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Rich Hofmann: Rex Ryan is slightly tamer version of dad Buddy

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. - "This looks a little different than when we were 4-6 or whatever - there are a few more guys here," said Rex Ryan, opening the store for business yesterday. The New York Jets' coach was looking out at a big bunch of television cameras and reporters, 4 days before the AFC Championship Game. Everybody in the makeshift auditorium laughed.

Jets coach Rex Ryan has a personality almost as big as his father, and former Eagles coach, Buddy Ryan. (AP and Staff file photos)
Jets coach Rex Ryan has a personality almost as big as his father, and former Eagles coach, Buddy Ryan. (AP and Staff file photos)Read more

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. - "This looks a little different than when we were 4-6 or whatever - there are a few more guys here," said Rex Ryan, opening the store for business yesterday. The New York Jets' coach was looking out at a big bunch of television cameras and reporters, 4 days before the AFC Championship Game. Everybody in the makeshift auditorium laughed.

"The other thing I'd like to mention is, I'm feeling a little faint right now - I've only had 6,000 of the 7,000 calories I normally eat by now," Ryan continued, referencing a New York Post story from the previous day about his prodigious eating habits. "You'll have to bear with me on that."

He then began to drone through the injury list and I actually closed my eyes for a second and tried to hear his father - and maybe to hear my own youth. It is nearly a quarter-century since Buddy Ryan arrived in Philadelphia to turn a football city upside down. He was a young beat guy's dream, writing stories by himself with his outrageousness and allowing the people who covered the team on a daily basis to see and know more than any beat guy in the NFL.

Now, the next generation is one game away from the Super Bowl, a height his father never approached as a head coach. Rex Ryan has a great defensive team that will be the underdog Sunday against the Indianapolis Colts. Buddy will make the 3-hour drive from Kentucky to Indianapolis to attend his first Jets game since training camp.

I closed my eyes. I didn't hear his father. I heard somebody who learned from his father.

Because Buddy's greatness was his ability to speak his mind and to use that brashness to mold a team with attitude, with swagger - but he never knew where to draw the line. He was from hardscrabble Oklahoma, he was a Korean War veteran, he was toughened in ways few could understand and he never acknowledged that there even was a line. Everybody was a potential target, other than two people: the man who hired him as an assistant coach in Chicago, the legendary George Halas, and Buddy's wife, Joan. Other than that, bosses, ex-bosses, co-workers, players, opponents, reporters - everybody was in his sights.

Rex seems to have inherited the best parts of his father's personality - the openness, the honesty, and the ability to use that to mold a team. He laughs about being superstitious and won't change a grease-stained hoodie or get a haircut. Earlier this season, when he said, "I never came here to kiss Bill Belichick's rings, I came here to win," it was classic Buddy. When he cried in front of his team at one point, I couldn't help but remember when Buddy cried after losing a game at Soldier Field against his old Bears players.

Still, yesterday was quieter for Rex, even as he predicted a win over the Colts.

"This is the best football team that we've had all year," he said. "So if Indy is going to beat us, this is the best. We have absolutely no excuses. This is the best we've played on defense, the best we've played on offense and special teams as well. They're getting us at our best and we'll see if it's good enough. I hope it is and I think it will be."

In one season, the honesty has already worked. Linebacker Bart Scott described his coach's omnipresence around the practice facility, the ease of his interactions with both stars and subs, and said, simply, "Guys play for him."

Mark Sanchez, the rookie quarterback, tells the story about going into Ryan's office after some of his bad games earlier in the season and unburdening himself, asking why it was happening, wondering about how hard it all was, acting like the rookie he is.

"He's just been honest and upfront about everything," Sanchez said yesterday. "And he said, 'Man, this is what you signed up for. It's all right. It's going to get better . . . Now, let's go face the music. Let's go face the media. You and me.' "

The dynamic seems so familiar; Buddy rallied his players by supporting them during the NFL strike of 1987 and outwardly disdaining the strikebreakers hired by the league. It was the same bonding magic, then and now. Still, the difference is that Rex seems to recognize that there is a line. He says he doesn't wish he had a rewind button and doesn't feel any of his talk has had an adverse effect.

"No, I don't," he said. "I've just got to be myself. I think every coach, you'd better believe in yourself and you'd better believe in your football team. That's all it is. It's never a disrespectful thing. I don't try to say anything disrespectful to the opponents that we're playing. It's all about our football team and the belief that we have. The only time I wish I'd had a mute button was when NFL Films has me miked up for a game or something. It's like, oh, sometimes, that one's brutal - but you don't even realize it, you know."

The result is that the son is tame by comparison to the father - he really is. But in these blander, media-managed football times, he stands out just as much.

Send e-mail to

hofmanr@phillynews.com,

or read his blog, The Idle Rich, at

http://go.philly.com/theidlerich.

For recent columns go to

http://go.philly.com/hofmann.