Play Like You Mean It: Passion, Laughs, and Leadership in the World's Most Beautiful Game (28 page)

I wanted my guys to go to bed that night thinking they were King Kong and there was no way we could lose to Houston. I really did believe we were the better team, plain and simple. I was jacked up, too. After the meeting ended, Mike Tannenbaum, our general manager, asked me if I wanted to go watch some videotape of Houston. “Tape?” I said. “No way.” I went out and ate Mexican food; I was hungry and I wanted to snack. I mean, at that point, there was nothing else I could do to be more prepared, and nothing else I could do to get my team thinking any tougher.

And it worked. We beat Houston 24-7 in what should have been a shutout, since Houston scored in the fourth quarter on a fumble return for a touchdown. Sanchez threw his first career TD pass, a 30-yard strike to wide receiver Chansi Stuckey. Thomas Jones added a pair of touchdown runs. I knew we would win. I set the Texans up. Everything I ran in the preseason on defense I changed. I never ran one thing in the preseason that would get them ready to play us. I couldn’t give two shits about the preseason. I will set up an opponent in a New York minute. Because it works. They had no idea how to read us or prepare for anything we brought.

I was so proud of my guys. As I told the media after the game, “Not bad for two rookies.” Sanchez became the first Jets rookie quarterback since Richard Todd in 1976 to win his opener.

I presented Jets chairman and CEO Woody Johnson with one of the game balls. Mr. Johnson was the one who made the decision to select me as the Jets’ new head coach, and I will always be grateful. I was emotional, too. I cried in the locker room after the game, but I wasn’t embarrassed in the least. My players had my back and I had theirs. I predicted we would have a great defense. That unit didn’t allow any points and held the Texans to 183 yards. Our ground-and-pound offense rushed for 190 yards. I received the ceremonial
Gatorade dunk and bath in the game’s waning moments. What made it even more special was that I had won my first NFL game as a head coach in the city where my father, Buddy, was defensive coordinator for the Oilers in 1993.

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I told our team, the media, and the fans that it was just the beginning. We were 1-0 and that’s what we expected to be. It was a tough game against a good football team, but our guys were up to the task.

We beat New England and quarterback Tom Brady 16-9 the following week in our home opener. We didn’t sack Brady, but we blitzed the hell out of him.

A week after holding Andre Johnson to four catches and 35 yards, our cornerback Darrelle Revis limited Randy Moss to four catches for 24 yards. I also became the first Jets rookie head coach since Al Groh in 2000 to win his first two games.

We followed that win with another, a 24-17 victory at home over the Tennessee Titans. Sanchez became the first rookie quarterback since the AFL-NFL merger of 1970 to win his first three games. Also, it marked the first time since 2004 that the Jets began a season at 3-0. It was the greatest start to a season I could have hoped for. The entire team—coaches, players, and assistants—everyone was phenomenal and did their jobs perfectly.

But even good times have to end. We suffered our first defeat the following week at New Orleans. My guys were devastated in the locker room, but I wanted to make sure that they had a little perspective. I looked at them and said, “Guys, we lost the game. Did you fucking really think we’d go undefeated?”

All the guys answered, “Yeah.”

I smiled and said, “Yep, you are dumb as me. I thought so, too.” That’s the truth, because that was our mentality. We believed we would win every game.

Of course, that didn’t happen. And rarely does. But I didn’t see what was waiting around the turn. We dropped five of our next six
games to fall to 4-6. I was miserable. We all were miserable. One of those defeats was a 24-22 home setback against Jacksonville on November 15. Really, what it came down to was that the Jaguars wanted it more than us. They went 80 yards for the winning touchdown after we had taken a 22-21 lead on Jones’s 1-yard touchdown run with 5:04 remaining. They drove it down our throats with simple plays that we had prepared for all week. I told the media that if we kept playing like this, we were going to get embarrassed.

I also caught some grief from the media because I cried at a team meeting the following Monday. But this was different. I told my players how much I believed in them, that I still thought we were the best team in the league. I was criticized by the media for losing control of my emotions; they believed that once that happened, I would lose the team. That was bullshit. My players know that I am emotional. They know I care about them. They see a personal side to me every day. I don’t lie. These guys know I care about them, and no way did I think crying in front of them in a team meeting was a negative. We just needed to stop thinking that wins would automatically happen. We had to go out and earn each game on the field.

After word got out about the crying incident, I decided to have a little fun with it. In my next press conference, I started off by slapping a big box of tissues right on the podium. Was I looking for a new sponsor? No. I just wanted to take a potential negative and turn it into a positive. Hey, I can take it.

I was as surprised as anyone that we were losing, but the great thing was, we still believed in one another. There wasn’t any question about that. I knew we would still get it done. I know fans had to be tired of hearing me say we had a good football team even though we were losing—but I knew at the end of the day somebody was going to have egg on their face and I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be me.

Even Mark Sanchez made an opening statement to the media following the Jacksonville game. He said he wanted to send a message that it was up to everyone in our locker room. It was up or down, win or lose, or whatever anyone wanted to call it. But the point was
simple: Our season wasn’t over. We just needed to win some games and we needed to win a lot in a row.

After we lost to New England the following week, that’s exactly what we did. We won five of our last six games to qualify for the playoffs. We pulled back to .500 at 6-6 with a 19-13 victory over the Buffalo Bills. We went to 7-6 with a 26-3 victory over the Tampa Bay Bucs. We lost to Atlanta to fall back to 7-7, but we won our last two games—against Indianapolis and Cincinnati—to finish 9-7 and advance into the playoffs.

Of course, the 29-15 win at Indianapolis in Week 15 wasn’t without controversy. The Colts were leading by five when coach Jim Caldwell decided to pull Peyton Manning and other starters in the third quarter. They had already qualified for the playoffs, and Caldwell wanted to rest some of his players and give some others who were injured extra time to heal. It didn’t matter that the Colts were undefeated. Caldwell wanted his team rested and prepared for the playoffs. As I said after that game, Indianapolis had earned the right to make the best decision for its football team and for its organization. That’s a heck of a football team. They didn’t have to apologize to anybody about anything, and neither did we. We won the game. We ended up doing what we had to do, no matter who was on the field for the Colts. Unfortunately, Caldwell’s decision meant that not enough credit was given to our football team after that win, and that was unfortunate. Our guys made the plays that won that game. We won by 14 points. I believed it was a big win for our franchise, because it set up the opportunity to advance into the playoffs if we won our regular-season finale against Cincinnati. I knew our team was excited.

And we couldn’t have kicked in the New Year, 2010, any better. We shut out the Bengals 37-0 in front of our home fans in our final game at the Meadowlands. The Bengals had 72 total yards of offense (all rushing), while we finished with 320. Our players took a victory lap (at my suggestion) around the stadium in a snowfall of confetti to thank the fans for their support. It marked the Jets’ second
postseason berth in four years, our fifth of the decade, and the 13th in franchise history. We entered the playoffs as the AFC’s fifth seed.

Not only did we set the franchise record with 2,756 yards rushing, we also finished with the league’s No. 1 rushing attack for only the second time since 1970. Jones also set a career high with 1,402 yards rushing and set a Jets record with 14 rushing touchdowns.

It was encore time in the opening round of the playoffs. We traveled to Cincinnati to face the Bengals in a Wild Card Game just one week after having beaten them at home. The result was just as good. No, make that better. We won 24-17 to extend Cincy’s playoff drought. Sanchez was incredibly efficient over the last three wins, leading 14 scoring drives (eight touchdowns and six field goals) while not turning the ball over even once.

It was also our first postseason victory since we beat the San Diego Chargers on the road in the 2004 AFC Wild Card Game. It was an emotional win, too. We dedicated the victory and gave the game ball to owner Woody Johnson, who had experienced the passing of his daughter during the week. We felt like we had really put our hearts into that game for his family. People can say we backed into the playoffs, but I didn’t care. To borrow a baseball axiom, I knew we would be a tough out.

We headed to San Diego the following week. Bringing his A-game once again, Shonn Greene rushed 23 times and chalked up a total of 128 yards, including a 53-yard touchdown. That score was the Jets’ longest postseason run ever, and it put us ahead 17-7 with less than seven and a half minutes left on the clock. We thought it was over at 4:38, when San Diego missed a 40-yard field goal, but then they managed to get one into the end zone for a touchdown with just over two minutes left and the suspense started to build again. The onside kick went our way, though, and when the clock finally hit zero we had broken San Diego’s winning streak by handing them their first defeat in 12 games.

It felt great. We were on our way to the Jets’ first AFC Championship Game since 1998, and Mark Sanchez became only the second
rookie (besides Joe Flacco) in the league’s history to start and win two playoff games.

Was I surprised that we were one win away from the Super Bowl? No way. We believed the whole time, the whole year, even when probably it wasn’t the popular choice or the popular opinion. We didn’t have to apologize to anybody. The win over San Diego was just old-fashioned ground-and-pound football, throw completions, and great defense.

Up one week, down the next. That’s football sometimes. Our dream season ended against the Colts and that son-of-a-gun Manning on January 24. We were held to only 86 yards rushing after averaging 170 yards on the ground in our first two playoff games. Manning threw for 377 yards to help the Colts advance to the Super Bowl, where they fell to New Orleans, for the second time in four seasons. Despite winning the Super Bowl back in 1969, we still have never won three playoff games in one year (back in 1969, there was only the AFL title game and then the Super Bowl). I can guarantee you, though, that we won’t stop trying.

So many players contributed in 2009. Sanchez finished with 2,444 passing yards, 12 touchdowns, and 20 interceptions. Offensive guard Alan Faneca, center Nick Mangold, offensive tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson, cornerback Darrelle Revis, and defensive end Shaun Ellis made the Pro Bowl. One who really stood out to me, however, was receiver Braylon Edwards. In 2007, Edwards had his first big year, making the Pro Bowl with Cleveland after catching 80 passes for 1,289 yards and 16 scores. The next season, as the Browns went through turmoil and ended up firing coach Romeo Crennel, Edwards’s numbers fell to 55 receptions, 877 yards, and three touchdowns. In 2009, he continued to go backward as the Browns’ offense struggled, catching only 10 passes for 139 yards in four games before we traded for him.

The third overall pick by the Browns out of the University of Michigan, Edwards was an incredible talent. But many questioned his work ethic and his legal troubles. I knew he had a bad rap coming
out of Cleveland. They said he wouldn’t play hard; they said he was selfish. That was funny to me, because the Braylon Edwards I knew was one of the top receivers in the league and I hated to go against him. I am telling you, this guy is good. I let him know that, too. “Hey, that’s why we traded for you,” I said after a big play in October 2009. “You are my guy now.” And he kept on performing.

Each Monday, we have a “Play Like a Jet” film showing highlights of players who play like a Jet. And Edwards was highlighted nearly every week. He blocked, he knocked defenders on their ass 20 yards downfield, he made great catches. I told him heading into the 2010 season that I wanted him to be the best receiver in football. I didn’t say of all time, just the best receiver this year. He looked at me like “What the …?” I told him he had more ability than any receiver in the league. And the very next day in practice, he went out there and caught balls off the heads of defenders and did some of the damndest things I had ever seen from a receiver. I know it can happen and I believe it can happen. Sometimes if you say it enough, with conviction, they start believing it.

All I want is the very best you have; and if you don’t give it to us, you don’t give it to me, then you’ll probably see a different side of me than that. I want guys to play loose. I want them to have fun and enjoy playing this game. It is a game, yet you have to be accountable—not just to me, but to your teammates. Whoever we bring in in the future has to play and practice and study to a certain standard, or they’ll be an outcast and be gone quickly. It’s as simple as that. I’m not ever going to beg somebody to do anything. If you don’t belong and you don’t see it that way, then you won’t be here.

People ask me all the time what I learned about myself in 2009. That is easy to answer: I believe in myself. My confidence has always been there, but during that season I saw how valuable my confidence was to the entire organization. I believe in our systems and I believe in the people in our building. We lost six of seven games in 2009, and it would have been easy to say, “Oh shit” and give up. It would have been easy, too, to point fingers. As a first-year coach, you
can get away with it. People like to shrug off that responsibility and undersell their product by not putting any pressure on themselves. My ass. I believed in who we were, and I knew if we just stayed the course we would get through it. And we did.