Photo: Marianne O'Leary, Flickr BY NICK ST. DENIS
When Rex Ryan admitted to losing the "pulse" of the team at the end of last season, he was likely speaking mostly of the offense.
Ryan, a hardcore defensive coach, hadn't been very involved with the Jets' offense when offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer was running things on that side of the ball the past three years. But after an 8-8 season and a switch from Schottenheimer to new offensive coordinator Tony Sparano, Ryan is now trying to be a more complete head coach.
"One of the things early on in the process when we started to build a package that Rex and I were doing on a daily basis is he would come in with me and it would just be he and I for a short period of time out there every day," Sparano told reporters Tuesday, according to NewYorkJets.com "It gave me a chance to kind of catch him up to speed with what it was that we were doing that day, whatever it was that we talked about, whatever part of the playbook that went in and that we discussed that day.
"... And that was good time for me, too, because I was able to pick his brain a little bit defensively."
In recent weeks, Ryan has spent upwards of an hour a day meeting with Sparano about what is going on offensively. Ryan has also sat in on a handful of offensive meetings, and according to Sparano, he's picked things up pretty quickly.
"He’s hearing it, he’s hearing the installs, he’s hearing me with the group from that standpoint and all that,"Sparano said. "And I think that’s good. The more times he can hear it, when he hears the play out there it’s not something that doesn’t hit him well.
"(Tuesday) we had a hurry-up situation where we call out a specific term and that term equals the play, the formation, everything in a hurry-up. And it was interesting afterwards because Rex was able to tell the team, hey, in this situation this is what we expect. So that was kind of good to get him to talk our language a little bit."
Follow Nick @NickStDenis"He’s hearing it, he’s hearing the installs, he’s hearing me with the group from that standpoint and all that,"Sparano said. "And I think that’s good. The more times he can hear it, when he hears the play out there it’s not something that doesn’t hit him well.
"(Tuesday) we had a hurry-up situation where we call out a specific term and that term equals the play, the formation, everything in a hurry-up. And it was interesting afterwards because Rex was able to tell the team, hey, in this situation this is what we expect. So that was kind of good to get him to talk our language a little bit."
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