Rex Ryan says that after the Jets lost 45-3 to the Patriots, he went into their playoff meeting by putting the whole game on himself. On Bussin' With The Boys, he recalls declaring, "This is me against Bill Belichick," so the lopsided score would not hang over his team. The Jets won, he says, and afterward he gave the credit to his players, just as he had told owner Woody Johnson he would.
Clip: Viral Podcast Shorts YouTube Short from the full source linked below.
He places it in his second year with the Jets. What follows is his memory of that week, told with plenty of podcast-style back-and-forth.
Changing the narrative
Ryan says the Jets had made the playoffs, and he knew what the reporters would want to talk about: the 45-3 defeat. "I got to change the narrative," he says. He did not want that score hanging on his team.
So he took it off the players. As he tells it, he said the game had nothing to do with them. "This is me against Bill Belichick," he recalls saying. "That's what this game comes down to."
He acknowledged Belichick's reputation, noting that people call him the best of all time. Then he added that Belichick had better be, because Ryan planned to be at his best too, and "it's going to be pretty damn good."
How the players heard it
"And so I put it on me," Ryan says. He describes the locker-room reaction with a profane line he puts in his players' mouths; the Short's captions mask the swear word, and it is not repeated here. The gist, in his telling, is that the players figured their coach was crazy enough to believe they were going to win.
"That was part of it," he says. Then, by his account, the Jets went out and beat the Patriots.
What he told Woody Johnson
Ryan also recalls a conversation with Woody Johnson about the comments. As he remembers it, Johnson asked whether they should "take this back a little bit." Ryan says he told him no, and laid out the plan: after they won, he would say it "had nothing to do with me and it had everything to do with my players."
"And that's exactly what I said," Ryan says. One of the hosts calls it a "3D chess move."
In Ryan's version, the bold talk was never about collecting the glory. Putting himself in the spotlight before the game, and his players in it afterward, was the plan from the start.
The "punching him in the face" joke
The hosts then bring up a pregame line. Reading from a note, one host says LaDainian Tomlinson recalled Ryan telling the team before the Patriots game that he would set the tempo when he met Belichick at center field by punching him in the face.
Ryan's first answer is "Uh, maybe." He then plays along, saying he told the players he would do it if they wanted him to, which gets a laugh in the studio. In his telling, the response was "Rex, don't do that."
This was a joke, and it is told as one: locker-room bravado from a coach trying to fire up his team, retold for laughs on the podcast. Nothing in the clip describes any confrontation at midfield. Ryan's serious point comes right after: "I was there to fight," he says, and in context he means he came ready to compete.
He closes by saying he knew the Jets were "a hell of a lot better team than that 45 to 3," and that everyone forgot an earlier win over the Patriots in week two, a game he says nobody wanted to talk about.
FAQ
What did Rex Ryan say before the Jets played the Patriots in the playoffs?
He says he framed it as "me against Bill Belichick" to take the focus off a 45-3 loss.
Why did Rex Ryan make the game about himself?
He says he wanted to change the narrative so the 45-3 score would not hang over his players.
Did the Jets win the game?
Ryan says they did, and that he then credited the win to his players.
What did Woody Johnson ask Rex Ryan?
Ryan says Johnson asked whether they should take the comments back a little. Ryan said no.
Did Rex Ryan really plan to punch Bill Belichick?
The line comes up as a joke. A host reads it from a LaDainian Tomlinson recollection, Ryan plays along to laughter, and he says the players told him not to do it.