We’ll have to wait until Sunday to see if Rex Ryan’s mind games worked against Bill Belichick and the Patriots.
A quick survey of Ryan’s own players yesterday revealed the Jets sure aren’t buying any talk by their coach or anyone else. Gang Green’s locker room is all about action. Play on the field is the only thing that will erase Week 13’s 45-3 blowout by New England from everyone’s mind.
“The thing is, we were the ones out that weren’t good, our effort wasn’t good enough. We played like [garbage] and we didn’t play to win,” linebacker Bryan Thomas said. “It isn’t about Rex or his prep for the game or anything like that. What it will be about on Sunday is the effort we bring on the field and we can’t bring what we brought that last time up there. We just can’t.”
Ryan, of course, led off the week by shouldering the blame for that loss and calling out Belichick to raise his game for the rubber match. Fullback Tony Richardson, though, said the team hasn’t spoken privately about the loss or its humiliation since that infamous Monday night in December.
“It’s the postseason, anyone still in it has an undefeated record. The past is the past and it
doesn’t do you any good to look back there,” Richardson said. “It comes down to all of us bringing a better effort on Sunday, not just Rex Ryan, but all of us to do a better job than a few weeks ago. If we don’t, then we lose up there again, simple as that.”
Ryan, though, keeps pumping his team a different story.
“If it were up to the players, their play on the field, this would be a tie, this game,” Ryan said. “The fact that it was me against Belichick, last game it was 45-3 in his favor.”
It’s cute motivational stuff for the locker room and the kind of verbiage that would make Tony Robbins proud but the coach’s comments fall apart at face value. While Ryan’s scheme for Week 13 was obviously flawed, it was the players that stepped on the field and failed to perform. It wasn’t Ryan who threw for a season-high three interceptions or had a season low quarterback rating of 27.8 on the game – it was Mark Sanchez. And it wasn’t the Jets’ coach who badly shanked a first half punt, giving the Patriots fantastic field position prior to one of their many scores. And it certainly wasn’t Ryan who failed to contain former Jets running back Danny Woodhead, who went untouched on his way to more than 100 yards rushing.
“We know Rex is trying to shoulder the blame and try to put it on himself,” Thomas said. “It’s not just on him. It’s on us and purely on us to correct the things from that game and do it right this time. We all have to improve, we all have to do better. It’s about execution and the guys on the field and nothing else.”
Perhaps the best thing to do with all of Ryan’s comments is to simply shrug it off. For a coach who has been portraying his team as a Super Bowl contender before even the first snap of preseason, the shift of attention away from his team and their role in the 42-point loss six weeks ago is merely more words and more rhetoric. It’s on the players to provide substance.
“He doesn’t block, he doesn’t tackle so the job is still on us,” center Nick Mangold said, followed with a shrug. “That’s just Rex being Rex.”
