Play Like You Mean It: Passion, Laughs, and Leadership in the World's Most Beautiful Game (4 page)

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There are two kinds of techniques in the NFL. There’s the penetration system, much like what Tampa Bay employed all those years under Monte Kiffin, who is now the defensive coordinator at Southern Cal under his son, Lane. And there’s the two-gap system, much like what Bill Belichick has installed at New England. We are probably somewhere in the middle. We are an aggressive, attacking team, but never from the outside edge—we want to go through our opponent. We call them knock ’em backs. That fits our team’s personality. Most teams in the NFL also talk about fits. How are you going to fit a play? We don’t use the f-word. Our linebackers, for instance, will be aggressive, they will run downhill, but it might not be from the same gap every time.

We put in a brand-new defense in Baltimore and the funny thing is Mike Nolan, the defensive coordinator at the time, couldn’t tell me how to coach a D-line because he had never coached it. I was the D-line coach, but I had never coached these certain techniques that we used—head up on a guy—so I established what we still call the knock ’em backs. To get my point across to my players, I found this video of a guy who was branding a horse. As he is applying the iron, the horse lifts his leg and kicks this dude right in the chest and he goes flying. I thought the horse had killed him. It was an unbelievable hit, I mean the horse kicked the shit out of him. I thought, “That’s exactly what I wanted to establish—the knock ’em back—and that’s how we would play.” I showed the video to our players and asked them, “You get the idea? We want to beat the offensive linemen to the punch. We want to knock them back.” We spent hours on the practice field. We’d
run our feet, and I wanted my defensive linemen to lock their eyes on the player across the line of scrimmage. I wanted my guy to look straight through him and I wanted my guy to bust his ass and make the tackle.

Bob Sutton, our linebackers coach, has coached football for nearly 40 years, including 17 seasons guiding officers at West Point. He told
The New York Times Magazine
, “Around the league, my friends who are coaches are studying what we do. But they can’t see what Rex is doing.” Sutton picked up our defensive playbook and said, “You could take this and give it to somebody else, and it wouldn’t work. It’s the other things he gives you besides phrases and diagrams in a playbook that make the playbook effective. Some say he’s too brash. But he’s just telling you what he really believes. This guy has some tremendous leadership skills. To me, he’s the hard-charging general who doesn’t do everything by the book but wins. He gets other people to buy in.”

I think it’s important not to do everything by the book—that’s what makes it work. I still have a lot of little kid in me, but I also don’t bullshit people. Never have, never will. I won’t piss on you and tell you it’s raining. I expect our players to be prepared, too, and we are fortunate with the Jets because we have a smart team. I am serious. Every one of our players has the responsibility to learn our defense. We give them a playbook over the summer to study and it might just be four or five of our basic installations. But if they don’t open that playbook, they will be in trouble when training camp starts. They will be behind, because that first day of camp Mike Pettine sounds like an auctioneer. He will review nearly 30 defensive packages in rapid-fire succession. This is not the first grade. We don’t ease into training camp. We want to fire bullets from our gun in that first meeting, and it’s the players’ responsibility to learn that defense. I give our owner, Woody Johnson, and general manager, Mike Tannenbaum, credit because they built a Jets team with intelligent players. Our guys are book smart and football smart, and we want them to be working at their full capacity intellectually.

Of course, a coach might have a roster filled with smart players, but you can’t coach with a broad stroke of a brush. Each player is different. There’s a psychology to motivating and teaching players, and it’s the cornerstone of what we do. We have a saying that everyone is treated fairly but everybody’s not going to be treated the same. Players who have been in the league and have played at the highest level and have put together a résumé of experience, they will be treated differently than a rookie or a player who is wet behind the ears and has been in the league just a few years. We do treat everyone fairly, but just not the same in every situation. I think our veteran players appreciate our approach.

Even with veterans, however, you still have to learn how they react to criticism. Everyone is different in that area, too. For instance, Bart Scott is a player I can dog-cuss up and down, all day Sunday, and it doesn’t bother him a bit—goes right off his back. But a guy like Shaun Ellis, well, I might have to be more careful, because he reacts differently to criticism. I simply can’t coach every player the same. Even from a teaching standpoint, there’s a difference. Safety Jim Leonhard, from Wisconsin of all places, is a smart dude. Way smarter than me, but that’s not saying much. He can flip through the playbooks and say, “Okay, I got it.” And, bingo, he does. It’s amazing. But not every player’s Einstein. We implement a variety of teaching tools to help players learn our defense—video, meetings, PowerPoint presentations, walk-throughs before and after practice. We might have more walk-throughs than any team in the NFL, but that’s okay. It’s our job as coaches to understand how guys learn the best. This is a get-it-done business, and we want to get it done—and get it done correctly.

Our approach is different than most teams’, too. We install our defense as a full group, which means every player on defense is in that room. It’s the assistant coaches’ job to separate into their respective segments and coach the individual parts. It’s as if everyone is responsible for a piece of the puzzle, but everyone is responsible to know the entire puzzle. I want our defensive backs to know what the
D-line is doing; I want the D-line to know what the defensive backs are doing. I will stand in our defense meetings and ask the cornerbacks what the nose guards’ responsibilities are in a certain package. I will ask the linebackers what the defensive ends’ job is on a certain blitz formation. It makes sense to me, because that approach creates team chemistry. Nobody wants to be the weak link. My intention isn’t to embarrass a player in meetings, but I want our guys to know they are held accountable. It’s a different deal, because we watch game film as an entire defensive unit; players don’t break into their respective position segments. Nobody can hide. If we repeatedly correct a player in front of his peers, one of two things is going to happen. He will get it right, or he will be gone.

When I was with Baltimore, Brian Billick said when a coach emphasized everything, he emphasized nothing. There are coaches in the NFL who overcoach, no question. I coached with a guy in Baltimore who each week passed out a huge packet of tips and reminders to his players. I mean, it was thick, 20 pages or so, and it had all the information he wanted his players to review about Sunday’s opponent. That’s overload. Each game when Mike Pettine passes out his tips and reminders, it’s one or two pages, max. One side is on our defensive scheme; the other side is on our opponent’s offense. We test the guys, because we want to get a feel and make sure our guys understand our plan. I am also not afraid to keep it simple, stupid.

When we play Tennessee, for example, we might want to remind our linebackers that they need to set the edge: No way can we let Tennessee running back Chris Johnson get to the outside—set the edge and turn him inside. I am a bullet-point coach, too. We are in the NFL and these players are the best of the best. I am not going to stand in front of them in a meeting and act like the Swing Doctor in golf: “Step here, wrap your thumb around the club, lock your hips, roll your hips, head down, follow through.” That’s not me. Sometimes I simply challenge my guys to line up and whip the other guy’s ass across from them on the line of scrimmage. Fans might shit because we might make millions and millions of dollars as players
and coaches, but sometimes it’s that simple. Let’s kick somebody’s ass and make a big hit.

We give our players our game plan, give them the concept of how we want it run, and we let them fail or succeed. If they fail, we as coaches get it corrected. It’s teamwork. Let them play and we will coach them on the big stuff. When I was with Baltimore, I had one guy raise his hand in a defensive meeting and ask me when I was going to collect the playbooks and check their notes. Check their notes, my ass. Class is on the practice field and in games. That’s when all of us are graded.

With veterans, for example, it’s difficult at times to break old habits. They get it done on the field, but it just might not be the way we draw it up on the board. Ray Lewis, one of the all-time great linebackers, sat in our defensive meetings in Baltimore and he prepared himself in his own way. He understood football. He was not one of those guys who look at the playbook and remember each detail. But he studied film, he understood angles, personnel groups, and what opponents would do on down-and-distance from the outside hash mark. Ed Reed was the same way. Those guys are special, but they prepared in their own way and I never had to worry about them. Nor did I micromanage them.

With the Jets, I told my defensive guys when we headed into the 2010 preseason, let’s go graduate level. We installed our scheme in our first season in 2009. They understood the basic concepts, the finer points of our plan. Now let’s take that next step mentally. Each week it’s like we pull items from a menu. We might change our blitz package, we might tweak a formation, but it’s also about remaining true to our fundamentals and technique. We reviewed three years of cutups from when I was with Baltimore, and, from a technique standpoint, we had the ability to shed blockers better than anyone in the NFL. The players may have changed over those three years, but our approach did not.

Of course, I always want the big hit. That hasn’t changed either.

In 2009, I signed linebacker Bart Scott, who I had coached in
Baltimore. When we were with the Ravens, Scott had one of the best big hits I have seen, against Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. I knew we could get to Ben if we could make him slide his pass protection a certain way at the line of scrimmage. When we watched film, we knew their center snapped the football to Ben the moment he put his head down after Ben said his cadence at the line. So Bart lined up in one spot, and the moment the center put his head down, Bart sprinted to the opposite side of the line. It was too late for Ben to audible his pass protection for the play, because the ball had been snapped. Ben thought he had backside protection, and, of course, he did not. Ben never saw Bart, who said he had hoped to God that Ben didn’t have the time to unload the football. Bart said it was the cleanest hit he ever had on a quarterback. All I know is Bart’s hit jacked up our entire defense and changed the game’s complexion. It was like watching a baseball game and seeing a guy hit an over-and-out-of-the-stadium home run.

Even baseball has a place in our football game plan when it comes to big hits.

M
y dad, Buddy Ryan, began his young adult life in foxholes as a soldier. He ended up changing the way the NFL game is played, both defensively and offensively. He was brave, he was tough, he was a leader, and he left an indelible mark on the greatest game in the world.

Who wouldn’t look up to a man like that? Who wouldn’t want to grow up to be just like that, just like his old man? You hear about that all the time. Sons of lawyers grow up wanting to be lawyers. Sons of doctors grow up wanting to be doctors.

I grew up wanting to be Buddy Ryan.

Of course, that kind of goal isn’t without some serious complications. My dad has all those great characteristics I just mentioned and, well, he was a little over the top from time to time. For instance, my dad got fired from his first job as a high school coach. He was in Gainesville, Texas, serving as both football coach and athletic director.

The only problem is that he thought he was athletic director of one sport, football. The school fired him when he spent all the money
in the budget on the football team. Likewise, my dad has never been afraid to get in someone’s face or to make a point, even a brutal one. As my older brother Jim once said: “There’s no diplomacy to Buddy. If you don’t want to hear the answer, don’t ask the question.”

As I said, my dad was that way from a very early point in his life. He grew up near a little town called Frederick, Oklahoma, as one of four brothers: my dad, Pat, D.A., and George. We’re talking about the 1930s and 1940s, when rural kids would basically fight all the time to toughen each other up. D.A., who’s real skinny, would get into a fight with George, the youngest one. George was well built, but D.A. would whip his ass, then Pat, who’s a big man, would whip D.A.’s ass, and then my dad would whip Pat’s ass like it was nothing. Then the old man, my grandfather, would whip my dad’s ass for getting into it with the other brothers. That’s just the way they all were, young, tough, hardheaded as hell. Hey, it’s genetic, what do you want me to say?

It’s like when Buddy and Pat went into the National Guard and they’d be out on these training hikes. They’d go 10 miles and my dad was right there along with him. My dad would end up carrying Pat’s pack. That’s just how tough my old man was. He would carry both his pack and his brother’s pack.

When the United States got involved in Korea, my dad went over there as a teenager. When he was 18, Buddy was in the Korean War. When I was 18, I was trying to figure out where to buy beer in college. My dad was a master sergeant in the U.S. Army. His most important job was to get guys to fight at the moment of truth. He was barely a man himself, and he was leading men in battle. Not
into
battle,
in
battle. He would jump in that foxhole, and if a guy wasn’t fighting, it was his job to get him to fight, one way or the other. If that meant he was going to have to slap the shit out of somebody, then that’s what he’d do. He made it to where you would rather fight the enemy than him. His job was about life or death.