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NY Jets' Rex Ryan has four games to make NFL playoffs and back up his talk

Coach finds plenty to boast about with team fighting for playoff spot

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Originally Published: Thursday, December 8 2011, 10:12 PM

Updated: Thursday, December 8 2011, 11:58 PM

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Andrew, Theodorakis/New York Daily News

It's rare to find Rex Ryan with mouth closed, even as his Jets aren't a lock to make playoffs.

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I ask Rex Ryan about where the Jets are right now, which means 7-5, not in the playoffs yet, probably needing to get to 10 wins and maybe to 11.

Ryan says, “Don’t worry, we’ll take our swing.”

He came out swinging from his first day as Jets coach and hasn’t stopped. Maybe you can never talk about where the Jets are and where he is without talking about how they all got here.

I ask Ryan Thursday if he came here with a blueprint for making this much noise. He has now made enough and the Jets have done enough on the field − short of a Super Bowl, so far − that he has become the biggest sports star we have around here.

“I knew the perception was that the Jets were almost the little brother to the Giants,” he says. “Well, no way in hell was I going to let that remain the same. We weren’t gonna be little brothers to anybody. Not only did we have that going on in our own stadium, we had the team that’s been the best in football, the Patriots, in our own division. So my feeling was that you can’t win your own market, you can’t beat the best team in the NFL, unless you’re a little different.

“It wasn’t just around here. I wasn’t gonna let us be little brothers to anybody in this league. I wanted us to be a throwback, leave-it-all-out-there football team. But one thing I wasn’t gonna do, and we weren’t gonna do, was just float along under the radar. I was gonna get one shot at this after Woody (Johnson) had the courage to hire me when others didn’t. So I was gonna give him everything I had and I wanted a team that would do the same.”

I ask if he had any idea, even coming into town hot the way he did, if he thought he would end up this kind of celebrity, one who dominates an amazing amount of news cycles in the big, bad city.

“Honestly?” he says, “I had no idea it would be like this. When I first got the job, my wife and I would take the train into town − we still take the train − and go to dinner or whatever, and nobody recognized you. So, no, I never thought I’d be a celebrity or anything like that, even though it feels like that now. So that part of it is crazy. It’s different now. I think (HBO’s) ‘Hard Knocks’ had something to do with that. But, yeah, you sure get recognized now.

“But that wasn’t my goal. My goal was just to have a team that people would recognize and win a Super Bowl with it. That part’s not different.”

I ask him about Mark Sanchez, his quarterback, one who has attracted as much scrutiny this season, and maybe more, than his coach, and that is saying plenty.

“He’s got the same mentality I have,” Ryan says. “You don’t think I can? I’ll show you. This is a guy who outplayed Peyton Manning in a playoff game, outplayed Philip Rivers, outplayed Tom Brady on the biggest possible stage. And then it’s funny, he’s like eighth in Pro Bowl votes or whatever. And I go, really? Give me a quarterback who wins.”

Ryan goes on to say: “I’m not putting him up there with Brady and Manning. The elite guys. He’s not there yet. But he’s definitely in the next rung.”

I throw Aaron Rodgers’ name in there, because Ryan has said that Peyton and Brady are the best he’s ever seen, and Ryan laughs and says, “Yeah, put Rodgers in there, too. Other than that, in that next rung, why isn’t Mark Sanchez there? I remember an old-time guy, Bobby Layne. What was his completion percentage, 47%? You know what he did? Win. That’s what my guy does.”

So now he and his quarterback are 7-5, looking to make it three wins in a row against the Chiefs, trying to run the table to 11-5 and take out all the guesswork about making the playoffs.

“This isn’t where we wanted to be,” Ryan says, “but at least it’s all in front of us.”

I ask him about the Patriots, because there is always this obsession about the Patriots, even though the Jets knocked Belichick and Brady right out of their season last January.

“I feel we’re gonna play them again,” he says, “and I’m excited about that. Even when we got our doors blown off, 45-3, last season, I wanted to play ’em again. I meant it then, I mean it now. We WANT to play them. No question we want to play them.”

But Ryan knows that when people talk about the best teams in the AFC these days, they talk about three teams: Patriots, Steelers, Ravens. The Steelers beat Ryan’s Jets in last year’s AFC Championship Game, the Ravens beat them in a Sunday night game this season, Belichick and Brady have beaten the Jets twice this season, the last time by three touchdowns at MetLife Stadium on the night when the Jets were supposed to take charge of the AFC East.

“I understand where people are coming from with that,” Rex Ryan says. “Hey, we’re not in the playoffs yet. But if we get in the playoffs, they’re gonna be talking about four teams. I mean, if we get in, how can you not talk about us?”

Then Rex Ryan, being Rex Ryan, unable to be anybody except Rex Ryan, says, “We can beat all those teams.”

“If we get in,” he says finally, “look out.”

This is who he is. He comes at it all the same way, from the day he got the job of coaching the Jets, and the challenge for him with four games to go in this regular season is the same as it always is: For his team to be as good as he says it is.

Ryan’s team tries to be a finisher again. It wins a fourth quarter in Washington on Sunday. It tries to win the fourth quarter of the AFC season against the Chiefs, Eagles, Giants, Dolphins. The coach is right. It’s all right there in front of his team.

Look out for the Jets if they make the playoffs, Rex Ryan says. What else did you expect him to say?

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/jets/ny-jets-rex-ryan-games-back-mouth-article-1.988994#ixzz1g9GjEBct

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The sanchez stuff is kinda depressing, mostly because I think he actually believes that Sanchez outplayed Manning/Brady/Rivers stuff, and his guy just wins nonsense. He talks about is his great defense a lot, and to ignore the fact that his defense has carried the team the past 3 years when talking about sanchez is not troubling due to the contradiction, but more so cause I honestly worry that he's not a deep enough thinker to even see it. Klacko can't connect those dots, maybe Ryan can't either.

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Did Little Mike Lupica deign to actually go out to the nether regions of New Jersey to physically interact with Rex Ryan, or did he leave that to some poorDaily News intern? This is written like this Rex Ryan personality is something new rather than the same guy we have seen every day since he was hired. Thus is not remotely newsworthy.

Life is too short in more ways than one to give a ___ about what Mike Lupica thinks about anything. He is probably "antiquing" somehwere in Connecticut as I type this.

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I really don't get why Jets fans are so down on this coach. 31-19, 4-2 in the playoffs, back to back AFC championship games with a rookie/sophomore QB.

If the Jets, Saints, Texans, and Packers win tomorrow, we control our own destiny. All that should matter to Jets fans right now.

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