Play Like You Mean It

by Rex Ryan

  Oh, that went over big. I had to stop them from throwing flowers. The love was just too much for me to handle. Once that was over and I was done meeting with the MMA trainers, Glazer and I were on the way out and who did I run into again but this same guy. Only this time he had a bunch of his buddies, and they were cussing at me and giving me the finger. I’d had enough at this point and flipped him the bird. The next day, there was a picture of me in the New York Daily News and I was thinking, “Oh, crap, what am I going to do now?”

  I’d been there before, in even worse situations, which probably hurt my chances of getting a head coaching job in the past. In other words, I know how much a mistake can hurt your career. It can take away your chance to chase your dreams. I know what players who make mistakes go through, and I think I know how they feel. I’m not afraid to share my past with my players because, frankly, it lets them know that I know how they feel and, for some, it gives them a connection to me.

  I think Cromartie feels that, because he seemed so comfortable coming to play for us right away. He really settled in here with the Jets; he just needed a change of scenery. From what I hear, he got to the point that he was butting heads with a lot of people in San Diego. The front office (they seem to butt heads with a lot of guys), the coaches, teammates—it just got real sour. Again, that stuff happens. They said he was a bad teammate, but I know otherwise.

  Just like Holmes, players like Cromartie don’t come around very often. I remember working him out when he was coming out of Florida State. Now, remember this: He missed the whole season before he was drafted with a knee injury and this guy was so talented, he was still a first-round pick. That’s how great of an athlete we’re talking about. When I saw him way back then, it was the most freakish workout I have ever seen. Ever. He has long arms, long legs; he’s 6-foot-2 and has amazing acceleration. He is one of those guys who can throttle his speed up or down and you don’t even notice it. He just glides. Oh yeah, and his hands are amazing. First, they’re huge. Second, he can catch absolutely anything: tipped balls, leaping one-handed grabs, everything. He had three interceptions in one game against Peyton Manning, including a one-handed grab along the sideline. Then there was that 109-yard return of a missed field goal he once had. Go find that on Youtube someday. He leaps up to grab the ball with one hand, manages to land inbounds, and then returns the thing. I mean, like I said, he is freakishly good.

  Cromartie was just the guy we needed to play the defense we really wanted to play. Yeah, he’s not a great tackler, but he’s fearless when he’s covering a wide receiver. Early in the 2010 season, we put him up against Randy Moss twice, the first time when Moss was with New England after Revis got hurt and then again after Moss was traded to Minnesota. Moss had one big catch against Cromartie for a touchdown, but otherwise Cro was all over Moss—shut him down completely. We needed him badly, because with the way we play defense, we have to have man-coverage guys. I need a guy who can play cover one, which is where you have only one safety behind you. Sometimes you have to play cover zero, where we’re not giving you any help over the top, no safety at all. He matched up on Randy Moss like it was nothing. He just went out there and said, “Okay, I’ve got to cover Randy Moss man coverage. No problem.” Where most guys wouldn’t sleep all week, Cromartie was ready to go.

  So we made the deal to get Cromartie. Again, he had one year left on his contract. I knew his agent, Gary Wichard, really well and that helped make Cromartie happy. Now, obviously, he has made some mistakes and made his life difficult with all the kids all over the country, but he’s not hiding from it. He’s not running away from trying to be a good dad. He talks to his kids all the time, either by phone or by computer, doing the video chat. I think he honestly wants to be a good father, but that’s hard in this situation. That has to be pressure on a guy. On top of that, you’re dealing with a lot of women in your life. That’s not easy. You have lawyers and money to pay. Hey, it’s hard to be a good dad even when you remain married to the child’s mother!

  The first guy we picked up who people really wondered about was Braylon Edwards, who we traded for in the 2009 season when the Browns wanted to dump him. I heard all the bad stuff about Edwards from the Cleveland coaches, but let me tell you the one person I talked to who really mattered: my brother Rob, who had been there for about nine months when we made the deal. My brother told me, “Don’t worry about it, Rex, you’ll love this guy.” Rob saw through all the negativity and the anger from the team and from the kid. That was a bad situation with the team trying to retool. That happens. At the time, Cleveland was going through a big rebuilding phase. They got rid of tight end Kellen Winslow before the season, then cleared some other guys out, too. I think Edwards was getting fed up with it and didn’t like the town anymore. At least, that’s what he said. I heard all kinds of stuff about how he dropped balls and didn’t block.

  Well, Edwards gets here, and let me tell you, we couldn’t have made the playoffs that first year without him and all the plays he made, especially all the great blocking down the field. Did he drop some balls? Yeah, but all receivers drop some balls, and we continue to work on that with him. We’re going to do whatever we can to help him. In the meantime, he’s doing whatever he can to help us win, sacrificing himself and his stats, and throwing his body around. I’m serious when I say that he is a huge part of our running game. When he lined up for us, he was so dominant that he was getting double-teamed, which was opening up the running game. Then he was blocking, which helped us get some big runs.

  He may have looked like a risk to some, but I’ll take a risk on a guy like this every day of the week.

  Finally, we went and got Tomlinson and Taylor last year. Again, in my mind, this is not a risk. Yeah, they have some mileage, but this is football. It’s not like I’m re-creating the Over the Hill Gang. You pick and choose a couple of spots. With L.T., we had a tough choice to make on whether we were going to keep Thomas Jones or not, and he ended up at a place where he was earning more money than we thought we could pay. I love Thomas Jones, he’s my kind of guy. He’s going to get you that tough yard, just like he did on that big fourth down we had in the 2009 playoff game at San Diego. We also had Shonn Greene at the time. As much as I love Greene, I wanted Jones in there for that play and he got it.

  Unfortunately, when you have money decisions to make, it’s tough. Jones was going to make something like $5.8 million with us in 2010, and it was more than we could afford with all the other moves we had to make, like re-signing Revis, Mangold, and Ferguson. We took a gamble by letting him go and going after L.T., especially when L.T. went up to Minnesota and they offered more than we did. This is where I went on a serious sales job. I called everybody L.T. knows. I even called his wife, LaTorsha, and told her how much L.T. meant to us, and how we needed him so badly. I did the same thing with Taylor. I called and called and called. I knew Taylor wanted to go back to Miami, but Bill Parcells wasn’t going to do it. I respect Parcells a lot, but if he’s going to turn down a guy like Taylor, I’ll gladly take him.

  With L.T., it was a little different. Things just weren’t working out in San Diego. Part of it was just bad luck. He had been hurt his last couple of years in San Diego. During the playoffs in 2007, the Chargers made it to the AFC Championship Game, but he carried only two times and they lost at New England. The guy had a bad groin injury; what can you do? The next year, he opened the season and got a toe injury but gutted it through every game, but then it was the same thing in the playoffs. He could only carry it five times in the first playoff game, and then he couldn’t play after that. That was frustrating for everybody.

  In the end, it seemed to me like L.T. didn’t feel appreciated there anymore. You don’t let that happen with great players. Trust me, if you treat guys like that, what does that say to the rest of the locker room? It’s like broadcasting the message “We don’t care how hard you work, we’re going to treat you like a piece of meat in the end.” Look, players get it. They know if they’re
not good enough, the team isn’t keeping them, especially when salaries mean so much. Regardless, there’s still a way you treat people. You don’t make a guy who works that hard twist in the wind. The Chargers did that during the 2009 off-season. They busted his chops over money, and they made it public and it set the whole tone for the 2009 season. Tomlinson had another down year, gaining only 730 yards. They were not playing him on third downs, and against us in the playoffs, he got only 12 carries and we held him to 24 yards.

  Despite all that, I could see he was just a little off in his game. Plus, the Chargers were having offensive line problems all year, so the timing on that team was never right. On top of everything, they had Philip Rivers, who was becoming one hell of a quarterback. I don’t think people realize just how great that guy is. You’re talking about this era’s version of Dan Marino, the way he gets rid of the ball so quickly and accurately. He may not have a cannon arm, but he’s one of the best deep throwers in the game. What I was seeing out of L.T. as I was watching him that season was a guy who just needed to heal his body a little and get with a solid offensive line. You could see by the way he was running that he still loved the game. He was just frustrated. The kid is a warrior, a guy with a lot of pride. By that time, everybody in the NFL knew the Chargers were letting him go, so when we had to make our decision on Thomas Jones, it was time to go get L.T.

  It’s funny—I had my lap-band surgery at the same time that L.T. was making his final decision on whether he was playing for us or for the Vikings. When I woke up from surgery, the very first thing I asked was “Did we sign L.T.?” I just knew that if we did, we were getting one really motivated guy. He was going to prove people wrong, and he certainly showed that all training camp and all season.

  With Taylor, I had the same idea. You’re talking about one of the best all-around athletes the league has ever had. He’s a great edge pass rusher, terrific in coverage, great motor, everything you want with a guy who plays that position. Most important, he has amazing pride and is very driven. You just see it in how the guy walks around. Clearly, he’s a good-looking guy, one of those guys who could be on the cover of GQ or People magazine every week. I know he has big plans to get into the movie business, too. That’s great for J.T. You can just tell how serious he is about being good at everything.

  So again, the only risk we were taking is that both L.T. and Jason didn’t get hurt. Neither one ended up playing full-time in 2010, but they both ended up being terrific for the Jets this postseason. L.T. started a lot of games, and we mixed it up and had Greene carry the ball a lot. He’s a beast. With Taylor, he was in there mostly on passing downs, and both guys were really effective. If we manage the situation right, which is what they pay me to do as coach, the truth is that you can’t look at either of these as real risks.

  —————

  So that’s how you build a team. You look for opportunities—moments some call risks—and you figure out how to manage those moments to create BIG moments. The five guys showed that, in fact, this can be done and done well!

  15. Sharing the Big Apple

  One of the biggest challenges, and one of the reasons I think I am the perfect fit for the Jets, is that they are the ultimate underdog team. When people ask me what it’s like to share New York with the Giants, my response is always I am not sharing it with them—they are sharing it with me.

  Some people like to say the Giants are the big brother team and the Jets are the little brother team. I know it’s going to piss off every Giants fan to hear this, but here you go: I really don’t care. We came to New York City to be the best team in the NFL, not just the best team in New York City. And I have news for you: We are the better team. We’re the big brother. People might say they are the big, bad Giants, but we are not the same old Jets. That was the big thing in 2009, my first year. We were the same old Jets? Oh, you mean the same old Jets who led the league in defense? The same old Jets who led the league in rushing? The same old Jets who have been to back-to-back AFC Championship Games and are considered serious Super Bowl contenders going forward?

  I know the Giants were in New York first and are considered part of the old guard. They had a lot of success when Bill Parcells was the coach and they recently won a Super Bowl (2007), so in a way they have had a much richer tradition than the Jets. They are based in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and the Jets were Long Island’s team, so lines had been drawn in the sand long ago.

  I am going to be honest, though. To me, it seems clear that right now we are the better team and we are going to remain the better team for the next 10 years. Whether you like it or not, those are the facts, and that’s what is going to happen. I know it’s going to happen because our style of football is different. We are going to take over the town whether the Giants like it or not, so those fans on the fence that like both teams are going to be Jets fans in the end. The truth is, if I am going to watch one game, I am going to see the Jets, without a doubt. We are better.

  I love the fact that people tell me that no head coach has coached past six years with the Jets since 1990. Bruce Coslet (1990-93), Pete Carroll (1994), Herman Edwards (2001-05), and all of these guys—none of them made it six years. Even an agent for one of my own players told me, “Quite honestly, Rex, we have got to do what’s best. You are not going to be here.”

  That definitely got a response from me: “Number one, you are dead-ass wrong. I’m going to be here as long as I want to be here. It’s going to be hard to fire ol’ Rex with the success we are getting ready to have.”

  I am a coach who’s big enough for this city, and I don’t mean that because of my waistline. This city is filled with heroes from all walks of life, and they want us to go for it all. They expect us to go for it all. I’m not a coach who is going to sit quietly by, be a bump on a log, and not stand up for our team, their team. I’m not that kind of coach. I never have been and I never will be

  I have promised from day one what the New York Jets would be. I promised we were going to be the most physical football team in the NFL. We were—check. I promised we would have the most dominant defense in the NFL. Check. I promised we would have an all-weather offense that would run the ball when we needed to. Check. We have one major thing left—we have to win a Super Bowl. That’s it. We’ve come pretty darn close in my first two years and we’re well on our way. That’s the last thing on our original list of things to check off.

  I told our team when I arrived that I wanted to be the team in the NFL that nobody wanted to play. By the end of both the 2009 and 2010 seasons, I could promise that nobody wanted to play us. We established that in my first season and we built on it in my second. In one year we were able to capture that identity, and that’s what bodes so well for us moving forward. We’re going to tell you what we’re going to do—and then we’re going to go out and kick your ass. That was the bravado I wanted to have with our team. We are not a fly-under-the-radar team. How can you be that kind of team in New York, the most populous city in the United States? New York exerts a powerful influence over life, from finance to athletics to entertainment to the news media. It’s my kind of city, and the Jets are my kind of team. I know we have a lot of bull’s-eyes on our back, but you know what? That’s okay, because we are going to plant a bull’s-eye on your chest, and that’s the difference. That’s our mentality. That’s my mentality. We don’t have to sneak up on you; we are coming right at you.

  Our opponents know that they have to play their asses off to beat us. I know there are teams and players out there who say, “I can’t wait to beat that loudmouth. I can’t wait to kick the shit out of the Jets.” Well, when that ball is kicked off, you will get the chance to prove it and kick our ass. We’ll see if you can do it. I think that’s part of the chip on our shoulder, being the younger brother in town to the older brother Giants. (Notice, though—I didn’t say we are the little brother.) That’s the mentality that we embrace in New York. People say I need to be careful what I say because of the media in New
York City. Why? Who gives a shit? All we have to do is go out and win. If we don’t win, they are going to laugh at us anyway.

  I love New York City, the Big Apple. Come on, it’s a sports town. The New York City metropolitan area has nine teams in the four major North American professional sports leagues, each of which also has its headquarters in the city. The state is actually represented in the NFL by three teams—the Jets, Giants, and Buffalo Bills. Yes, the Bills, the only NFL team that actually plays in the state of New York. The Jets and the Giants play in the New Meadowlands Stadium in nearby East Rutherford, New Jersey. Like I mentioned earlier, the Giants have always been considered by many people to be the more popular team because they have been around the longest. The Giants, who have the third most titles in NFL history with seven, joined the league in 1925. To tell you what kind of infant state the NFL was in back then, there were five teams that joined the league that year. The Giants are the only one still around. The Jets, who were originally called the New York Titans, were founded in 1960 as a charter member of the American Football League. They changed their name to the Jets in 1963 and joined the NFL as part of the AFL/NFL merger in 1970 (45 years after the Giants).

  I loved the Jets as a kid. They were my team. As I said earlier, my dad was the Jets’ linebackers coach from 1968 to 1975 and helped the team win Super Bowl III in 1969 against the Baltimore Colts. That game is regarded as one of the greatest upsets in sports history and was the first game officially known as the “Super Bowl.” The Jets and “Broadway” Joe Namath beat the Colts 16-7, giving the AFL its first Super Bowl victory. Namath guaranteed a victory in that game, and his bravado brought much-needed interest to the game since the Colts were nearly a 20-point favorite. Many people regarded Namath as an arrogant loudmouth—now, who does that sound like?—and that gave them more reason than ever to root against him, but Joe had his supporters and they happily applauded his bravado. I know the entire history of the Jets. Everybody just kind of looked down on them while I celebrated their history. If I had been offered the job of head coach by the Giants at the same time as the Jets, it still would have been an easy choice. I’d pick the Jets, because that’s who I am.