Free Play Like You Mean It: Passion, Laughs, and Leadership in the World's Most Beautiful Game by Rex Ryan, Don Yaeger

when he was a head coach. Really, you’re going to hold that one against him? Ridiculous.
    My dad went from Chicago to Philadelphia after he got his first head coaching job in 1986 and proceeded to build another truly great defense. After two losing seasons, the Eagles made the playoffs three straight years under my dad starting in 1988. They won 10 games each season, too. Now, some people might say that’s no big deal, but remember that they’re playing in the NFC East, which had the Washington Redskins and Joe Gibbs and the New York Giants and Bill Parcells. Dallas still had Tom Landry, but the Cowboys were on the decline. Still, the Cowboys were only a few years away from hiring Jimmy Johnson and drafting Troy Aikman.
    Between Gibbs and Parcells, there are five Super Bowl rings. Johnson came in and created a team that won three more in the 1990s. When I tell you the NFC East was the best division in football, I mean it might be the best division in football ever. That depth was unreal. The team my dad created ended up winning 10 games or more five straight years. That’s tied for the longest streak the teamhas ever had winning 10 or more. They had Reggie White and Randall Cunningham already, and then my dad drafted Jerome Brown, Keith Jackson, Seth Joyner, Eric Allen, Byron Evans, Keith Byars, and Clyde Simmons, and signed Mike Golic as a free agent.
    I mean, Jackson and Byars are offensive guys and everybody said my dad didn’t know offense. I know he pushed quarterback Ron Jaworski out of there and made Cunningham the starter. Everybody loved Jaworski, and why shouldn’t they? He’s a great guy and he really knows the game. But it’s not like Cunningham wasn’t incredibly talented. He made the Pro Bowl, too, and the plan for the organization, even before my dad got there (Cunningham was drafted in the second round in 1985, the year before my dad came to the Eagles), was to make Cunningham the man. My dad just pushed it faster because he didn’t want to waste time building his team.
    From there he went to Arizona as the head coach in 1994. My dad was 63 by this point and he went to one of the worst franchises in NFL history and led them to an 8-8 finish his first year there. That may not sound like much, but the Cardinals had nine straight losing seasons before that year. The following season they slipped down to 4-12 and my dad got the blame, even though the defense was great. It’s easy around the NFL to draw conclusions about a coach’s record, but it’s important to take a step back and really look at the situation. That’s why I took a moment after the win over the Bengals in the playoffs and gave my dad that ball.
    I realize that my dad wasn’t perfect as a head coach. Even though he’s a great leader of players, a great leader of men, and a great strategist, you can’t deny that he had his faults. My brother Jim talked about it after my dad’s first chance as a head coach with Philadelphia, remarking: “I think Rex learned a lot from watching how my dad handled the front office in Philadelphia. My dad was abrasive. As I said before, my dad wasn’t a diplomat. He was always getting on people if they didn’t see it his way, and that wore down the front office of the Eagles after a while. It sounds funny coming out of Buddy’s mouth, but then you have to work with people you’ve just madefools out of.” Jim then added: “I think the most important lesson Rex learned from watching my dad in Philadelphia was that you have to have everybody working together. It has to be united, the players, the coaches, the owner, the front office, everybody on the same page.”
    The best example about how it went wrong for my dad, as Jim pointed out, was the whole Jim Lachey situation. People probably don’t remember a lot about Lachey, but he was a great left tackle who was drafted No. 12 overall in 1985 by San Diego. He made the Pro Bowl three times and was a first-team All-Pro. He was the whole deal. He