New York Jets Head Coach Rex Ryan has been the catalyst for the franchise’s newfound confidence and winning attitude.
The New York Jets are talking themselves up to be huge, and have proved it against two of the league’s best quarterbacks. The Jets took back-to-back wins on the road in the playoffs to advance to the AFC championship game for the second straight season, but the first ended in a loss to the Indianapolis Colts. Rex Ryan and the Jets thought they were the better of the two teams and should have gone to the Super Bowl, and maybe he was right. The Colts lost to the Saints in an embarrassing move to lose the Super Bowl. He took a personal vendetta to the AFC wild card playoff game against Manning and the Colts this season and shut down the hall-of-fame quarterback for a decisive win.
This only led to an even better AFC Division playoff game — round three of what was thought to be a brawl. A few weeks earlier the New England Patriots embarrassed the New York Jets 45-3, making the gap between the two seem wider than it really was. Rex Ryan took another personal vendetta to this game with Tom Brady and the Patriots team as a whole. His players latched on and unleashed a whirlwind of trash talk towards New England. Everyone thought this swagger would only fuel Bill Belichick and Tom Brady’s animosity towards the Jets and have them scheme up another precise game plan that would lead to another humiliating defeat for the Jets. Everyone couldn’t have been more wrong.
Rex Ryan gives the Jets such bravado that they feel they can beat any team they face. Some see this as arrogant and brash, but it’s really turning out to be superb. Ryan lets his team boast, taunt, brag, celebrate and do almost anything they please because he has a team of players that shine under the New York spotlight. And when the Jets win like they have been, against who they have been beating, it makes them that much harder to beat, because their “we’re better than you and we know it” attitude is that much harder to break.
Ryan has brought a wide range of attention that was never on the Jets before. This attention has the Jets stealing the city away from the New York Giants, and has Empire State Building shining green in support of the Jets rather than the blue that looked to be there earlier in the season. Confidence beat discipline. The Jets topped uptight Giants’ Head Coach Tom Coughlin for the city, and beat apathetic New England’s Head Coach Bill Belichick to reiterate it.
But what goes up must come down. The Jets need to ride the wave Ryan has them on for as long as they can. Reaching the AFC Championship Game — on the road — with a rookie head coach and a rookie quarterback is amazing, but if the Jets catch an unlucky break and miss the playoffs a few times, there is going to be heavy scrutiny. If the swagger breaks, so does the team. And with the string of negative media attention Ryan has been getting over the course of his two years, he needs to win. Another big slip and a coach with a losing record would have been gone if they supplied the same amount of negative attention that Ryan has brought towards team owner Woody Johnson and the New York Jets.
The Jets are one win away from the Super Bowl and could have the city in an uproar if they were to win. Rex Ryan plays his game and he plays it well; many might not like it, but he accomplishes what he says he’s going to do, no matter how rough it may be
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