Year III of the Rex Ryan Era nine days from now starts the same way the previous two have ended — with desperate, driven Jets reaching to the sky for the Lombardi Trophy.
“The Super Bowl runs 24-7 in our locker room, and in the organization and in the building,” Darrelle Revis said after the Jets’ preseason mercifully ended last night with a 24-14 loss to the Eagles.
“We want to be champs,” Revis added. “We want to be crowned champs at the end of this year . . . well, not this year but next year. We just got to keep on building on the success we already had, and keep on getting better, and hopefully one of these years it happens. And right now, we’re in this year, so we need to focus on this year to get to that Super Bowl.”
Over the course of these nine days, you will hear Rex talk Super Bowl, White House, all the usual suspects, because he is the modern-day NFL Howard Cosell, telling it like it is the way he believes it is, no matter what anyone else thinks.
But now it’s winning time.
Now it’s time for Ryan to deliver.
Not an AFC Championship game appearance.
Not a MetLife Bowl.
That Super Bowl he has been talking about from the day he barged into our lives.
That Super Bowl that every Jets head coach who has followed Weeb Ewbank, every Jets quarterback who has followed Joe Namath, has been chasing for 43 years.
Ryan is a beloved figure around these parts because what we see is what we get, because he is comfortable enough in his own skin to poke fun at himself, because he is made for New York, and because the great Bill Belichick does not scare him. He is charmingly human, his vulnerabilities laid out on the public stage for all to see.
He is a third-year head coach now, with a third-year quarterback he considers elite, even if he is not. Not yet.
But there are no excuses for Ryan not to become an elite head coach now.
“I think he already is an elite, and he’s a great coach,” Revis said.
We know he knows defense, just as his twin brother, Rob, knows defense, just as his father, Buddy, knew defense. It’s in the Ryan DNA.
We know he knows how to motivate players, because they all love playing for him, and they all will run through brick walls for him.
Owner Woody Johnson and general manager Mike Tannenbaum have so much faith in him that seemingly no player, whatever baggage he may be lugging, is not considered.
Revis was asked what it is about Ryan that gets guys to buy into what he sells.
“The mentality that he sets of how we need to play this game,” Revis said. “We need to play it rough, we need to do our job, we need to be technique-sound. . . . Our defense does look crazy sometimes, but it is a lot of discipline within it . . . just buying into all those things. . . . Playing Like A Jet. . . .. playing hard-nosed football . . . take care of your teammates. . . . when you’re out in public, be proud of representing the Jets organization.”
It was probably asking too much of Ryan’s team to beat Peyton Manning in Indianapolis with his rookie quarterback in the 2009 AFC Championship game. But even after tormenting Tom Brady with a masterful, coverage-heavy game plan in the playoffs, an elite head coach would have sealed the deal and found a way to beat the Steelers with his second-year quarterback in last year’s AFC Championship game.
An elite head coach would not have been scratching his head afterward wondering why the game started for his team an hour after it started for Mike Tomlin’s team.
But now it’s the Cowboys on 9/11.
“It’s going to be a very emotional day . . . for us, but also for America . . . probably even the world,” Revis said.
Rex, whose brother Rob coordinates the Cowboys’ defense, was asked if he had any concerns about his team.
“I don’t think I have any concerns,” he said. “We’re always 2-2 in the preseason, so. . . . Same Old Jets, I guess.”
There are concerns. Pass rush. . . . Offensive line depth. . . . Shonn Greene as primary back. . . . Plaxico Burress at 34.
“It’s like he hasn’t even missed a step,” Revis said of Burress.
Same Old Jets lost the AFC Championship the past two years. If Ryan doesn’t want to be called the coach who cried wolf, if he doesn’t want critics crying that he can’t win the big one, he better win the big one this time.