Ryan letting emotion take control

The crying game just continues for the New York Jets.

They’ve tried everything over the years, and it just hasn’t worked since Joe Namath’s stunning backup of his Super Bowl guarantee. Only problem was, that was some 40 years ago.

Bill Parcells bolted the Patriots for the land of Gang Green and didn’t last. Herm Edwards and Chad Pennington took ’em to the playoffs a couple of times, but that was it. And last year they looked Super Bowl-bound until Brett Favre’s arm gave out and could no longer mask Eric Mangini’s tyrannical ways that resulted in his dismissal.

Now they’ve got this creature called Rex Ryan running the show, and boy is he a piece of work. We in the media would love him here, but the fact is, he talks a good game and often coaches a bad one.

Still, he is a colorful change from his bland New England counterpart, Bill Belichick. But it’s unlikely he’ll ever win nearly as much.

“We believe we’re a decent football team,” Ryan said after Sunday’s 31-14 Patriot missile, “but we weren’t the better team today. Look, I’m always going to be myself. With me, they’ve got to understand this is what you sign up for.”

And what Ryan says he wants his teams to sign up for is to be more aggressive, more forceful out of the gate. But they were easy fodder for a Patriots team that needed to bounce back strong from an emotionally draining loss last week in Indianapolis. The Jets backed up their talk in Week 2, but Ryan’s inexperience set a tone that had his team peak too early.

Emotional coaches are fine, but coaching in the pros is based on precision and player talent, not rah-rah. That’s why Pete Carroll is such a better coach at Southern Cal than he ever would have been in Foxborough. Two coaches who made such a big deal about wins over the Patriots – Ryan and Denver’s Josh McDaniels – are now checking their teams for a pulse. It may not be a coincidence.

The Jets may eventually have something in rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez, but rookies make mistakes and the kid from USC on Sunday made plenty of them (a fumble and four picks). He turned Patriots cornerback Leigh Bodden into the Jets best receiver, throwing him the ball three times to lead to 10 points, including Bodden’s own 53-yard touchdown runback. His fourth pick to Brandon Meriweather resulted in another score. The ravenous New York media will be all over Ryan to sit him down but Not-So-Sexy Rexy actually is making the right call when he said after the game “I don’t think he’s going to get any better sitting on the sideline” and gave kudos to Belichick’s scheme.

“That’s where they deserve the credit,” Ryan said. “They can make a quarterback look bad. Bill Belichick is a helluva football coach. They can lay some traps out there, and Mark’s got to see that.”

Bodden talked about how the Patriots saw how Sanchez had played of late and knew he had become mistake-prone, as most rookies do.

“We put some pressure on him, and that’s what you’ve got to do with a young quarterback,” Bodden said. “Put some pressure on him and hope he’ll make some mistakes.”

Smart coaching, smart players. That’s what wins games.

But Ryan has his Jets going on emotion.

“Our confidence is still there,” he said. “We’ve got to understand when you come out of the tunnel to go play you better be ticked off. The last couple of weeks we’ve let the other teams dictate the tempo.”

It wasn’t surprising. The Jets caught the Patriots at the right time for that September win, early in the season, with no Wes Welker (who had a whopping 15 catches for 192 yards on Sunday), a timid Tom Brady returning from injury, and they had a lot of confidence back then.

This time there was a New England team that was angry about letting one slip away last Sunday night.

But the Patriots kept their emotions in check, knew they had the better quarterback, the better receivers, simply the better team. And prepared like pros.

“It was a long week for all of us,” Brady said. “We put a lot into it. It’s a big game over the course of the season.”

Indeed, they really can’t pass up these opportunities to land on the Jets. Remember, they have no rings to kiss.

Tom King can be reached at 594-6468 or tking@nashuatelegraph.com.