Jets coach Rex Ryan knows he took some shots in the media for saying after Friday’s preseason opener that he hadn’t been watching the offense, and he had a sarcastic answer on Sunday when asked about watching the Jets’ offense on film.
Asked how the quarterbacks looked on film, Ryan said, “I never watched the film. I still haven’t seen the film.”
After getting that joke out of the way, Ryan said that the reality is that he does evaluate every one of his players, and that he thinks he was unfairly criticized for being honest and saying that at certain points during the preseason loss to the Lions, he wasn’t watching the offense because he was dealing with issues with the defense.
“That’s what’s so funny, I see every single play, every special team play, every offensive play, every defensive play, I see every one of them,” Ryan said. “I guess my thing is, I shouldn’t have said the truth.”
Ryan said he wasn’t looking at the field when Mark Sanchez threw a pick-six on the opening possession, but he did quickly look up when the crowd in Detroit reacted.
“The truth was, did I see the interception? No,” Ryan said. “I heard the interception when I heard the fans going crazy and I looked up and I saw the young man, the big dude from BYU [Ezekiel Ansah] running with the football into the end zone and so I relayed that. I said, ‘Oh shoot.’ There was an ‘Oh’ something with an S.”
Ryan pointed out that the Jets got to two AFC Championship Games in his first two seasons, and he said he didn’t always watch the offense during those seasons, either. And Ryan says that other coaches are no different than he is: Sometimes they turn around to talk to a player or assistant coach or deal with some issue on the other side of the ball, and miss some of the live game action.
“I told the truth. I promise you [with] every coach, there’s no difference. I guess I need to be tactful and say, ‘Hey, we’ll watch the tape.’ From now on, that’s all I’m going to say,” Ryan said.
Obviously, that isn’t all Ryan is going to say: Ryan is going to continue to be verbose, because that’s who he is. And sometimes he’ll be criticized when he makes an admission that sounds a little puzzling.