New York Jets Coach Rex Ryan to Return to the “Pushups for Penalties” Program

Sep 22, 2013; East Rutherford, NJ, USA; New York Jets head coach Rex Ryan during the game against the Buffalo Bills at MetLife Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports

Well, it is not the “Cash for Clunkers” program that we remember from the government, but it’s a program that should have the Jets being more “economical” if you will, by not killing themselves with penalties.

They call it the “Push ups for Penalties” program, that coach used once before back in 2010, with great success. Here is Rex describing it:

The only one I’ll lay out there will be the push-ups, to challenge the entire organization to get behind it. We’ll see. I think once we realize how important it really is, and this organization in between these walls is a close group. I’m not saying that our fans need to do the push-ups and all that. I’m not saying it. But you know what? We’ll let you know. (joking) If our fans want to get in there and help us, because I think how much pressure is that? Well, you’ve got your fans doing push-ups, too. If you’re on the practice field and you’re doing whatever, 10 push-ups, go for it.

I want the player (who commits the penalty at practice) to stand up. He doesn’t do them. And I want him to notice who he’s affecting. He’s affecting all of us. I think that’s where it’s like, ‘Oh, okay.’ It’s not just when they see that, it’s not, ‘Oh, I’ve got to do these push-ups.’ No, no. After you’ve done a few of those you’re like, ‘Really, you got a penalty again?’ And they’ll get on each other. There’s a little bit of accountability, especially if you look and the owner’s knocking them out. ‘Oh, really?’ We don’t want to look like Jack LaLanne or somebody (joking). In all seriousness, we’ve got to get better and that’s going to be a focus of ours. We’ve done some good things as a team but obviously we’re not near where we need to be even in our execution of things. But the penalties, man, we know we can fix it and it needs to start this week.

No offense coach, but I know I won’t be doing them anymore than in spirit. Sorry, hahaha. He also talked about the affect it had in the 2010 season.

We had them all do them and it worked. We’re never at the top of the penalties. You guys will have those exact numbers. But I think that we really improved once we really emphasized it. And I thought we were anyway. We’re one of the only teams in the league, I know our team has officials at every practice, and we work on them. There’s no doubt. It seemed like every play we were having something go wrong in the game. Again, that’s not the type of team that we are. We certainly don’t want that. We want to be an aggressive team and I’m happy with the way we’re playing physically. We’re playing a physical brand of football. But again, that doesn’t have anything to do with (playing) outside the rules. We want to play within the confinements of the rules and play as hard as we can and that’s always been our take. So we’ll see about getting better.

In a nutshell, everyone does push ups except for the player that committed the penalty. That way, he can look around the field and understand how a penalty affects the entire team. This should condition the players to be more careful out on the field. It has worked before, and should work again.

However, I am still not doing them, sorry Rex.