NFL players are not impressed with what they’ve seen of Jets coach Rex Ryan.
In a poll of 103 players on 27 teams conducted by Sporting News, Ryan was the runaway winner on the question, “Who is the most overrated head coach?” Ryan was named by 35 players, more than twice as many as the No. 2 choice, New England’s Bill Belichick, who had 16 votes.
“Some of the things he does in front of the cameras are way over the top,” said one unnamed player who voted for Ryan. “You put that with the New York media and he has a pretty big reputation, I guess. I don’t even know if you’d call him overrated anymore because it’s gonna be a couple of years since he was in the AFC finals.”
After Belichick came Philadelphia’s Andy Reid with nine votes, Washington’s Mike Shanahan with eight votes and Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin with four votes. Jeff Fisher, Jim Harbaugh and Norv Turner got three votes apiece, Pete Carroll, Jason Garrett and John Harbaugh got two votes apiece, and six coaches who received one vote each.
Although these unscientific polls are more for fun than anything else, they do show that there’s a consensus in the NFL that the Jets are overrated. When Sports Illustrated asked NFL players to name the most overrated player in the league, Jets quarterbacks Tim Tebow and Mark Sanchez topped the list.