Rex Ryan is all in as head coach of the Buffalo Bills and said in an interview that he's looking forward to the opportunity to face the team that he previously coached for six years, the New York Jets.
Rex Ryan really wants the Bills to beat the Jets
Rex Ryan holds no grudges against Jets owner Woody Johnson, but promises he’ll go full steam ahead when it’s time for the Bills to face his former team.
Kevin Hoffman-USA TODAY Sports
In a feature in Sports Illustrated by Jenny Vrentas, Ryan said he holds no grudges against Jets owner Woody Johnson, but that won’t stop him from keeping his foot firmly on the accelerator when the two AFC East teams face each other.
“I want success for Woody Johnson, I do,” Ryan said. “But don’t kid yourself -- we’re gonna try to kick the s*** out of them when we bring our team in.”
After back-to-back AFC Championship appearances in his first two seasons as head coach of the Jets, Ryan's team was unable to post a winning record in his final four seasons in New York. Eventually, the team devolved into a disorganized mess and Ryan knew the writing was on the wall for his inevitable departure.
Ryan spoke of some regrets from his time with the Jets. He called Greg Roman, the current offensive coordinator of the Bills and former offensive coordinator of the San Francisco 49ers, to say that the "biggest mistake" he made was not bringing Roman to New York. Ryan also regretted not going to Johnson with his concerns of an ongoing power struggle in the organization.
In the 2014 NFL Draft, Ryan pleaded the team to make selections that were eventually ignored and at a meeting in April 2013, the team explained the difference of being "bold, electrifying and united" vs. being "brash." Ryan felt like he was the one being singled out in the branding exercise.
“They were trying to pull away from me,” he says. “Like it was my fault, somehow, that people identified the Jets with me, and that was a bad thing and not a good thing. I was just being who I was. From that point on I knew I wasn’t going to be long for that job.” (A Jets spokesman told SI: “It’s surprising and disappointing that Rex feels that way. There was no effort by the organization to move away from him in any way.”)
Jets tight end Jace Amaro went even further in singling out Ryan. On April 6, Amaro told Sirius XM NFL Radio that the Jets lacked accountability under Ryan. The coach didn't mince his words in his response to his former tight end:
“He’s full of s***, and I’ll remind him of that when we play him. Look, we weren’t perfect, and I never said we were going to be perfect. But that’s a f***ing b.s. comment. But, hey, he’s happy that he’s got a different coach in place. We’ll see how happy he is when I play against him.”
Amaro had a short response on Twitter to Ryan’s comments, but the tweet has since been deleted.
Ryan signed a five-year, $27.5 million contract to be the head coach of the Bills. In his introductory press conference, he guaranteed that the team will make the playoffs and will have the No. 1 defense in the NFL.
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