God forbid a New York sports team lose a regular season game and it doesn’t get blown out of proportion due to someone’s comments in the media.
Joe Namath vs. Rex Ryan: Let’s Call It EgoPreparationGate
Joe Namath made sure that didn’t happen after the Oakland Raiders roughed up the New York Jets this weekend, telling a radio station that he thinks Rex Ryan over-inflates the egos of his players.
“It’s rather alarming,” Namath said on ESPN Radio. “It starts at the top. Coach Rex Ryan, he’s been doing a great job, getting us to two conference championship games, but there’s one thing about the athlete: You keep telling him how good he is, he’s going to start believing it to the point that he may not be preparing quite the way he should. He may be losing some respect for the other team.
Rex Ryan, who always seems to find himself in the middle of playground tiffs like this, naturally disagrees with Joe’s assessment.
“...I’m not going to change who I am just because Joe Namath said something. Joe Namath can come in here and if he can still throw, we’ll have him as a backup quarterback. He doesn’t know our team, he’s on the outside. Even though he’s a Jet, and once you’re a Jet you’re always a Jet, he’s on the outside. He’s not in these meetings. I think if he was, he’d be shocked with our preparation.”
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