Ryan acts the fool but it IS an act. His pre-game shtick is to get in front of the media and tell them what he wants them to hear. This serves two purposes which are to send a message to the other team and to establish the week's persona for his team. Against Indy, Ryan was full of respect and admiration for Manning and the Colts franchise and he came off as grateful for the opportunity to play them. This played to Manning's ego and made him the center of the universe. Just how that affected him is unknown, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that he was trying a bit too hard to live up to that title. With New England, it was the opposite. Telling the world how great the Patsies are would be preaching to the choir so he decided to rattle their cage with a bunch of bombastic nonsense (and perhaps encouraged Cromartie to take the shots he did). The end result was that he got under Brady's skin and perhaps Brady tried a bit too hard to show the world how classless and horrible the Jets are. I don't know about you, but I definitely see a pattern here. As for next Sunday, so far, Ryan has taken the "Gee I sure wish we were at home" angle and will no doubt keep that going (and growing) for the rest of the week. The plan will be to let the Steelers know just how scary it is to play at Heinz and get our guys thinking that home field alone will be enough to make the Jets nervous and perhaps make mistakes. You can laugh at Ryan all you want and you can call him an idiot but you'd be doing so at your peril. Ryan is crazy like a fox and his act has is an extremely calculated and very choreographed bit of psychological warfare. Even though his comments may seem better suited to a comedy club, make no mistake -- he's been playing everyone and it's been working. My advice to Tomlin and the rest of the team would be just a simple "no comment" and then work like hell to plan for anything and everything by Sunday.
I think you're reading too much into the psychological impact of it. His confidence gets the most out of his players, plain and simple. And the players most likely appreciate not having to work for a drill sargeant.
Ryan is definitely a clever guy and no doubt has an agenda. But, I think you're reaching a bit here, not sure he is being THAT calculated.
Ryan is a bad motherfucker, he is coming off back-to-back wins against Peyton Manning and Tom Brady on the roads in the playoffs, that is incredible. I think the guy is actually alot more simple than being suggested in the OP post and he genuinely seems like a what you see is what you get sort of guy. You guys have an awesome coach who the entire team has rallied around and taken on his personality. For all criticism this guy gets during the regular season, he's advanced to the conference championship in 2 years - I fucking wish we had a guy like this who players rally around instead of our starfish coach Caldwell. Make sure you add Rapistberger's scalp to the growing collection Rex has gathered through these play-offs so far
Rex is very sharp and he is very good obviously at the psychology of coaching. He gets the most out his players. His comments to media are basically what he thinks its not that calculated imo. He is the anti-bellicik, the antithesis of the taciturn corporate approach to coaching. I love it, not everybody does - fuck 'em.
Btw I think it is obvious Ryan is a defensive and motivational genius. I do mean genius, his speeches really resonate with the players (just from anecdotal evidence) and bringing in Dennis Byrd was just brilliant. Rex's defensive game plan's are every bit as good as something you get from Belichick. Not only that, but people forget that Rex put the team through a little training camp a couple of weeks ago and since that time this defense has been stellar. He just seems to know what buttons to push and when to push them. He also does the same with the coaching staff.......
Exactly. Ryan is all about motivating his own team to get the best out of them mentally. It doesn't seem like he'd be worried trying to psych out the other teams.
