Maybe.
Since rising from relative obscurity as an assistant in Baltimore to the head coaching position in the biggest city in the world, Rex Ryan has made every headline imaginable. From dramatic playoff victories to preseason yearnings for snacks, the 48-year-old coach constantly positions himself squarely in the public eye. That's something he has no problem with whatsoever.
"This week is about Bill Belichick against Rex Ryan," the coach declared on Monday. "There is no question. It's personal. It's about him against me, and that's what it's going to come down to."
He might have come across as an idiot, but of all the things Ryan is, "complete moron" isn't one of them. He knows he will have a minimal impact when the whistle blows on Sunday, and he knows the pressure is 100 percent on his players. He also knows, however, that it was those very same players who took the very same field in Foxboro a month ago and were handed the worst loss of their lives.
"Never," Braylon Edwards said that night, when asked the last time he had been a part of a loss that painful. "Never," he reiterated.
What about in Cleveland? Michigan? High school?
"Never — exactly," he said. "Never. So it says something."
Edwards wasn't the only Jet feeling that way that night, and that's not a feeling that goes away in a month. Rather than subject his players to an endless barrage of questions about that night in December, Ryan is shifting the attention to him. He's taking the blame for that loss and he's placing the onus of winning Sunday's game on himself. It comes across as self-promotion, and he gets attacked for it in the media, but he really could not care less.
"I think the pressure should come on me," Ryan stated plainly. "That's it. I'm the guy that said we'd be in this position again — by the way, we're here. I'm the guy that said we'd play them again. I'm the guy who believes we'll beat them. It comes down on me, nobody else."
It's a worthwhile method for Ryan, and, really, it's respectable. Like he said, he's the one who declared in the summer that anything short of a Super Bowl victory would be a disappointment, and he's the one who so publicly and so loudly told everyone he could just how good his Jets are.
It's the latest tactic employed by Ryan since he took over for his polar opposite, Eric Mangini, in 2009. While Ryan is unquestionably an entertaining figure, and while his team can clearly compete in January, it's not yet known if his style enables his team to win the whole thing. There are, however, a few marks against him.
Take, for example, last December, when the Jets had just lost a home game to the Falcons, who entered the game with a 6-7 record. It was a blow to the Jets, but it didn't eliminate them from playoff contention. The head coach should have known that, but he didn't.
"We're obviously out of the playoffs, so that's unfortunate," he told the media after the game, adding this on his Super Bowl aspirations: "It ain't going to be this year."
That turned out to be true, but only after a pair of dramatic playoff victories in Cincinnati and San Diego. Frankly, if a head coach doesn't know every single playoff scenario for his team when there are still two games left in the season, it's a good indication that he doesn't have everything in order.
Following that playoff run, Ryan's confidence was rightfully as high as ever, and he turned into a legitimate superstar on HBO's Hard Knocks. While he developed into a likable character, he exposed a rather serious coaching flaw in front of the cameras.
Following a lackluster preseason effort, Ryan lashed out — at his backup players. He said he was satisfied with the work of his starters, who didn't play in the second half, and that it was the subs who didn't play well enough for him.
The problem is that no matter how well they played, those starters didn't play perfectly. There was work to be done. Yet, the coach told them they did just fine. It was the same type of satisfaction that Ryan seemed to have with winning two playoff games last year, and it's similar to the sentiment he's sharing this week about conquering Peyton Manning last Saturday.
It is, really, the type of attitude that can make a team very good and very confident, but it can also distract the players from winning a championship.
Championships in any sport are won by the team with, of course, the most talent, but it takes a whole lot more than that — especially in football. It takes focus and drive, as well as an unwillingness to ever revel too long in the aftermath of a victory until that final game is won.
Yet, there was Rex in Indianapolis on Saturday night, pleading with the media for a 12-hour window to bask in the glory of beating the Colts. It may seep into the collective mind-set of the Jets at practice this week, or it may not, but we know that in the summer, such an approach led to dozens of players goofing off and eating fast food during a scrimmage open to the public. Ryan scolded his team for that incident, but he clearly didn't learn his lesson.
But isn't that what's sort of great about this guy to begin with? He speaks off-the-cuff and speaks before he thinks. Sometimes, it's the wrong thing to say, but you're always listening. You'll get a kick out of him one minute, and he'll drive you insane the next — that's true for Jets fans and non-Jets fans alike.
Maybe, it's the type of style that truly can buck the trend and set a new standard for coaching. It could prove that if you come into a season claiming to be the best, stating you want to "lead the league in wins" and believing there's no reason you shouldn't win a Super Bowl, maybe you can actually fulfill that belief. Or you could fall flat on your face and have nobody to blame but yourself.
When it comes to the Jets and Coach Rex, you never really know.
