INDIANAPOLIS — Brian Billick was Rex Ryan’s boss for nine years in Baltimore.
When Billick hears talk of the Jets coach becoming a new, quieter, meeker version of Rex, he scoffs at the idea.
“Rex isn’t going to tone it down and he says he’s not going to tone it down,” said Billick, now an NFL Network analyst.
Billick, when he was coaching the Ravens, hired Ryan in 1999. Billick said what Ryan is going through now is something all head coaches go through. He said early in a coaching tenure players view the head coach as their friend. But when the business begins to take over and tough roster decisions are made, a separation develops between the coach and his locker room.
“The longer you’re the head coach the more you’re having to make decisions along with management to where some of these guys need to go,” Billick said. “The business part of it comes into it. The players will progressively not separate you from [those decisions] going forward, so that affects that relationship. But Rex is not going to change. He’s going to be aggressive. He’s going to go after it. He’ll take the heat but he’s going to make sure now, he’s learning as a head coach, that it doesn’t affect his team.”
Ryan made a splash at the NFL Scouting Combine this week when he said he thought his Super Bowl guarantee a year ago contributed to the Jets going 8-8 in 2011. Ryan said he would be making no more guarantees and talked about holding back more when speaking to the media.
“One thing I am totally serious about is winning and if I think that something that I say, a comment that I’m going to make, that pulls away from us accomplishing that mission, then I’m not going to say it,” Ryan said. “But will I always be myself, of course I am going to have a great time, that’s who I am and that’s who I’ll always be.”
After the Jets imploded with three losses to end the season, team chemistry issues came to light. Many people targeted Ryan’s bravado as part of the problem. One of the critics was running back LaDainian Tomlinson, who said Ryan’s brash remarks put pressure on the Jets.
Ryan has cautioned that the public perception of the team’s problems is not entirely accurate. He believes the fighting in the locker room got blown out of proportion.
“I don’t see us that we got completely off the track,” Ryan said. “I think we kind of got in the gravel a little bit, we’ve just got to right it. And we can’t knee jerk reaction and we’ll roll it the other way. So you know, there’s ways of handling this type of thing. I think our football team is a little closer than people give us credit for. But again, I’m excited about the challenge. Because I know thing, the team that I’ve always coached, generally that’s what you know about this unit and this football team, that it is going to be a close team. And we will be, there is no doubt.”