He was a popular coach in New York, emerging into the big brother after he changed the culture briefly for the minority football franchise in town. But now, he’s not best known as Rex Ryan but Talksaurus Rex for weeping and blabbering too much.
There is a circus that has drawn much tension and a ruckus after the Jets’ season-ending 19-17 loss to the Miami Dolphins, and because he’s persistently uttering drivel as the most annoying blowhard in sports, Ryan should buy a clown suit, wear goofy shoes and emerge from the tunnel onto the field next season with a red nose. A clown he is, and he has gradually torn down team chemistry and maintenance to divide a disjointed locker room.
By now, he is well aware of his enemies, ridiculed in local tabloids when he spent an entire season running his mouth and never backing up his trash talk, a bunch of tiring hoopla that heralded disturbance nationwide each week. It bothered our senses, it peeved our souls, yet we listened and laughed at him when the nonsense hijacked front page headlines in every tabloid, much of it musings from Ryan regarding his team’s presumed supremacy.
As a head coach, though he has proven to be a crafty defensive specialist, he’s the town’s biggest loser and acted like a sore loser following the final game of the season, then cried even louder on his way out the team’s facility. For all the garbage he utters on a regular basis, for all his cartoonish antics in press conferences weekly, Ryan is football’s biggest joke. His nonsensical, obnoxious smack-talk is maybe the most irritating example yet of why his team continue to struggle and miss the postseason.
He is enthusiastic enough about coaching and inheriting wins, no doubt, but an abrasive braggart. He’s disgusted to know, as a polarizing head coach of the National Football League in a town where bashers and critics can be cruel, just as the business itself can be harsh, that the Jets missed the playoffs built with so much talent enough to reach new heights. This is all the reason, as Ryan refused to shut up and let the game speak for itself, Giants running back Brandon Jacobs threatened to punch him in the face and yelled after the game, “Time to shut up, fat boy!”
And meanwhile, he welcomed the blame after the Jets lost the fight to the Giants, not even close to being the likable franchise in New York, but the laughingstock as their in-town rivals hold bragging rights for at least another season. Watching it all unfold, fortunate enough that he can salvage his coaching job despite a lousy season, he has given himself a bad name disdained by a few players and a vast majority of fans locally.
The town, like most, has animosity toward Ryan, a disliked man characterized as a big-mouthed and big-belly coach from what Jacobs called him when he bitterly ripped the clown. The noise drags on, the buzz circulates the Jets in a negative way, nettling our senses only to make us dislike Ryan even more so and become his newfound enemy. The drama comes when the Jets are now scrutinized after a late-season meltdown, after Rex motivated opponents to beat them by his trash talking and after Gang Green failed to clinch a playoff spot for the first time in Ryan’s three-year tenure.
Running into a crisis, where wide receiver Santonio Holmes was named team captain but never has been a leader for his selfish, bad attitude that has ruined his credibility, he must take accountability for enabling anarchy in the locker room. The issue here is that the Jets had fallen apart, as infighting clutter and a major chemistry problem behind close doors destroyed continuity and caused the team to perform poorly. There is nothing else that seems wrong, except that Rex’s team can’t come together as a whole, a divided group with no willpower or asperity as his words are dissent from a practical point of view.
There supposedly is not another man in the land who tell jokes about his belly or yaps endlessly, the frenzied trash talker losing control of his fallen Jets. The toppling of this team, first by Ryan naming Holmes a captain, created friction in a divided locker room when Holmes and quarterback Mark Sanchez feuded in a team meeting. It’s tough to play through distractions, especially with a problem-child pouting on the field and in the huddle last Sunday benched by offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer late in the fourth quarter in Miami.
The other day, following a season that ended so miserably and from a disastrous scenario, the players cleaned out their lockers. But just as the Jets dropped, Holmes declined as well and finished in Miami without catching a pass only targeted once. And while he was shut out for the first time in his career — weeping in front of his locker mad — one player called him a “cancer.”
It’s a shame that Ryan and the Jets have been overshadowed by scrutiny from all the national attention given to the second-best team in New York, primarily because they are a laughable news mantra. They are erratic, really, disappointing their fans as life in the Big Apple turns, quite honestly, egregious and mind-boggling. Rest assured he’s not laughing now seen in tears during a meeting with his players a few days ago, reflecting on such a faulty letdown this season, and again, the Jets derailed in what was supposed to be a breakthrough season.
Three weeks ago, Sanchez and veteran running back LaDainian Tomlinson had a feeling that Ryan’s trash talking, boastful words in sports that usually inspire determined opponents to compete harder, would get them into trouble and indeed it cost the Jets. The point is, in the midst of the pettiest downfall, a problem that has poisoned the one franchise built with so much talent and gifted stars, Ryan is the world’s biggest joke and Giants coach Tom Coughlin can have the last laugh after all.
For all the craziness in one season – from the pessimistic talk about him having the audacity to guarantee the Super Bowl, he has failed to back up his bad choice of words and stumbled either late in the season or during the playoffs. He can’t resist bragging or promising for better results every week, to bring forth headlines that are annoying. This was such an unfulfilled season – ending in the kind of humiliation no one ever anticipated, and unnecessary bravado destroyed not only the team’s positive outlook but illustrated much idiocy for a man who never learned to keep his mouth shut.
It’s time to cut ties with Ryan. Come on, executives. Stop it. Get him out of there. It doesn’t even matter that the Jets improved to some degree with him at the helm, but we can also come to the realization in which he’s all hype, if nothing else. He’d make for an entertaining comedian on Broadway, but as far as coaching an NFL team, he won’t ever establish a foundation or succeed in such a demanding profession. He regrets not making the playoffs, not winning enough games and not backing up his words.
This is your life, Rex, a disappointing one.
It’s right there for owner Woody Johnson to see. This is no excuse for a horrendous season, but it was a major problem when Holmes quit on his team and acted like a bad-tempered child, when Ryan lost his team and players trust and when Sanchez seemed unhappy. The epidemic suffering of any team can ultimately unravel, with the lack of discipline or leadership. It’s now an offseason of turmoil, especially when Ryan broke his promise, and yes, they are meant to be broken at times. But in all, the Jets should have advanced to the playoffs.
No ifs ands or buts.
If one thing is promising, it’s Ryan’s mouth that normally gets him in trouble and indeed it has created enough madness at the end of what was a dreadful series of failures.
