Rex Ryan Still Confident In His Job Security

Jan 23, 2013; Mobile AL, USA; New York Jets coach Rex Ryan scouting the Senior Bowl north squad practice at Ladd-Peebles Stadium. Mandatory Credit: John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

It’s official, our new general manager is in place. It’s his second day in the New York area in his new position with the Jets. Everyone had the right things to say yesterday, when talking about the new working relationship, but the fact is, Rex Ryan’s fate will be in John Idzik’s hands, along with owner Woody Johnson. Is Rex still confident? Of course he is, it wouldn’t be Rex if he wasn’t. Take a look:

I’m not. And the reason I say that, and I’ve said it before, I’m confident in myself but I’m confident in the direction that this football team’s taken. I think we have a lot of great people in this building, in this organization and I’m confident we can get things done. But as far as the long term deal, what I can affect is doing the best job I possibly can do and I’ve had success, maybe not to the extent that everybody looks at, like winning Super Bowls every single year. I haven’t had that success yet as a head coach but I have had some success throughout my career and the best thing I can do is focus on doing a tremendous job here and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’ll never forget when Mike Nolan took the defensive coordinator job over with the Ravens and I was passed over. And Mike was the receiver coach at that time, even though he had an extensive background on defense, and I thought I was the right man for the job. And I sat there, and I told him, I said, ‘You know, it’s going to take me a day or two to get over this decision, that Brian (Bilick) made and Ozzie (Newsome) made, but I’m going to be the best coach you ever had.’ That’s how I approached it. And right now, I’m going to be the best coach that he’s seen and that’s the way I’m going to look at it and I’m excited about that because it energizes me. Some of the decisions that we’ve made on the coaching staff, I guess it wasn’t official that we hired Marty Mornhinweg, I think that’s just out now, I’m going to break that story to you guys that Marty Mornhinweg is our offensive coordinator. Dennis Thurman, which I held it and held it, but yes, we’ve decided to go with Dennis Thurman as the defensive coordinator. Tim McDonald will be our secondary coach. Brian Smith is being elevated to the assistant secondary position. We’ve hired David Lee as our quarterbacks coach. Obviously, and we’re still in the process of hiring a linebacker coach but that’s still going on. We have a couple guys, one guy scheduled Friday another one scheduled on Monday but that’s been something obviously each decision you make is important and that’s something that we’re looking at. But really, when you look at it, when I said that it’s kind of like hit the reset button, that I’m starting over, that’s how I look at it. The same kind of enthusiasm and energy and all that and I think a lot of that stems from, and not saying Mike (Tannenbaum) didn’t have it, but when John came in, it’s hard not to get excited when you listen to John talk about what he looks at as the future of the organization and things and the direction on how he’s going to build it, how he’s going to lean on the people here. I can’t wait to start really getting into the personnel part of it and everything else and working side by side with him.

Is the confidence misplaced? It could be. If things don’t go well in 2013, you would have to believe that John Idzik is going to go his own direction with the head coaching position. But like I said, it wouldn’t be Rex if he wasn’t confident. We will just have to see how it plays out.