By Trent Modglin
Nov. 21, 2006

Growing up, Rex and Rob Ryan would do anything their father, Buddy, asked of them, including taking a month every year while in high school and college to come down to the family farm for some good ol’ fashioned physical labor. During the day, they’d be hard at it, cramming a year’s worth of work into a handful of weeks, putting up fences, digging post holes, clearing space. But when the sun went down, that was the time to pick their dad’s brain, and the brothers Ryan, who eyed careers in coaching defense in the NFL long before their father realized it, soaked up every ounce of knowledge Buddy could provide.

“That was the way we relaxed,” says Rob, now the defensive coordinator in Oakland. “It beat trying to go to bed next to my twin brother in this little trailer that we had.”

Outside on the picnic table, in the fading heat of a Kentucky summer evening, with a little black and white TV showing the NBA Finals, the Ryan trio would talk football. They’d draw up ideas, discuss tendencies, explore possibilities, figure things out. And that is where a new appreciation for the game — and each other — truly began.

When the Ryan brothers worked, though, they worked. Neighbors would come by just to see how much they’d done that day.

“Our work ethic as college kids and young coaches, it kind of blew people away,” says Rex, the coordinator for Baltimore’s consistently stingy defense. “But we didn’t know any different.”

Buddy, now 72 and raising race horses on the same farm, chuckles at the memory.

“I told them to come down and work in June, and I’ll give you $1,000 apiece for a month’s work,” Buddy recalls. “But the only time you get off is when it rains.”

They agreed, but it didn’t rain a drop that first year, and cabin fever set in something fierce, as the family had yet to build its house and instead lived in a little trailer on the property. The next year, they came to Buddy and said they would work for nothing if they got one day off per week. Buddy agreed.

Buddy and his wife had a nice, spacious spot to sleep in the trailer. Rex and Rob were smashed together in an overhead loft.

“They were about 250 pounds, each of ’em,” Buddy says with a laugh only a grandfather could let go. “And they’d be sweating like hell up there, tryin’ to sleep, sayin’, ‘Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.’ ”

Buddy pauses, thinking back. “Those were good times,” he says. “We had a lot of fun.”

Buddy had the reputation of being a temperamental sort. On the sideline, he was known as much for his gruff demeanor as the pressure his teams would put on the opposing quarterback. Stubbornly set in his beliefs and confident in his abilities, the moment he backs down from anyone will be his first. He was accused, by Jimmy Johnson, of taking out a bounty on two Cowboys players when he was head coach of the Eagles in 1989. In 1993, while serving as the defensive coordinator in Houston, Buddy got into a sideline altercation with then-Oilers offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride. During a national broadcast, for all to see. The Ryan-led defense, however, would ignite an 11-game winning streak to end the regular season and push the Oilers into the playoffs.

Buddy famously feuded with Mike Ditka during their time together in Chicago, essentially dividing one of the best teams in the history of the game into two separate — albeit functional — parts. The offense and the defense. Ditka didn’t mess with Buddy’s defense, and Buddy didn’t give a damn about Ditka’s offense. That was the understanding. And it worked.

“I was a tough guy, wasn’t I?” Buddy chuckles. “Oh yeah, I played the part, I would say. … Funny thing is, I’ll go to charity affairs and different things, and people will come up and talk to me, and then I hear them walking away, saying, ‘Boy, he’s a nice guy. I didn’t know that.’ ”

So maybe things have settled down for Buddy, and we’re seeing a softer, gentler version. No more grudges. His son Rex even suggests that, deep down, there’s probably this underlying respect that Buddy and Ditka had for each other despite all the turmoil that winning seemed to hide in Chicago. This notion is mentioned to Buddy.

“No, I didn’t have any respect for him,” he quickly retorts, proving he hasn’t totally mellowed in retirement. “Mr. Halas hired me, and I hired my coaches to coach the defense. That was the way it worked out.”

When the Bears were searching for a coach in 1981, many of the players assumed the job would go to Ryan, who led the defense. Alan Page and Gary Fencik, two of the team’s veteran leaders, took a letter of support signed by the entire defense to owner George Halas, who acknowledged the team’s faith in Ryan and signed him to what was believed to be a lifetime contract before hiring Ditka as head coach.

That level of devotion was evident with many of the players he coached, and Buddy showed the same commitment to his family. Despite a hectic schedule, he would inevitably be in the stands for nearly every baseball and football game. He’d be in attendance more often than the parents who lived and worked just down the street. The boys were decent at sports, but not great athletes by any stretch of the imagination. But that’s not why he showed up. He was out there because he enjoyed watching them play, and if he had any criticisms, he kept them to himself. He knew they were tough and played hard and enjoyed the competition, and that was good enough for him. And some of Buddy’s players would occasionally show up too, taking a seat next to him on the hard bleachers, which never hurt the brothers’ popularity in school.

Rob Ryan

“Everybody paints a picture of Buddy Ryan a certain way, but the fact of the matter is, he’s always had a great heart. The things he loves, man, he cherishes. He’ll spend $2,000 to help that dog get over a broken leg rather than have to put him down. He’s got a heart of gold. The players that played for him know how hard he was on them, but he loved them, and they knew it.”

Rex Ryan

“He was probably as intelligent a man who’s coached in the league,” Rex says. “... He could see the whole field and made adjustments probably easier than anybody else. The thing that was dangerous about him was that he could scare you with that Neanderthal style of football, yet he could be way ahead of you mentally, as well. He could totally set an offense up.

“You look around the league, and there are a lot of people playing good, solid defense. But I don’t see the innovative things he would always come up with, the trap coverages, the pressure created in the 46 (defense).”

The Ryan brothers admittedly should’ve been thinking more about English or algebra while they were growing up, but as ball boys for the Bears in the mid-1980s, “The Catcher in the Rye” and mathematical variables understandably weren’t much of a concern. And who can blame them when stars like Fencik and Mike Singletary know you by name? It was like a natural sugar high. They lived for weekends.

“When they were ball boys, the rest of the ball boys were playing grab-ass, and these guys were watching everything that was going on with the game and the preparation of it,” Buddy says. “They were really into it.”

Any doubts about what they were going to do for a living were short-lived, if prevalent at all. It was either going to be coaching or law enforcement, and coaching was just a more natural fit. They understood the game. They enjoyed and respected the game. They were inquisitive about the strategies. Buddy dragged them into it. The hunger was there at a young age and never left.

Nevertheless, Buddy was surprised a bit by how fast they picked things up. Little did he know, they had longed to direct their own players since they were riding bikes around the neighborhood. After college graduation, he explained to them the principles of the base 46 defense he invented and eventually would see imitated by nearly every team in football. That was like stoking a fire. A forest fire.

“They’ve always been gym rats for football, but they enjoy it,” says Ravens GM Ozzie Newsome, who promoted Rex to defensive coordinator when Mike Nolan took the head-coaching job in San Francisco in 2005. “It’s not work for them. It’s pure enjoyment.”

Not only did they both inherit the strong will of their father, but all their lives they’ve been surrounded by great players and legendary coaches, so being intimidated by anyone or anything they encounter just isn’t going to happen. Nothing, they stress, surprises them.

“Watching all these guys work — watching Mike Ditka, watching Bud Grant, watching Weeb Eubank, all these guys we’d been around — you don’t realize it at the time, but they’re helping mold what kind of coach you’re going to be,” says Rex. “That’s another thing, being around all these guys and my father, the great coaches are themselves. And you can tell a phony one. If a guy is a hard-ass, then be a hard-ass every day. If a guy is more of a quiet thinker, then be that. I’m always trying to be Rex Ryan. I don’t try to go out purposely and emulate my father. If there’s a comparison, then that’s great. That’s fantastic. I enjoy that. I’m very proud of all his accomplishments. But I don’t go out there to try to do that. I’ve got to be myself.”

But being himself sometimes wasn’t enough. As many doors as you would think it would open, being the son of a storied coach, the brothers Ryan believe it probably closed a lot more, for whatever reason.

“It’s funny how a lot of people wouldn’t hire him because they’d think, ‘Oh s--t, you know Buddy Ryan,’ and whatever it is. And that’s unfortunate,” Rex says. “But again, you’ve got to be yourself. I try to get along with everybody. And I think I see the good in people more than the negatives.

“My success is going to be based on the people I’m around and my own talents. And I realize that. But I’m proud of all my dad’s accomplishments, and I’m proud to be his son.”

And Buddy is proud, as well. He talks to both his sons several times a week and settles into an easy chair in front of the tube on Sundays to catch all the action. With the way Baltimore and Oakland are putting the clamps down this season, he’s surely popping a few buttons with pride. Entering Week 11, the Ravens ranked fifth in the league in total defense, the young Raiders a surprising seventh.

During commercials in his sons’ games, he flips the channel to keep track of his former players now in the coaching ranks, like Bears defensive coordinator Ron Rivera, Titans head coach Jeff Fisher and Singletary, the 49ers’ assistant head coach and LB coach.

When football isn’t on, Buddy spends a good portion of his time tending to the 17 horses on his farm. Too many, he says. He breeds and races thoroughbreds, and he and Rex took a shot at ownership of one awhile back, but it didn’t turn out too well. She had all the ability but couldn’t handle it mentally.

No doubt the same way Buddy described more than a few of his players back in the day.

“Yeah,” he says, laughing in agreement. “You got that right.”

Meanwhile, Rex and Rob have their own stables to tend to. The egos on their respective teams to massage. Opposing running backs to prepare for. Young cornerbacks to groom. The beat goes on for the younger Ryans, but the ties to an old man feeding horses back in Kentucky remain strong.

“It is neat, knowing he was such an innovator, and when you think about a trademark, when you say ‘the 46 defense,’ you’ve got to think of him,” Rex says.

And every time you see a safety creep up near the line of scrimmage before the snap …

“You think Buddy Ryan.”