Play Like You Mean It: Passion, Laughs, and Leadership in the World's Most Beautiful Game (27 page)

I was told Yankees fans tend to root for the New York Giants (who once played in Yankee Stadium) and the New York Rangers, while Mets fans tend to root for the New York Jets (who once played in Shea Stadium) and the New York Islanders. Trust me when I say that is not entirely true. There are Mets fans who also root for some or all of the teams Yankee fans root for, and vice versa. New York fans are not going to let anyone tell them where their loyalties should lie. I love the fans in New York. I absolutely love the city’s atmosphere. It’s exciting. It’s a sports town, and everyone wants a winner. That’s why I talk about winning every chance I get.

People think that’s pressure. For me it’s an opportunity to talk about my team. If you believe in yourself and you believe in the people around you, what’s the big deal? Sure, if you don’t win every game you are going to get ripped by the media and fans whether you’re in New York, San Francisco, Tampa, or Dallas. You know what? If you don’t win or play well, you should get ripped. It’s the media’s job to talk about what went wrong. I respect the people who
have the pen, because they are writing for a living. It’s my job to find a way to be successful, and then maybe the media will change what they are writing about us. The media has a job to do; I respect it and I make myself available. I don’t go into our news conferences with the New York media just trying to get through it. I go in there, be myself, and enjoy the process. I try to be true to myself from start to finish—win, lose, or draw. I am going to be the same guy.

Hey, losing stinks and I have a difficult time with it. It hurts. But the next week I am ready to go, because, by God, I know we are going to win and that’s the way I approach it. My work has just started in New York. I can’t wait to win, to be the first coach in New York Jets history to win two Super Bowls. I can’t wait to have the most wins in the history of this team as a coach. I want to be here forever. Remember I said someone told me nobody coaches more than six years with the Jets? Well, I’m going to coach 16 years with the Jets. That’s my mentality, that’s what I’m going to do. I think our fans embrace that approach, too.

Let me say a few words about our new stadium and our hometown rivalry with the Giants. It was tough to play our home games in Giants Stadium in 2009. We were the visitors for our home games, for crying out loud. We were considered the stepchild to the Giants in the Meadowlands. We just had to look at the name on the building as we drove in—Giants Stadium—to feel that way. The Giants-Jets rivalry is all about proximity, not any real impact on the league from a games standpoint because (unlike the Jets-Patriots rivalry) the teams don’t play each other that often.

We play each other in the preseason every year and occasionally meet in the regular season—11 times overall, and the last time in 2007. Still, when we played the Giants in our preseason opener in August 2010 at the new $1.6 billion venue at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey, it had a playoff atmosphere. It was actually the first time since the 1983 season that we had met for our opening preseason game. The exterior of the 82,500-seat stadium was lit in green instead of Giants blue, since the Jets were the
designated home team. It was an incredible sight, and I’m sure it irritated a lot of Giants fans.

The teams have identical-size locker rooms and the advertising for each team can get changed electronically. While we shared old Giants Stadium for 26 years, this is the first time one stadium had been built with the idea of sharing it between two teams.

There’s not a bad seat in the house, and it feels like the fans are right on top of you. I mean, some of the seats are 46 feet from the sidelines! The stadium is equipped with four massive, high-definition video display scoreboards and more than 2,200 high-definition video displays that are located throughout the facility. Earlier in 2009, NFL owners voted to put the 48th Super Bowl in the new stadium. Until this point, the league had never gone to a cold-weather city that didn’t have a domed stadium for the Super Bowl. The league made an exception for the New York area—and New York only. According to the league, the 2014 Super Bowl will be played on February 2, 9, or 16, depending on the format of the season and schedule. While there had been other events held in the stadium, from college lacrosse tournaments and soccer exhibitions to concerts, our preseason opener against the Giants was the first NFL game.

And it was a doozy.

New York
Daily News
columnist Gary Myers cited the game’s intensity and said in his story that it was time to move our preseason meeting to the regular season. Myers reminded everyone that the Jets and Giants practiced against each other in training camp for one day in 2005—and they needed a boxing referee, not a football referee. We have not practiced against each other again in the last five years. Myers said, “There is a natural rivalry between the Jets and Giants. I don’t think the Giants hate the Jets as much as they hate the Eagles, Redskins and Cowboys and the Jets certainly hate the Patriots and Dolphins more than they hate the Giants, but they are still battling for attention in the same market, which has always made their annual summer get-together more meaningful than any other preseason game. This year it was taken to a new level.”

Eli Manning suffered a bloody, three-inch cut to his forehead. He had to leave the game, which the Giants won 31-16, to get a dozen stitches because there was blood all over his face after his helmet got knocked off. Fortunately, he didn’t suffer a concussion and got sent home. That’s what fans probably remember most from that game. I tipped my hat to the Giants. They put a clinic on us, and it showed that we had a lot of work to do, specifically with our reserves.

Over the years, the results of our games against the Giants rarely have had a lasting impact. I know the Jets beat the Giants in 1988 in the last game of the regular season to keep the Giants from the playoffs, but since then there probably hasn’t been a matchup with as much weight. The Jets-Giants rivalry isn’t about beating the other team for strategic reasons, simply because we don’t play each other enough. With the Jets and Giants, it’s more about ruling the roost. Each of us has a large and devoted fan base, and each of our home games is usually sold out.

Even so, we could not have exited old Meadowlands Stadium as the “home team” in any better fashion than we did when we beat the Cincinnati Bengals 37-0 on January 3, 2010, in our regular-season finale. We clinched a playoff spot with the victory. Between our offensive line pounding away and our defense being so dominant, we didn’t let Cincy get a first down until seven minutes were left in the third quarter. With a first-year head coach and a rookie quarterback, not many envisioned a playoff run at the beginning of the season—except for those of us in that locker room who stuck together all year.

It was very nice that our organization also paid tribute to the 26 years the team played in Meadowlands Stadium, from 1984 to 2009. Each season was represented by at least one Jets player from that year’s team at halftime. A video of highlights took fans and players alike back through the history of Jets football at the Meadowlands. Players who made it back included Bobby Jackson (1984), Wesley Walker (1986), Marty Lyons (1988), Wayne Chrebet (1995), Vinny Testaverde (1998), and many others. It was just a great, memorable way to close out Meadowlands Stadium.

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Jets right guard Brandon Moore called the night “an electric feeling from pregame warm-ups on.” He told the
New York Post
, “We wanted to do it for the fans and do away with that least favorite phrase of mine, ‘same old Jets.’ ”

I keep telling you we are not the same old Jets.

Just ask the Giants.

S
o let’s look at a few highlights from our 2009 season. With all the pieces in place, we went into 2009 thinking that we really had the opportunity to do something special. And we did, reaching the AFC Championship Game and finishing one game shy of our ultimate goal—to win the Super Bowl.

As I said in the opening lines of this book, Peyton Manning, who won his fourth MVP that season and who has been a pain in my backside, brought the Colts back in that championship game. We were up 11 points and he threw three touchdowns to beat us 30-17 in the AFC title game on January 24, 2010. It was our first road loss in six games, a brutal way to close that great season. And what made it even more brutal for me was that was two years in a row I had helped coach a team that was beaten in the AFC Championship Game. I was defensive coordinator with the Baltimore Ravens in 2008, when we lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers 23-14. You get so close and yet you don’t find a way to get it done. It definitely hurts. But, then again, I was so proud of our team.

When you’re 4-6 at one point in the regular season, or you lose
two of your best players (Pro Bowl players such as nose tackle Kris Jenkins and tailback Leon Washington) to injuries, a lot of teams would burn out. But not the 2009 Jets; our team found a way to get it done. We fought. We believed in each other. We believed in our system and in our way of doing things, and that’s great.

But we didn’t deserve to beat the Colts.

Even after I looked at that film—maybe especially after I looked at the film—I realized we deserved to lose. The Colts won the game. No question about it. It was a nightmare watching Peyton Manning do that again to us. There are some very positive things that happened in the game, though. We had that lead, we felt great about it, but we never felt comfortable about it. They scored a touchdown right before the half and I felt in my gut that the momentum was shifting. It really didn’t matter where they got the ball in the second half. We struggled to stop them. That was the main issue.

I knew we were done at halftime. That might come as a shock, but I knew we were in serious trouble. When cornerback Donald Strickland was injured, I was like, “Oh boy.” I told the coaches, “Guys, we are in fucking trouble.” We all knew it, because there was no magical “We can do this” halftime speech. We knew that Manning knew it. We were in trouble.

What made it nearly impossible was that we allowed that touchdown right before halftime. We were on top, but Manning responded. He marched the Colts 80 yards in four plays. We blew a pair of defensive coverages and Manning hooked up three straight times with rookie receiver Austin Collie, including the 16-yard touchdown pass that made it 17-13 with 1:13 to go in the half. We honestly believe that we would have been okay had we not given up that touchdown. I told everyone before the playoffs that we were the Super Bowl favorites. I believed it—right until halftime.

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Going into the 2009 season, I told our players that I wanted to be the team that nobody wanted to play. We played a physical brand of football,
and I don’t think a lot of teams were looking forward to facing us. From the emails and calls that I received from opposing coaches and guys who I really respect in this game, I think we accomplished that mission. I was a rookie head coach, but I think our guys believed that I was going to tell them the truth and talk straight with them. The way our guys accepted the coaching, accepted our standard, and built our standard will help us going forward. When we bring in players, they have to perform to our standard. If they don’t hit the practice field with a mission to get better, they are gone. Not caring is not the way we do things. We wanted to establish that in 2009, and I think we did.

Overall, the season was like a yo-yo. We started great and then we just about hit rock bottom; but we fought back and came right back up again … and then, unfortunately, we hit rock bottom again against the Colts. That may sound a little dramatic, but that’s the way it felt to me, because there was no tomorrow. At least not in the 2009 season. But the great thing was that our players and coaches had a vision and believed it.

When you consider that we finished ahead of 28 teams in this league with a brand-new defense and a rookie quarterback in a brand-new system, that’s really a good thing. I told our players to wear their Jets stuff and be proud of it. There’s no reason each one of us shouldn’t be proud to be a New York Jet.

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We actually defied the odds over the regular season’s final months. Even though I declared us mathematically eliminated from the postseason race after we lost to the Atlanta Falcons 10-7 in Week 15, we won our final two games, against Indianapolis—we ended the Colts’ perfect-season run and their 23-game regular-season winning streak—and Cincinnati and entered the playoffs as the AFC’s fifth seed. On the road through the playoffs, we upset a pair of division champs in Cincinnati and San Diego. We were the only team in NFL history to make the playoffs with a pair of three-game losing
streaks during the regular season. And, best yet, rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez grew up before our eyes over the final five weeks.

I believed we saw our future in Mark over that last month or so. I really did. I named Mark our starting quarterback a few days before our third preseason game—that’s how much faith I had in him. His teammates believed in him, too. They talked about how relaxed he was in the huddle and that nothing seemed to rattle him. I was encouraged by how he handled everything and, best yet, how he led his team to the playoffs. That’s where and how quarterbacks are judged, and I think he handled it all with his usual class.

I knew our fans wanted me to be diverse on offense, instead of just the run first–, run second–, run third–type mentality. I still think we need to run the ball, but I think we can do other things. As comfortable as Mark got in our system and in Schottenheimer’s system, you just saw him growing by leaps and bounds. Our team was able to really enjoy seeing him develop as a professional; we knew he was great to begin with, but it was simple reality that he needed more experience. After his leadership the last two seasons, no one has any question that Mark knows how you win games and also how you lose games—and that’s how a top-shelf quarterback should be.

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We all saw the 2009 season as it unfolded, but I want to share a few of its highlights from my perspective. I will always be able to say for the rest of my life that I opened my career as an NFL head coach with a win. And you should have heard how we prepared for that first game against the Houston Texans. Man, I was throwing everything at my team. I was telling our players that we outworked every team in the NFL, particularly the Texans, and it was going to pay off in the season opener. During our team meeting the night before the game, I reminded the guys about how many weights we lifted in the off-season and how hard and long we ran in the awful New Jersey March weather—and how the Texans had probably not done
it the same way. I said the Texans were as soft as Charmin tissue and we were going to blow their doors off because our weakest guy is stronger than their strongest guy.