Rex Ryan is up to his old tricks.
According to ESPN.com, the outspoken Jets head coach found a new way to predict a Super Bowl championship for his squad: signing Adam Shefter’s travel bus, “Soon to be champs.” Gotta give him points for creativity.
Ryan is a handful. From the first day of training camp, he has been shouting to anyone who will listen that the Jets will bring home the Lombardi Trophy — and the cameras for HBO’s Hard Knocks are eating it up. He’s loud, arrogant and smug.
But he might be on to something.
"The first step is, if you don't believe it yourself, your team darn sure won't," Ryan told ESPN.com. "Again, I'm not apologizing. I just know what's going to happen. My crystal ball, I'm seeing a Super Bowl trophy in there. I could be wrong, but that's what I see."
In a time when “take it one game at a time” dominates the airwaves, Ryan is breathing new life into a game that brims with showboating. He was the only one bold enough to say his Jets could make the Super Bowl last year, a comment for which he was ridiculed. But his team — the one with the past-his-prime running back, rookie quarterback and ferocious defense — nearly did. The Jets, somehow, were one extraordinary Peyton Manning performance away from the Big Game.
It almost worked at the end of last season. Why wouldn’t he spout the same mantra seven months later?
"That's what I'm saying. That's our mentality, that's our goal and I've got confidence to put it up there,” Ryan said. “I believe we'll do it so why wouldn't we say it, why wouldn't we go for it?"
Players are buying in, and as most will agree, a confident team is a good team. The Jets were a game away from fulfilling Ryan’s proclamation last year, and a team that has few holes (assuming Darrelle Revis and the Jets kiss and make up) has a great shot to do it again in 2010.
"We'll see what happens,” Ryan continued. “I'm not embarrassed to say I think it'll happen. The great thing is we get to prove it soon. That's the beauty of it."
And at the very least, spectators and media alike are wondering if this defensive mastermind is creative or just plain crazy. People are talking about Ryan’s brash statements and not dissecting the Jets’ first 15 training camp practices. The coach is under the microscope, remarkably, and not the players.
Maybe Rex Ryan is on to something.
