Play Like You Mean It: Passion, Laughs, and Leadership in the World's Most Beautiful Game (24 page)

Let’s go. Let’s get it done. This back is going to block you. What are you going to do? I am going to run his ass over. I am going to kick his ass. That’s right. If he beats you, okay. I am going to beat his ass on the next play. I am telling you, making mistakes on the field is part of the game. It’s the part where we will come back and create something. That old saying “Momentum is heading our way” is the way we approach it. Even if we are down—if we go into halftime and we’re down 7-0—we say we have them right where we want them.

Think about it. First of all, the skill of some of these players is amazing. The competitive balance of the league is always in play, so your team might go from last to first in one year. You all have the same money. It’s fair. The system is fair and the system works. I think that’s the beauty of it all. That’s the reason the games are so competitive. How many games get down to the last minute with the game in jeopardy? The teams are so well balanced, and I think that’s a great feature of the NFL. They are trying to protect players, which I think is terrific. They are protecting the quarterbacks, protecting the guys who don’t see it coming. Even the defenders now, they are trying to do right by the players, trying to protect them. You don’t want your
players crippled. You don’t want that to happen, but there are always going to be injuries. When you play New England, you want to see Tom Brady at quarterback. The only thing that got me riled up until 2009 was hitting a defenseless defensive player. You couldn’t hit a defenseless receiver, yet you could hit a defenseless defensive player, so I am glad they cleaned that up.

Obviously, you have to build for the season, too, from start to finish. The NFL wants to extend the regular season to 18 games. In fact, they’re probably negotiating as I write this, so who knows how it will turn out? They are proposing to cut two preseason games and, in place, start the season two weeks earlier and make each team play a total of 18 games. That is, each and every member of the starting lineup must be healthy and playing for at least 18 games. Me? I like it the way it is with four preseason games. The way you adjust it, you play a quarter, then a half. You basically get five quarters in and you are ready to go by then. You go into the regular season and you are ready. You’re also given an opportunity for some of your younger players to step up and make the team. It gives you the opportunity to see what you have. If they extend the season, it will be hard sometimes to get healthy players to the game.

I hope it doesn’t change. I hope they keep it the way it is, but I doubt it. I can see them going to 18 games and two preseason games. I understand what they are saying from a fan’s perspective, that you would rather pay to see a regular-season game than a preseason game, but I’m afraid the product would suffer. At the end of the day, you want what’s best for the league. It’s a pretty good thing right now as it is. Fans complain a little bit about the preseason games, but in a way they still enjoy it because they get to watch the young guys battle. I don’t want to lose that.

All I know is I am not going to change the way I coach, the way we prepare, or how I build my team. I know we are going to be great on defense. And I want us to be great on offense, too. That’s a proven formula. I know we are a pain in the ass to play against, really a pain in the ass. Yet it’s also simple. It’s an easy philosophy to teach. Once
you learn the concepts, it’s easy to play our system. It allows you to be really creative as a coach. Let’s do this. We may blitz all corners. We may blitz whomever. We may run the ball behind the center.

If my plan works—and I honestly believe it will—I’ll join Bill Parcells as the only first-time NFL coaches in New York to rely on a kick-ass defense and a ground-and-pound running game to win a Super Bowl. And here’s the thing about Parcells: He really had to struggle to get there in 1986. That was his fourth year in the league and he almost got fired when he went 3-12-1 in 1983.

You always have that one goal, but it’s so hard to win that Super Bowl. Like they say, it doesn’t take just one or two great players. You have to have 11 good players on defense or you are not going to win. If you only have 10 good ones, they are going to exploit the other guy. So you better have 11 good ones on defense and you better be ready to chase the quarterback in the fourth quarter. On offense, you don’t have to have 11 great ones, but you have to have enough that you can put the ball where you want to and you have to be able to run it and control the line of scrimmage.

In 2009, I decided to take a more active role in the offense. Sanchez was struggling and I was being criticized for not coaching the entire team. It’s no secret that I believe in defense first, last, and always. Our entire team is built on that brashness and aggressiveness. I guess I am considered a throwback with my offensive philosophy. I’ve been called conservative. I’ve been criticized. I can handle it.

And I won’t abandon my formula. It works.

I
know what a lot of people are going to say after reading my chapter on getting guys like Bart Scott, Jim Leonhard, Marques Douglas, and all those other lunch-pail attitude guys: “Sure, Rex, all that stuff about building your team is great, but what about the risks you took on other guys? How about Santonio Holmes, Antonio Cromartie, and Braylon Edwards? They were all troublemakers on their previous teams, but you couldn’t say no to their talent. What about LaDainian Tomlinson and Jason Taylor? They both looked like they were done, but you rolled the dice that they had something left.”

No question, we brought in some interesting guys, players that other people didn’t feel like they wanted anymore. Hey, it’s just like in Baltimore when we brought in defensive tackle Sam Adams, or tight end Shannon Sharpe, who was 32 when the Ravens got him from Denver. Sharpe ended up being our biggest weapon in the passing game in the playoffs. Both Adams and Sharpe were crucial for the Ravens.

The key is, they weren’t the first guys in the door. When you’re building your team, you had better have your foundation right. It’s just like building a house. You screw up the foundation, that house is not going to stand. Well, we had foundation guys. We had Scott, Leonhard, and Douglas to be the grinders that I need, the guys who set the tone. We had some great veterans, too, like Shaun Ellis and Brandon Moore. We had some young, up-and-coming stars like Darrelle Revis, Dustin Keller, Nick Mangold, David Harris, and D’Brickashaw Ferguson—guys who were there before me. All of those guys, every one of them, is a good character guy, the kind of guy who is going to do all the work, every last thing you need. You’re going to win a lot of games. Then we added our quarterback with Mark Sanchez, so we had a guy who was young but was going to put in the work.

Now, you can take some chances. You can get some guys who have had some issues here and there because you have a foundation of players in your locker room who are going to do a couple of things for you. First, they’re setting the tone more than those new guys. The new guys have to fit in, because everybody else has already established how the team is going to be run. Second, those guys who have already set the tone for your team, they police it for you. If somebody gets out of line, they take care of it or they let the coach know what’s going on. Even then, what chances are you really taking on some of those guys? Yeah, Tomlinson and Taylor are getting up there in age, but you can’t buy that kind of character, that work ethic, and (most important) that little extra desire both those guys have. But I’ll get back to that in a minute.

With guys like Holmes, Cromartie, and Edwards, I still don’t see it as taking a chance. If you look at all of them, they have all been great players. They’ve done it on the field and they’ve done it pretty consistently. Maybe not as consistently as they wanted to, but still pretty consistently. You’re talking about a Super Bowl hero and two Pro Bowlers. These aren’t lazy guys just out of college, who have all the ability but aren’t willing to work now that they think they’ve
“made it.” These guys have all put in time. All I have to do is channel their ability and make them want to play for me.

When it comes to getting guys interested in coming to the Jets, right now, I think I’m on a roll! If you don’t believe me, check out what the players say.
Sports Illustrated
did a big poll of players this past season. They had 279 players respond this year, and yours truly came out No. 1 among coaches when players were asked, “For which other coach would you like to play?” I got 21 percent of the vote. Mike Tomlin of Pittsburgh was second at 12 percent.

I think the reason is that I focus on how to deal with guys individually. I’m going to find some way to connect with them, make them know that I’m on their side and to get them on my side.

Let’s take Santonio Holmes, for example. The first thing I did with Holmes, right after we traded for him, is I called NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell; I’m lucky, because he’s right up the road in New York. I called him and said, “Roger, I need your help. Can you come down and spend an afternoon here?” He asked what I needed, so I told him that once we got Holmes I wanted Goodell to come down and talk with Santonio after one of our minicamps. Then I said, “I’d like for you to try to bring him closer to me.” Goodell said okay, but he wanted to know what I had in mind. I said, “When the three of us sit down, I want you to take the first 10 minutes of our conversation to rip my ass in front of Santonio—about what I’ve done off the field, how I’ve embarrassed the league.” That’s all true about me. This is a couple of months after the Super Bowl, when I got fined $50,000 by the team for flipping off that fan in Miami.

But for this visit on this day, I asked the commissioner to rip me good right there in front of Santonio. Then I asked if he would turn and give both barrels to Holmes. I wanted the commissioner to let Santonio know that he hadn’t done what he should either in being a good employee in the NFL.

My goal was that at the end of that conversation, Goodell would leave … and Santonio and I would be left in the same boat. I wanted
him to know that we needed to be better, not just for the league, but for each other.

Anyway, Goodell made that trip to my office and he chewed us out, and I think it actually brought Holmes and me closer. There he was, not just out there alone feeling like he did something wrong, which had led Pittsburgh to trade him for an embarrassingly low fifth-round pick, but instead he’s hearing about how I’ve done something stupid, too, and how the league doesn’t like it. All of a sudden, I have a bond going with Holmes. Maybe I played it up a little, but it was all true. I’ve made mistakes in my life. I don’t want these guys thinking that I’m some saint. I want them to know I’m human just like they are. I wanted Holmes to understand I’m going to be in there fighting for him and I need him fighting for me. You should see it now; we’re as close as I’ve ever been with a guy after this much. He’ll come over during practice and we’ll put an arm around each other. It worked.

The other thing I did with Holmes is I went out to California at one point to see him. He was working out on his own, and since he was a new player in our organization I wanted to check in on him. Now, one thing you have to realize about this guy is that he’s as stubborn as a mule. If you try to force him to do something, he’ll go kicking and screaming. As I’ve said many times, until they know how much you care, they don’t care how much you know. I’m serious about that.

Some coaches think they can come out and bark orders and expect that players will just jump. Some will, but you’re not really forming a bond. If you really want somebody to do something, to really put their whole heart into it, you have to show you care about them, that you trust them. So I started thinking about how I could show that kid that I trusted him. Well, what’s the number-one thing that I have in my life, the thing most important to me? It’s my family, of course. So I brought my younger son Seth, who is a receiver on his football team, with me to see Holmes in California, and the favor I asked of Holmes was “Can you teach Seth about getting off press
coverage?” Then I just walked away. I left the two of them to just be together on that practice field. For an hour and a half, I left them together and Holmes was working and working. I mean, he was really into it. I don’t think he was just trying to please me; you don’t do something that long just to please the coach. I think he really felt good that I would leave my son with him, that I trusted him to take care of my kid. They just worked and worked and worked. And after that, I couldn’t get Seth away from Holmes if I tried. Holmes was phenomenal with Seth.

As a football player, Holmes is one talented guy. My last year in Baltimore, Holmes was playing for Pittsburgh and was a complete nightmare for me to deal with. The Steelers, who had won the Super Bowl the year before, had drafted this kid with the No. 25 overall pick in the 2006 draft. In fact, they traded up to get him. They had the last pick in the first round, the No. 32 pick, and moved all the way up to get him at No. 25. You have to know this—Pittsburgh isn’t very big on making moves in the draft, so you know they had to be convinced about this guy, even if he had a rough background.

Holmes grew up in Belle Glade, Florida, which is right next to this other town called Pahokee. That part of Florida is where they grow half the sugarcane in the country and a ton of citrus fruit.

And a ton of football players.

Joel Segal, an agent who has represented a great number of guys in this league over the years, represents Holmes. Segal also represents Michael Vick, Reggie Bush, and Randy Moss. We’re talking about some serious players and guys who came from really rough backgrounds. But Segal said that in all the years he has been representing guys, Holmes came from probably the toughest background he had ever seen—all kinds of brutal stuff.

That’s part of the deal with Holmes; he doesn’t have many people around him he trusts. He has a huge heart and he’s a good kid and a charismatic guy. Really, you talk to him and he’s a sweetheart of a guy, but he doesn’t trust people and that makes it hard. At the same time, it’s part of what makes guys great football players. If you want
to get out of the environment where you grew up, you have to throw yourself into the game with nothing to lose, and that’s part of the reason you see so many great players with backgrounds somewhat similar to Santonio’s.