Rex Ryan on Playing Scared: “That’s Not Even Close”

October 21, 2012; Foxboro, MA USA; New York Jets head coach Rex Ryan during the third quarter against the New England Patriots at Gillette Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Bob DeChiara-US PRESSWIRE

Following Sunday’s game, there has been a lot of talk that the Jets played “scared”. The coaching staff didn’t have the confidence to play to win, so instead, they played not to lose. Well, that starts from the top, with coach Rex Ryan. When asked yesterday, he vehemently denied this, and didn’t sound happy about having to discuss it:

That’s not even close. We go down (there) to win. I think saying we played scared is somebody who has probably never played the game in his life. That’s a ridiculous comment. That’s certainly not what we do. Everything we do is to play to win the game. You’re running traps on two of their best players and they caught two balls in those situations, where if the ball is thrown here or there, we’re feeling a little different today. Again, if you lose, people have the right to any opinion they want. They can make that (assumption), but to say we were scared, that’s not even close to being accurate.

He is still confident in his offense, as well he should, talking about if they can with with Mark throwing:

Yes, when you look at it, we’ve done that (before). We’ll always do what we think is in the best interest of our team to be successful, whether it’s run (or) pass. We’ve closed out games running the football. We’ve closed out games throwing the football. When we beat New England in the playoffs, we ran Shonn Greene and rode him to victory. Same thing in San Diego, there are times when you do that. There are also times like when we played Houston (in 2010), (where) you just put it on Sanchez’s back. Detroit (in 2010), there are all those types of times. I have faith that you can put it in Sanchez’s hands. I also have faith that we can put it in our running game. Sometimes, you have to give the opponent credit, which I always do, but that’s the way it should be. They’re the ones that came up with enough plays to win the game.

Whether they were scared or not, we will never know that for sure. He would never admit that, and nobody should really expect him to. As far as the offense, they are getting better every week, and he should feel good. As we were discussing yesterday, the offense is learning to play together, without Santonio Holmes, every day. They are only going to get better.