Vrentas on Rex

[DBarrett=all<3]

I thought it was a good read:

http://www.nj.com/jets/index.ssf/201...ce=twitterfeed

[AlwaysGreenAlwaysWhite]

I thought it was as well...

So far, I'm feeling good about what he's done to fix team unity. TC will be a big insight into whether he's finally got the team back though...

[VAJET58]

Thanks.

Nice article.

[DDNYjets]

Nice article. She's the only beat reporter worth following IMO.

Here it is for our lazy members.

http://www.nj.com/jets/index.ssf/201..._rex_ryan.html

New-look Rex Ryan aims to reconnect with his team

Rex Ryan’s quest to take back his team began Jan. 1, in the galley of a 757 team charter homebound from South Florida.

His Jets, in his third year as head coach, had just imploded — collapsed upon themselves from within, in the truest sense — in a drama-filled season-ending loss to Miami. Sickened by his team missing the playoffs for the first time in his tenure, Ryan began sifting through the rubble for answers.

He pulled the second-longest tenured Jet, right guard Brandon Moore, into the cramped kitchen area as the flight attendants drew the curtains shut. For the next 20 minutes, Ryan was endearingly “wide open,” Moore recalled. He needed to know what happened to his team, even if he knew the answers would sting.

“I’m sitting there, talking in front of the team, selling, ‘Team, team, team,’ like I always am, and I did not know we had a rift in our team. How was I not aware of it?” Ryan said months later in his Florham Park office. “I was mad. I was upset. I was mad at myself, because you’re either coaching it or allowing it to happen, and I’m not going to do either.”

In the months since that nadir, Ryan has embarked on a regeneration of sorts in anticipation of a new season, which officially starts when training camp opens this week in Cortland, N.Y. He publicly took responsibility for the sub-standard 2011 season, and has privately taken measures to ensure 2012 is different.

His approach has been humbling and painstaking, including a reckoning with a yellow pad of paper in Hawaii, a frank speech to the entire football operations staff in February and consultations with a secret “sensei” — his word — whose identity he promises to withhold until his redemption campaign is complete.

As he shed a remarkable 106 pounds (and counting) from his physique, Ryan was reshaping himself as a head coach, too, desperate to turn the defeat of an 8-8 season into opportunity.

“He’s revived,” owner Woody Johnson said. “It’s a different Rex in a way, because I think Rex is evolving into the job. He was almost to the Super Bowl two years in a row, coming right out of the gate, so it’s hard to change your attitude. … He took (last season) personally, and I just think you’re going to see more of an intense focus.”

SEEKING ANSWERS

Ryan, a man of ritual, has made a habit of unwinding from each season with a getaway to the Pro Bowl. Before he left for Hawaii this winter, general manager Mike Tannenbaum handed Ryan a yellow pad of paper.

“Put all the problems on the left-hand side,” Tannenbaum told him, “and put your solutions on the right.”

The afternoon after the season-ending loss to the Dolphins, Ryan made the admission to reporters that he “lost the pulse” of his team. But his evaluation process would go on for weeks, as Santonio Holmes’ Week 17 benching and players’ public descriptions of the locker-room disharmony cast a pall over his club.

Ryan continued to poll his players and assistant coaches, making a simple plea: “I need help.”

All-Pro cornerback Darrelle Revis had been asleep on the flight home from Florida, so Ryan called him a few days later. He also met with linebacker Bart Scott and defensive coordinator Mike Pettine and secondary coach Dennis Thurman, the men who had believed in Ryan since his days as an up-and-coming coordinator with the Ravens.

Each confirmed what Ryan was realizing on his own: He had strayed from the very traits that had once set him apart, being hands-on and teaching the game of football and having fun. He had tried to take the next step as a head coach, but instead, in Pettine’s words, “isolated” himself.

“I just told him that we need him in there,” Scott said. “He should come back in and give us more of his gifts. Teach us. Nobody really teaches like him.”

By the time Ryan returned from Hawaii, he had filled pages and pages of the yellow pad. In return, Tannenbaum shared that he had tucked away in his top right desk drawer the aqua-colored band used to tag his bag at Sun Life Stadium — a daily motivator to avoid another season bitterly expiring on New Year’s Day.

Seated in Ryan’s office, they were ready to move forward.

“Let’s go,” Ryan told Tannenbaum. “We’ve got to get better, and it starts with me.”

FOOTBALL FIRST

To prioritize his responsibilities as a head coach, Ryan visualizes a four-quadrant grid. In the top left are tasks that are urgent and important. The bottom right has items that are not urgent and not important. The other two boxes are where he’s making a change.

Ryan realized he was bogged down last year with things that were urgent but not important, managerial-type tasks that kept him in the head-coaching chair, figuratively and literally. He has vowed instead to focus more on what is not urgent, but important — like spending time with his players.

In other words, it’s football first.

“He’s admitted it, he lost sight of that,” Pettine said. “Football is the dog, not the tail.”

The staff received its first taste of the renewed Ryan when it gathered in the cafeteria in mid-February, the entire football operations department from the front office to the new coaches to the groundskeepers.

For 45 minutes, he and Tannenbaum spoke of the direction of the team, of each person being a stakeholder in its success, of communicating better so small problems don’t become big ones. But Tannenbaum most noticed Ryan’s humility, the way he pointed the finger only at himself, which has had a trickle-down effect.

This offseason, Ryan became the head coach who set up hour-long tutoring sessions with new offensive coordinator Tony Sparano, but usually stayed nearly twice as long. Players swear he is in every meeting, grilling cornerbacks on the nose tackle’s responsibilities during a defensive install.

First-round pick Quinton Coples was shocked when Ryan stopped him in the hallway one afternoon — “In the hallway!” Coples exclaimed — to show him a different counter-move to the jump-set Coples had seen from an offensive lineman in practice that morning.

Ryan changed his daily schedule to allow more time to watch film with his assistants, and his colleagues have noticed that his itinerary is now much more regimented. Meeting times and calendars are set, no longer as free-flowing.

What drives Ryan is what he once took for granted on his teams: Everybody pulling in the same direction.

When the players returned for the offseason program in April, Ryan showed a PowerPoint slide in the team meeting with examples of anonymous quotes in the media that undermined the team last season.

Since unity starts from the top, the coaching staff went off-site to a farm in June for an exhausting day of team-building and leadership drills, led by a former Army Special Forces operator and a pair of combat-wounded veterans.

“Just because you build something doesn’t mean you will take off from where you were,” Ryan said. “You have to go back to the ground floor, and start again.”

THE NEXT STEP

Ahead of the Jets is a season with much to prove: That last year’s playoffs miss was an aberration, and that QBs Mark Sanchez and Tim Tebow can work in synergy, for starters. Perhaps for many reasons, Ryan has enlisted the help of a mysterious mentor he calls “my little sensei,” the Japanese
word for a “wise teacher.”

The sensei’s identity is intriguingly guarded within the walls of the Jets facility. He is male and does not work in the building. He and Ryan speak a few times a month. He offers advice and perspective, and “really has me look at myself,” Ryan said. But other details are scarce.

Asked if the sensei is a former coach, Ryan says, “He’s a coach of mine.” Thurman, one of Ryan’s most trusted confidants, pretends not to know about the sensei before jumping up from the interview table. Tannenbaum squirms similarly, offering only that the sensei is a “special person who has bettered all of us.”

“After we have the season that we’re going to have,” Ryan says coyly, “I’ll mention his name.”

What kind of season is that? That mildly confident intimation is as close as Ryan wants to get these days to his once-ubiquitous Super Bowl guarantees. Toning down his brashness was part of Ryan’s redefinition this spring, and in its place, Thurman describes “more of a hard-line, straight attitude” to work toward winning a championship rather than talking about it.

Ryan’s aim is not to change who he is, but rather to be the best, most successful version of himself. He refers respectfully to Tom Coughlin, coach of the Super Bowl champion Giants, kindly guessing his counterpart “probably doesn’t make a mistake” decades into his coaching career. But being able to learn from mistakes is one of the reasons Johnson hired Ryan.

To Ryan, last season was a mistake, his mistake. He’s determined to be the opposite for his team this year.

“For some coaches, it’s about hanging on,” Ryan said. “That’s not who I am. I want to be great. Maybe that sets me apart from others, but I’m not worried about the security. I came here to be special, and that’s what I want to be.”

Jenny Vrentas:
jvrentas@starledger.com
http://connect.nj.com/user/jvrentas/index.html

[NY's stepchild]

Love that girl. Probably means she won't last long. You can say it's all talk, and that we hear that things are going to change every year, but I've never heard anything quite like that from any coach, on any team. This guy is the winningest coach in Jet history, and he's really upset about it. Got to love that.

[Kentucky Jet]

absolutely great article. Makes anyone want to follow him anywhere. The guy is motivated to be great! I p[redict that he will one day be special. That day is coming soon!

[jetstream23]

Awesome.

The person who can't learn from his mistakes is destined to repeat them. And fans who can't accept that Rex made mistakes and allow him to correct them are doomed to gloom.

Guys like SAR are right, Rex was a bigmouth and a bully and his guarantees backfired. The good news is that, unlike other people in this world, Rex can admit it was a mistake and he's trying to improve.

As he said, he's not trying to hang on. He's not concerned about doing just enough to keep a job. He wants to win a championship. Who wants a Norv Turner that wins 10 or 11 games every year and craps out in the playoffs? Rex won't say it (even though he's said it every year in the past) but there's the Super Bowl champion...and then there's everyone else.

I'm all in.

Go Jets!

[TheMikeIsHot]

Originally Posted by DDNYjets

Nice article. She's the only beat reporter worth following IMO.

Here it is for our lazy members.

Notice how most people said the same thing about Manish before he left the Ledger?

I think the editors over there have a lot to do with what we read and they tend to encourage a positive writing style... while the DN writers seem to have a bit of an agenda with the Jets.

[DDNYjets]

This is a good sign. But now he has to walk the walk and so does this team. The prof will be how he handles himself and the team in TC and throughout the season.

[lamont_jordan_rules]

... great read! ...


... i loves me some rex!!! ...












l_j_r

[NYJCAP2]

Good read, thanks.

[10PennyToColes87]

Wonder who the sensei is?

[NY2FLDWC85]

Great read, indeed.

No, we haven't won a Super Bowl under coach Ryan thus far, but then again, we've landed two AFC Championship Game appearances during a three year span (for the first time in franchise history), and we've also featured three consecutive seasons of top five defensive play (for the first time in franchise history).

This man is a winner, and as an NFL head coach, he's focused on becoming as great as he can possibly become. This made for a very nice read. I love the fact that coach Ryan understands the overall importance of having a finger on the teams pulse. I respect the fact that he's able to admit that he lost his team last season without knowingly doing so (until after the matter). I also appreciate Rex, as a head coach, becoming closer to both his players and coaching staff in order to feature a more 'hands on approach'. Last year could end up becoming a blessing in disguise for both coach Ryan as well as our franchise moving forward.

Now, in 2009, when we featured the leagues number one rated defense, coach Ryan literally called over 85% of the defensive play calls. During both the 2010 and 2011 seasons, that number reduced/decreased significantly and we started to see our defensive coordinator in Mike Pettine begin to call (most of) the play calls. My question is this, will we begin to see Rex Ryan take over the defensive playbook/situational play calling once again?

Now, yes, I do understand that Rex must focus on lots of other aspects in regards to being an NFL head coach, but I truly believe that he's one of the greatest defensive minds around (outside of Dick LeBeau). We need to use his defensive football I.Q/knowledge to our advantage moving forward. The number one (main) reason why Rex Ryan became an NFL head coach, was due to his ability to dominate the league as a defensive coordinator with Baltimore. We need Rex Ryan calling out the defensive plays come Sunday's. I truly believe that. Hopefully we see Ryan return to 2009's form, and take over more control in regards to the defensive end of the ball, specifically play calling.

[WestCoastOffensive]

Originally Posted by DDNYjets

Nice article. She's the only beat reporter worth following IMO.

Here it is for our lazy members.

It's called ED and I take medicine for it, thank you.

Originally Posted by 10PennyToColes87

Wonder who the sensei is?

Body by Jake?


Anthony Robbins?



teddy atlas

[patman]

Nice article, One good thing you can take from the Sparano hiring is that his exp as a head coach will allow him to assume some of the more mundane tasks that Rex found himself in.

[KRL]

Vrentas does it again, enjoy it while it lasts because some bigger newspaper
or media outlet will snatch her up and she'll probably never cover the Jets
again

[GreenGeek]

Best read of the off-season.

I agree that Rex lost it (even though he's presently over-stating this).
Admitting this, taking it on himself, and moving on...LOVE IT!

Even SAR I could not complain about Rex now...
<waits for SAR I to complain>

[Sourceworx]

Originally Posted by 10PennyToColes87

Wonder who the sensei is?

Bill Parcells.

[NY's stepchild]

Originally Posted by patman

Nice article, One good thing you can take from the Sparano hiring is that his exp as a head coach will allow him to assume some of the more mundane tasks that Rex found himself in.

That's what I say. Sometimes what you have to do in order to get another team's elite coordinator, is make him your head coach. It doesn't help you if the guy stops coaching though. Let someone else do that stuff. Someone with more organizational skills. All you have to do is make it clear that the guy has your authority, and is answerable to you, and you can go about being the DC the same as always. I don't get these people that want him to have his input in every part of the team. All he needs is guys that he can trust, for them to keep him informed, and show him results. Who says it has to be done a certain way. There's more than one way to skin a cat. Ask Maine. I'll bet he knows a lot of ways.

[NY's stepchild]

Originally Posted by Braumeister

Bill Parcells.

Herm Edwards? lol