Already you can hear Rex Ryan’s words bellowing through the team hotel ballroom in Seattle as he stands before his players tomorrow night in the final team meeting before the Jets play the Seahawks on Sunday at CenturyLink Field.
Those are the moments when Ryan is at his very best as a head coach, when he motivates his players through raw, unfiltered emotion, when there is not a contrived bone in his body.
Ryan knows what his 3-5 Jets face Sunday in Seattle, where the 5-4 Seahawks have won all four of their games and positively thrive in the frenetic, home environment, where the noise exceeds that of any stadium in the NFL.
Ryan knows the odds are stacked against his team, which has lost two in a row, has a struggling offense still in search of an identity and most recently looked pathetic in a home loss to the Dolphins before the bye week.
Ryan and his players know few outside of their locker room believe the Jets will beat the Seahawks. This is where he believes the new-found camaraderie among the players, something that lost its way last season, can help carry the Jets to an upset victory.
When Ryan speaks of this game, it sounds as if he embraces the adversity it presents.
“It’s a crazy thing, but the fact that it’s [in Seattle] and it can’t get much tougher a situation than it is, maybe that’s what we need, maybe that will pull this group together,’’ Ryan said.
Maybe Ryan is on to something. Maybe he is desperately grasping at straws.
Yesterday, he made a rare but admirable admission of error when he spoke of how much closer this team is to the one that the ended the season bickering a year ago, with Santonio Holmes pouting on the sideline, having been kicked out the huddle by his own teammates in Miami.
Ryan believes those days of locker room tension, something he unwittingly let fester last year, are over. He believes locker room harmony is now a strength that can pull this team through its first-half struggles.
“This team is much closer than it was last year,’’ Ryan said. “I just feel it. I sense it.’’
Ryan openly admitted he took that dynamic for granted last year after two consecutive playoff seasons.
“I wasn’t on top of it as much as I should have been, obviously,’’ Ryan said. “I really focused on it the first year in particular. The second year we kind of had it rolling pretty good and I made a bad calculation. You don’t start from where you left off. Every year, you start off from the bottom, from the floor. And that’s something I had to learn.’’
In an effort to gain a better feel for the pulse of his players, Ryan has tried to distance himself from the perception that all he cares about is defense. He has diversified.
“I’m more involved … being a part of it, being in the locker room, being down in the training room, all over the place,’’ he said.
Ryan has made it a point since training camp to bring his players together the way he felt they were in 2009 and 2010 when they went to consecutive AFC Championship games. His goal has been to get the team to the point “where guys are totally committed to each other.’’
“We’re doing that,’’ Ryan said. “It’s not showing up in wins and losses yet, but I’m confident it will.’’
So when he gathers his players together in that makeshift meeting room in the team hotel tomorrow night, he will say things that will bond the group together as it fights to retain postseason relevancy to its season.
Ryan surely will address the Seahawks’ profound home-field advantage that is perceived by many as an unstoppable force and tell his players to wreck that home. He probably will say something about how it will take every man in that room against the world and how they should embrace the adversity.
“As a competitor you like measuring yourself against tough opponents and tough circumstances,’’ Ryan said. “We haven’t done too well at it, quite honestly, but this is a new opportunity for us and we’re all in. Here we come.’’