NFL: Rex Ryan Just Doesn’t Get It

Rex Ryan has made it abundantly clear: the former Buffalo Bills head coach just doesn’t get it and possibly never will.

If you thought Rex Ryan was going to go quietly into the night after getting canned by the Buffalo Bills in December, then shame on you. Since taking the head coaching job with the New York Jets back in 2009, Ryan has been nothing short of outspoken, brash and arrogant. It’s who he is and at this point there’s no reason to believe he’s going to be anything different. With that said, it’s still stunning the 54-year old not only shows a lack of responsibility, but also chooses to cast blame on others for his troubles.

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We’ve all heard the saying, “Winning trumps all.” And it’s true in sports and in life. In the case of Rex Ryan, his cockiness and bold predictions when he first became a head coach won over many players and fans. Then again, that’s because he and the Jets were winning.

In his first two seasons as the Jets head coach, Ryan had back-to-back winning seasons for a combined record of 20-12. Although they never won a division title they did make the playoffs in those two seasons and won a total of four playoff games. Since then, it’s all been downhill.

From 2011-14 Ryan and the Jets never made a playoff appearance and didn’t have a winning record in each of those four seasons. As a result, Ryan was not-so-surprisingly fired in December 2014.

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Despite going 8-8 in 2013, finishing second in the AFC East and defensive lineman Sheldon Richardson winning the Defensive Rookie of the Year Award, Ryan stated months later after his firing on HBO’s Real Sports that he “knew we weren’t going to have a good team (in 2014) when we never did anything in free agency. I knew that.”

In that statement Ryan basically deflected blame for the team’s 4-12 record in 2014 because management wasn’t as active in free agency as he would have liked. Also, he admittedly determined the team wasn’t going to be “any good” six months before their first game. Before that offseason, didn’t Ryan have five years of decision-making in the draft and developing players from free agency and in the draft?

In the end, Ryan failed to deliver on his countless “guarantees” of Super Bowl appearances and Super Bowl victories. At first, these guarantees were nothing to take lightly because the Jets were winning and appeared to be a Super Bowl contender. After awhile though, these bold predictions became nothing more than white noise because Ryan failed to deliver on his promises and his guarantees on numerous occasions.

When the Buffalo Bills hired Ryan in the start of 2015, instead of being humbled by his experiences in New York, Rex seemed determined to prove to everyone he was the same confident and brash guy he was in New York. At his introductory press conference Ryan said, “I’m not going to let our fans down. I am not going to do that. I know it’s been 15 years since the Bills made the playoffs. Well get ready, man, we’re going. We are going.”

As usual, Ryan did not deliver on what he said he was going to do.

After two seasons with the Bills, the team never made the playoffs, never had a winning record and Ryan was fired before the team’s final game this past season. In the 15 games he did coach in during his final season, the Bills went 1-6 against teams who went on to make the playoffs. The one game he did manage to win came against at Tom Brady-less New England Patriots team.

In a recent interview with the Manish Mehta from the New York Daily News, Ryan claimed not to make excuses for the his time in Buffalo:

"“I wasn’t real lucky coming in there with the situation I did,” Ryan said. “Hey, that’s the way it goes. No excuses. We went in there and did the best we could. I wish things would have been different. I wish Sammy Watkins wouldn’t have had a broken foot and been healthy the whole year. I wish our draft picks would have played. There’s a lot of things that I wished for, but at the end of the day, I’m responsible for the product on the field.”"

Last time I checked, Ryan willingly took this job with “unlucky” circumstances and then he proceeded to tell the media the Bills were going to make the playoffs. Didn’t this Bills team that Ryan inherited have a 9-7 record the year before he got there? Didn’t the Bills defense rank No.4 in total defense and lead the NFL in sacks that same year? Yeah, the situation sounds terrible.

Not to mention, saying, “No excuses” and then listing a bunch of excuses right after is the same as berating somebody up and down and then at the end saying, “no offense.” It’s hypocritical and nonsensical.

In regards of his future coaching career Ryan went on to say:

"“The one thing about (being on TV) is that you don’t lose,” Ryan said. “You’ll remember every damn loss. But the wins? You don’t necessarily remember. So, it takes a lot out of you. I’m tired of getting [expletive]. Unless it’s a real situation, there’s no sense of getting into it again.”"

Yep you read that right. Ryan, who has a career head coaching record of 61-66 in the regular season, never won a division title in all eight attempts and who has missed the playoffs in six straight seasons is the victim in all of this.

He’s tired of getting [expletive]? Well maybe management and the fans are tired of Rex not delivering on the things he says he’s going to do. The things he promised over and over again for nearly a decade. Did he ever think of that? Maybe, just maybe some of the Ryan’s former players were tired of him not holding other players accountable.

Back in November, Ian Rapoport of NFL.com tweeted about what kind of “atmosphere” New York Jets head coach Todd Bowles inherited when he took over as the Jets head coach in 2015:

The “atmosphere” Rapoport was referring to was the poor culture of the Jets that was once accepted and tolerated by former head coach Rex Ryan. So it shouldn’t exactly have been that surprising when Buffalo Bills wide receiver Sammy Watkins was openly critical of the team shortly after Ryan was fired. When asked by ABC Buffalo how Watkins believes the team can fix their culture he stated:

"“Discipline — whatever around the locker room that needs to be addressed,” Watkins started. “Just being a professional. As players, that’s got to get fixed first. And the coaches have got to be harder on us — not scared of us. Get at us, yell at us, curse at us…. whatever can get the player to do that job the best he can, that’s what he needs to do.”"

If that’s not a direct statement about what kind of locker room Rex created and allowed in Buffalo then I don’t know what is.

The fact is, Rex isn’t a good NFL head coach. He’s a fringe NFL head coach whose lack of production ended his time in both New York and Buffalo. Every year we see players who get cut after their antics outweigh their production. The case with Rex in Buffalo was no different. If he worried more about what was going on with the actual team and less about going out of his way to make guarantees, promises and striving for media attention he may have gotten another year in Buffalo.

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Ryan is a great defensive mind. But as we’ve seen, it takes a lot more than a good football IQ to be a successful head coach. He’s a “player’s coach” to a fault because he’s too busy being the “cool uncle” than an authoritative disciplinary figure as evident by the culture of his last two teams. Instead of stepping back and realizing his situation is a direct result of his own actions, he makes excuses and plays the victim. That’s not what a successful NFL head coach and leader of men does.