The press had their first opportunity to question New York Jets owner Woody Johnson and head coach Rex Ryan today about the status of the team.\u00a0 In what turned out to be quite the uncomfortable Q & A with the media Johnson\/Ryan tried, often unsuccessfully, to clarify where the team has been and where they are going.\u00a0 Below are some of the questions fielded by Johnson and Ryan (Editors note: questions are paraphrased):<\/p>\n
Q: Will the new general manager having full autonomy and is one of the conditions of hiring a new GM is to accept Ryan as the head coach?<\/b><\/p>\n
Johnson:<\/b> \u201cIt was, I believe in Rex, I\u2019ve always been with head coaches I\u2019m part of that search and so the relationship between the head coach and the owner is critical.\u00a0 The relationship with the head coach and the GM is also critical that is why Rex is part of this and he\u2019ll get to know the general manager as soon as we (follow-up question: is Rex part of the process?<\/b>) Rex will be part of the process (selecting a new GM). \u201d<\/p>\n
Q: Why did you choose to keep Ryan and fire Tannenbaum given that precedent shows often the coach goes with the GM?<\/b><\/p>\n
Johnson:<\/b> \u201cI never looked at it (a precedent) that way, I\u2019m looking at what is best for the New York Jets going forward and so I made the decision on that basis.\u201d<\/p>\n
Q: What is Tim Tebow future with the team?<\/b><\/p>\n
Ryan:<\/b> \u201cIt\u2019s way too early to say what any of our player\u2019s future is.\u00a0 We need to get an offensive system in place then we\u2019ll make those determinations.\u00a0 Tim is under contract right now with our football team and that\u2019s something I know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson:<\/b> \u201cWe\u2019re not going to make any player decisions particularly on offense until we have a coordinator in and we analyze the whole roster and see what is this, (follow-up question: statement you made Tim was going to be here three years, you open to him not being here three years<\/b>?<\/strong>), No, I mean I think we\u2019ll make those determinations once the new offensive coordinator is here.\u00a0 We can plan the whole offensive strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n Q: Johnson was asked several times about Ryan being a \u201clame duck\u201d coach given the fact that he only has two year left on his contract with a new GM coming in and is there a playoff mandate?<\/b><\/p>\n Johnson:<\/b> \u201cThere is no mandate, no I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve created that perception (lame duck) at all.\u00a0 The first day in the press release \u2026 expressing my confidence in Rex.\u00a0 The only way you\u2019re going to get better is admitting what you haven\u2019t done so far if you just kind of gloss over it you\u2019re not going to get better.\u00a0 One of the things that impresses me about Rex as a leader is that, he knows where he wants to improve and he\u2019s committed to do that and I trust him.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen him lead this team \u2026 to a very high level.\u201d<\/p>\n Q: Why have you not been able to imprint in four years what you want the team to be on offense?<\/b><\/p>\n Ryan:<\/b> \u201cI have failed in that area for whatever reason it is hard to see that but I think it is clear where that\u2019s where I\u2019ve come up short.\u00a0 When I talk about an all weather offense I want to be able to run the football in terrible weather, want to be able to throw it and all that type of stuff but when I mentioned the ground and pound I think that carried over for years and years.\u00a0 That was more based on what was best for our team and the best way for our team to win at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n Q: How do you plan to change since you didn\u2019t do it over the last four years?<\/b><\/p>\n Ryan:<\/b> \u201cThis is what the New York Jets fans signed up for and what Mr. Johnson signed up for when he hired me.\u00a0 This has to get done, it\u2019s not a question of will it get done, it has to get done.\u00a0 I\u2019ve failed to this point but I have confidence in myself and in this organization that we will succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n Q: Will you go along with not having Mark Sanchez as the starting quarterback if the new coordinator does not want him even though Sanchez has a high salary?<\/b><\/p>\n Ryan:<\/b> \u201cWhoever the offensive coordinator is, his system all those types of things there will be a lot of things that go into it but money, the financial part of it, will not have any of the considerations for it.\u00a0 We\u2019ll play the player that fits what we do best, what we believe gives us the best chance.\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson:<\/b> \u201cI concur that\u2019s a determination to be made in the future but it doesn\u2019t have anything to do with what we have done retrospectively or whatever we are looking for the best player at the start of the season start of the preseason (follow-up question: starting quarterback position is a wide-open competition?<\/b>) I think every year there is competition among players.\u201d<\/p>\n Ryan:<\/b> \u201cThat\u2019s exactly right understanding that there are things we need to do at first we have to get an offensive coordinator in place then we\u2019ll address it from there.\u201d<\/p>\n Q: When you hired Tony Sparano you said that he was a mirror image of yourself so was the hiring a miscalculation? <\/b><\/p>\n Ryan:<\/b> \u201cI don\u2019t think I miscalculated, I spoke of running the football and those types of things I think we\u2019re really basing our personnel a lot of that.\u00a0 Our personnel are probably going to change \u2026 that attack and unpredictability that we have on defense I think we need to have this throughout our football team.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe I misjudged the thing about I just want to just ground and pound that type of mentality.\u00a0 Maybe I bought into that more then I should have, maybe I needed to be more open-minded and look at things different.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The press had their first opportunity to question New York Jets owner Woody Johnson and head coach Rex Ryan today about the status of the team.\u00a0 In what turned out to be quite the uncomfortable Q & A with the media Johnson\/Ryan tried, often unsuccessfully, to clarify where the team has been and where they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":17519,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1337,213],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17536","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-home-slider","8":"category-jet-news"},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Rex-Woody.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peLffi-4yQ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17536"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17539,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17536\/revisions\/17539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}