His eyes empty and moist, his face beaten up by the bitter cold, Rex Ryan looked like a captain who had just run his ship aground on the banks of the Allegheny. The coach of the New York Jets wore the mask of a haunted man for good reason.
He did not have his team ready to play the AFC Championship Game at Heinz Field, and that is a regret he will carry to his coaching grave.
Behind the force of his larger-than-life personality, Ryan drove the Jets to a second straight appearance in football's final four. His audacious belief in himself and his players made the Jets a popular pick to return to the Super Bowl for the first time in 42 years, and to leave the big game the way Joe Willie Namath left his, jabbing their victorious index fingers into a forever corner of NFL lore.
But after pushing all the right human buttons in Rounds 1 and 2, inspiring his Jets to knock out Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, Ryan suddenly lost the pulse of his team. The stunning disconnect between coach and player allowed the Pittsburgh Steelers to score the first 24 points of the game, and ultimately guaranteed that a second-half rally would save face, but not the season.
"We played a good half," an emotional Ryan said. "We just never played a good game."
Rex has to take the fall for that. His chief responsibility as head coach is to have his team ready to play, and yet the Jets were a lifeless mess in the first half, finding inspiration in absolutely nothing.
Their spiritual force in New England, Dennis Byrd, was on the sideline and at midfield for the opening toss, and still the Jets came out flatter than they've been since that bygone December blowout in Foxborough, Mass.
The Jets' defense was playing flag football out there, lunging and grabbing for air, looking like a unit prepping itself for the Pro Bowl instead of the Super Bowl.
"The tackling," Ryan said, "that's not up to our standards by any stretch of the imagination."
Bart Scott, the one who couldn't wait to get to Pittsburgh, the one who talks like his pro wrestling heroes, kept whiffing on tackles and playing as if he was ordered to lose by some WWE script. Pittsburgh's Rashard Mendenhall ran like an enraged Jim Brown, barreling away for 95 yards in the first half compared to the Jets' grand total of 1. The Steelers had 135 in all in the first 30 minutes despite losing their center, Maurkice Pouncey, on the first scoring drive.
"To come out as flat as we did against such a great franchise and such a great team," Mark Sanchez said, "a tough team, one of the toughest -- if not the toughest -- we played all year, it just doesn't work."
Not even close.
Sanchez said he had no idea how or why the Jets could be flat for a conference championship game, and Darrelle Revis said the same. Nobody wanted to admit the obvious, that the Jets were emotionally drained after spilling three rivers of blood, sweat and tears all over New England.
Did the apocalyptic conquest of Brady and Bill Belichick -- a signature moment for a franchise that only has a few -- turn out to be Pyrrhic in form?
No matter what, Ryan can't use it as an excuse. The 2004 Red Sox exorcised 86 years of demons and doubts by erasing an 0-3 American League Championship Series deficit and finally overcoming their tormentors, the New York Yankees, in a decidedly historic way.
read more - http://sports.espn.go.com
No comments:
Post a Comment