Buddy Ryan, who died Tuesday at age 82, was brash if nothing else. The late NFL coach used his sharp tongue to lob barbs at people he didn’t like, but on Jan. 2, 1994, he actually used his fists to send a message.
Ryan, then in his first year as the Houston Oilers’ defensive coordinator, had steamed all season about the team’s Run and Shoot offense, which emphasized quick passes and left his defense little time to rest. Ryan reached his boiling point during a nationally televised game against the New York Jets after quarterback Cody Carlson fumbled a snap on an attemped pass play when the Oilers should’ve run out the first-half clock.
As the TV cameras rolled, Ryan angrily confronted Gilbride — 18 years his junior — and threw one hell of a haymaker.
“It’s a difference in coaching philosophy in the heat of battle,” Ryan said, via the Los Angeles Times. “That’s all I’ll say about it.”
But that wasn’t all he had to say. Two days after the incident, Ryan declared: “Kevin Gilbride will be selling insurance in two years.”
Gilbride proved Ryan wrong on that count — he stayed in the NFL until 2013, with a brief stint as the San Diego Chargers’ head coach — and he finally addressed the incident in a 2009 interview with The Star-Ledger.
“The last thing you’d like to be is stained with an incident that you’re sorry it happened,” Gilbride said. “But the rapport I had with the father was nonexistent from the beginning.
“When (the punch) happened, I was shocked by the whole thing. You try to hold your poise and your self-control. It’s not always easy, but fortunately some guys grabbed me right away — or who knows what might have happened?”
Ryan’s Oilers boss, the late Jack Pardee, was less complimentary, telling The Star-Ledger his former defensive coordinator “always was an idiot.”
Idiot or not, Buddy Ryan always made things interesting in the NFL. After his infamous punch, Ryan was hired as the Arizona Cardinals’ head coach but lasted just two seasons — his last two in the league.
Thumbnail photo via Tampa Bay Times screenshot
