Rex Ryan has a new book coming out. An excerpt is coming out in this week's Sports Illustrated.
In the first official excerpt from the soon to be released "Play Like You Mean It: Passion, Laughs and Leadership in the World’s Most Beautiful Game" by Rex Ryan with Don Yaeger, the outspoken New York Jets Head Coach details the difficult pre-season negotiations with Pro-Bowl cornerback Darrell Revis. In typical Ryan fashion, he describes the realization that it may be a long time before he had his star player on the field again: "He (Revis) wasn’t around anywhere, he was barely talking to his teammates. You know that serious silent treatment people give you when they are trying to show you they mean business? Anybody who has been married knows what I am talking about." The patience of the Jets leader was finally pushed to its limit with the first regular season only days away. "The time for trying to get this done peacefully is over, and I drop into Rex the Wrecking Crew. It’s tantrum time for me. He wants to play, I want him to play, but it isn’t happening, so I let everybody have it. These guys are talking about the right amount, and it has to be on a four-year deal versus the long-term deal and all kinds of technical, minutia crap, and I’m trying to tell them, "I don’t care about any of that, because if we don’t win, I’m not going to be here in four years.""
This is going to be a great book. Rex is so candid that I am sure he will take fans where they have never been before. Unlike other interesting coach books by the likes of Joe Torre and Phil Jackson, Rex has the ability to entertain without throwing any of his players under the bus.