American heritage who has started at quarterback in the history of the NFL.

  It’s still about winning, though.

  Look what he did for us during his first two years. Twice he helped lead us to one win away from the Super Bowl. He has shown the competitive fire, the pocket presence, and the awareness that, in my opinion, make quarterbacks special. Yes, he has occasionally been mistake prone, but I could see steady progress in his ability to read defenses, to put himself in the right positions to make plays, and to trust his receivers. Mark is mature enough to take the praise with the criticism.

  Mark is also a well-rounded guy. He has lots of interests outside of football, including theater. He loves attending Broadway plays—he was even a presenter at the 2010 Tony Awards.

  And I’m here to tell you his character is top-notch. I’ve never seen a young man who always puts his teammates and team personnel first. He took D’Brickashaw Ferguson to the White House and equipment manager Vito Contento to watch the Mets. Sanchez bought shoes for each player he tossed a touchdown to during his rookie season.

  During the off-season in July 2010, Sanchez took the initiative to work with his offense in a setting away from the team’s practice facilities in Florham Park, New Jersey. The workouts were called “Jets Camp West” and were held in Mission Viejo, California, at Sanchez’s high school. A number of players, including receivers Santonio Holmes, Jerricho Cotchery, Larry Taylor, and David Clowney, tight end Dustin Keller, and quarterback Kevin O’Connell, participated.

  Sanchez used the video cutups of each receiver from the 2009 season, and they’d meet for an hour or so to discuss how they could all improve. Mark also ordered all the equipment for the players, from their shoes to their pants to their specially designed jerseys that said “Jets West.” It looked like a crayon drawing of an airplane. Mark arranged for the players to stay at this phenomenal place.

  I took my son Seth out to California to visit Mark during that time. He ran routes and even won a quarterback challenge over Sanchez in one of the little contests Mark had set up for the guys to work on to sharpen their skills. They’d throw up Gatorade bottles and had to hit them with the ball on the way down. It takes a perfect throw. They also had to hit the goalpost crossbar. Seth hit it two times in a row to win it. It was just hilarious to watch.

  Mark made sure all the players also enjoyed some good leisure time together, playing golf and attending Major League Baseball’s All-Star festivities in nearby Anaheim and the Espy Awards. You name it and Sanchez did it. He had everything arranged to help HIS team grow together.

  That’s Mark—he’s all about doing the little things. And Mark knows that little things add up to big things. He’s a winner.

  12. Filling Out the Roster

  You have to do two things after you take over an organization. First, get rid of the guys who don’t fit your system, be it mentally or physically. Second, bring in guys who do fit your system. Two guys I dumped in a hurry were tight end Chris Baker and linebacker Eric Barton. Take Barton, for example: His idea of trying to motivate Vernon Gholston was to rip the guy, yelling at him all the time about how he wasn’t giving enough effort, that he wasn’t playing hard, that he wasn’t measuring up. That’s not showing respect. Those guys never respected the guys they played with. They were negative guys, and I’m not going to have negative guys on my team. That was the message I got from the people I talked to in our organization.

  When I arrived in New York I used a different tactic to learn about our players. I talked to lots of people, like our equipment guy. You’d be surprised at how much the equipment guys on a team know about the locker room and what the players are really like—and no one ever asks their opinions. It was the same concept that the Jets used when they were looking at the head coach candidates. I talked to the people who were around the players the most. I wanted to see how the players treated other people on staff, the people who have to help them every day—whether it’s getting a pair of socks for practice or getting a DVD of some plays they want to study when they go home. If you just talk to the players you only get one view, and players have a hard time being really straight about the guys they play with—and that’s understandable. In fact, it’s kind of important for those guys to really stick together, because they’re the ones who fight together. They have to deal with the little things they don’t like about each other and still be able to work as a unit, to trust each other. That’s why I had to ask around to get the whole picture. It was hard, because when I was about to make some of the moves I knew were necessary, some guys came up to me and said, “Rex, you’ll love that guy. He’s a great player.” No, I knew what kind of leaders they were by that point and I didn’t want them on my team. Our first year, we got rid of about nine players on the defense, including three or four starters.

  Clearly, those decisions didn’t hurt us, because we ended up No. 1 in the league in defense. After the 2009 season, I traded Kerry Rhodes, another guy who didn’t fit. He was a selfish-ass guy. He wouldn’t work, and he was a Hollywood type, flashy and needing attention. I don’t mind flashy, but your work ethic had better back it up. He was a talented SOB, that’s for sure, but he wasn’t one of us. So we traded him. For most of those guys I let go, I didn’t even wait to see if I could trade them; I just got rid of them. What you have to understand is that we’re not running a day-care center here with the Jets. I’m not trying to have a group of guys who sit around the camp-fire singing songs. Heck, if you saw Hard Knocks, then you know there probably aren’t too many day-care centers that would allow me in the front door these days. I can see it now: preschool teachers cringing as they imagine my pep talk: “Hey, kid, that’s a great f—ing finger painting.” I will say this about any preschool I might go to—I know we’d have a great time. Hit the playground and wrap things up on a positive note … “Let’s go snack!” I’d be a hero.

  Anyway, my point is this: There are times you have to correct people by getting on them, really laying into them; however, you had better have a strong foundation of positive thought so they’ll be able to deal with it when you give them an earful. If you’re always telling a guy, “You suck,” how long do you think it’s going to be before he tunes you out? Really, that kind of ripping approach just doesn’t cut it unless a guy trusts you and believes you’re trying to help him.

  The toughest decision I had to make coming to the Jets in 2009 was about Brett Favre. After I got the Jets job in January, I had a conversation with Favre and told him I’d be happy to have him come back. Part of me really wanted to coach Favre and I think we would have been great with him, even for the $15 million he was supposed to cost us if we kept him; but he said he was retiring, and I could just feel that he didn’t want to play here again. It was obvious he wanted to play for Minnesota so that he could try to get his revenge on Green Bay. It’s funny—whe
n I got the job, Adalius Thomas, who played for me in Baltimore and then went up to New England as a free agent, and knows Favre really well, was telling Favre, “You’re crazy, you should want to play for Rex with the Jets.” But Favre wanted to stick it to Green Bay. I get it. He told us “No” in February and announced on February 11 that he was retiring. (Not that anybody in the media believed it.) In fact, I remember Woody Johnson joking that Favre was like that Sears commercial where he wants to buy a TV but can’t make a decision.

  Anyway, we had come to the conclusion that we were going to go get a young quarterback in the draft. As long as we could do that, we’d let Favre go after the draft, and that’s what we did. Now, if we hadn’t drafted Mark Sanchez, I would have flown down to Mississippi just like Brad Childress did, and I would have brought Favre back to New York no matter what it took … but that wasn’t really our first choice.

  We didn’t want to wait for Favre and have our whole team held hostage by his off-season routine. We needed leaders in the locker room right away, not in a few months. I understand that Favre sits around in the off-season and doesn’t know what he wants to do about the upcoming season. Heck, I know plenty of veteran players who don’t want to be around for the off-season. Really, how much more is a guy like Ray Lewis or some other 10-year vet going to get out of the entire off-season program? But you see, the off-season is about everybody being there and working together. You develop many of the relationships between guys by having them work together. Football is a game about collective suffering. It’s about guys putting the pressure on each other to fight through the pain so they can make sure they’re ready in games. For a quarterback, there’s even more of that. You have to be in synch with your receivers and understand where they want the ball. The other thing is (and you hear this especially from the offensive coaches), the quarterback has to be your hardest worker. He has to be the guy who is first in and last out—especially a guy like Favre, who is the face of the team. If he doesn’t think he has to put in the time, what are the rest of the guys going to think?