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

played three years for the Chargers and then he wanted out. He said he was tired of the organization and wouldn’t play for them anymore. It was 1988 at that point and my dad was in his third season with the Eagles. The left tackle situation was a mess, just awful, and my dad knew it. Again, everybody thought my dad didn’t know offense, but he knew.
    So my dad told the Eagles’ front office to go get Lachey. I don’t know how hard they tried, but partway through the season, Lachey first got dealt to the Raiders and then he got sent to Washington. Not only did the Eagles not get Lachey, but one of their fiercest rivals in the NFC East got him instead. In the 1989 playoffs, the Eagles lost to the Los Angeles Rams 21-7. Why? The Rams outside linebacker Kevin Greene just went crazy that day putting pressure on Cunningham. Greene was so good that the Rams didn’t blitz one time. NOT ONE SINGLE TIME. They played zone defense the entire game, bottling up the Eagles’ passing game. Philly didn’t score until the fourth quarter.
    If that’s not bad enough, here’s the topper: My dad got fired the next year after losing his first playoff game again. Who did he lose to? The Washington Redskins, with Lachey at tackle. The Redskins went on to win the Super Bowl that year.
    I’m not trying to rehash a bunch of history. There’s a point here and I learned it. I’m not happy I learned it through watching my dad suffer, but I’m not going to ignore it either. My brother Jim said it best: You have to work together. The organization has to be united.That’s what we have with the Jets. We have a great coaching staff—the kind of guys who are willing to put in the time and the effort. We have owner Woody Johnson, who cooperated with the Giants to build a new stadium that’s a palace. He moved the team to a new facility in Florham Park, New Jersey, where we have everything we could possibly need. He helped in the effort to bring a Super Bowl to New York for 2014, which is the first time the league is bringing the game to a cold-weather, outdoor venue. We have General Manager Mike Tannenbaum and his front-office staff, and we have players working hard to be ready.
    You have to have everybody pulling the same direction in this game. It’s just too hard to have it any other way. There are a thousand things that go into winning a Super Bowl—literally, a thousand things. You can have great players, but if they don’t work, it’s not going to happen. You can have great coaches, but if one guy isn’t doing everything he can, you can fall short. If you don’t have people handling the finance side, whether you have a salary cap or not, the whole thing can get out of control. Then, on top of all that, you’ve got to be a little lucky. I believe in the saying that you create your own luck, but you still have to have some things bounce your way, whether it’s the ball or being lucky enough to stay healthy.
    What my dad did was aggravate the people above him too much. It got to the point that it was unhealthy. My dad is not one to tolerate fools, or at least the people he thinks are fools. He expects results when he asks for something. Sometimes you have to massage people and work with them to keep them with you. You can’t be ripping into them, pretending like you know their job better than they do. It’s like with the negotiations we had with cornerback Darrelle Revis when he was holding out. I don’t understand that stuff. I poked my head into it at one point, but I wasn’t telling anybody how to do what they do. More on that later.
    Anyway, while all this was going on with my dad in Philadelphia, I was just getting started in the business. My brother and I graduated from Southwest Oklahoma in 1986. We graduated
summa cum
laude
, too. Okay, not really, but here’s a good one: My brother and I had a little fun with our graduation cards and typed in
“summa cum laude”
at the bottom. We ended up being called on stage with all