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The NFL is a league where the 32 team brands reign supreme over just about every player or coach that’s able to don their colors, but every so often there are teams or players who seem to transcend the popularity of the shield. The right mixture of talent and direction can cause ordinary men to be immortalized in the social fabric and history of the sport — or in this case, a scheme.
When the Jets hired Ravens defensive coordinator Rex Ryan to be the face of their organization in 2009, they were able to build a unit that stamped its place in NFL history by doing the one thing every fan wishes their defense could do: beat the absolute crap out of every opposing offense.
When Ryan arrived as the head coach of the Jets, they weren’t a rudderless ship. Eric Mangini had just taken the Jets to a 9-7 season, but was fired because they collapsed after an 8-3 start. The offense ran the ball well, ranking fifth in rushing success rate that year according to TruMedia, but Brett Favre and his 22 interceptions were tough to overcome with a defense that was just about average on a play-to-play basis. They ranked 11th in expected points per play, 21st in success rate and 23rd in percentage of plays resulting in a first down or touchdown. Run defense and turnovers were their calling cards, but even with a cornerback as talented as Darrelle Revis on their side, they were a middling pass defense.
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So Ryan replaced Mangini, and the rest was history, at least on defense. The offense struggled a bit with rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez under center, but the defense skyrocketed to being the best in the league with every Madden player’s ideal defense: blitzing the quarterback until he’s crosseyed with sticky man coverage on the back end. It’s a strenuous style of defense for the players executing, but when it works well, a bunch of Xs and Os on a chalkboard can feel as if they have a story of their own to tell.
How Rex Ryan modernized a classic defense
Like any iteration of any scheme that’s been run in the NFL, Ryan did not invent this style of defense in New York. Or Baltimore. Or any of his previous stops prior to being the head coach of the Jets. The violence and speed that the Jets played with was passed down from his father Buddy Ryan, who toted the famous 46 defense that culminated in the 1985 Bears pulverizing their opposition en route to an 18-1 record and a Super Bowl title, allowing just 12.4 points per game.
The premise of the 46 defense is simple: load the box, blitz and hold on in man coverage behind it while the quarterback ideally gets clobbered repeatedly. The landscape of NFL offenses vastly was different in the 1980s than it was in the 2000s when Rex was forging his path as a coach. Spread offenses and formations with three wide receivers weren’t used a lot, making a defense that featured three linebackers and a safety near the line of scrimmage much more valuable. The true, throwback 46 defense featured 4-3 personnel and brought the heat. (For reference, the “46” part does not imply defensive lineman and linebacker counts like 4-3 or 3-4 — 46 is the number of Doug Plank, the starting safety for Buddy Ryan’s early Chicago defenses.)
The obvious challenge here for Rex Ryan, who wanted to mold his own coaching style after his father, was adapting a defense that was meant for rockfight 1980s football to the fleet-footed, spread-out offenses that became popularized following the 2004 rule changes. The truest form of the 46 defense wouldn’t be able to survive in the same capacity, but after Ryan took the Jets’ job, he said himself that the overall philosophy was similar: attack the quarterback.
Ryan coordinated some defenses in college, including a one-year stop at Oklahoma in 1998 where the Sooners improved from 50th in yards per game (336.2) to 11th (278.9) during Ryan’s lone season. From there, he went on to Baltimore where he was the defensive line coach for the legendary 2000 Ravens before eventually being promoted to defensive coordinator in 2005. The Ravens did have a loaded defensive roster before Ryan took over play-calling duties, but he did help develop a front seven that was too much to handle for most offensive lines and run games for several years running. They were essentially the best defense in football prior to Ryan taking over the play-calling for years, ranking first in expected points added per play (-0.13) and points per drive (1.19) from 2000-04.
The first opportunity for Ryan to call plays at the NFL level came with the same results as his predecessor, Mike Nolan. The 2005 Ravens featured a top-five defense by most measurements, but 2006 was the year when everything clicked for them. The heat was turned all the way up and they spent the entire season beating offenses into submission with chaotic blitzes from a Ray Lewis-led front seven while Ed Reed patrolled on the backend. Oh, and they had guys like Haloti Ngata, Chris McAlister, Adalius Thomas, Bart Scott, Kelly Gregg, Jarrett Johnson and Trevor Pryce to help them orchestrate mayhem.
The Ravens’ 2006 defense was flat out one of the best in NFL history, paving the way for Ryan to eventually take over as the Jets’ head coach. Pick a statistic. They were probably No. 1 in that category that season. The biggest improvement that the Ravens saw was with the crucial familial line that trickled down from Mike Singletary to Ray Lewis: attack the quarterback. Baltimore finished with a sack percentage of 10.5%, first in the league, and forced a turnover on 20% of their drives. Lewis and fellow inside linebacker Scott combined for 14.5 sacks on the season with Scott racking up 9.5 of those — a number that clearly defines how they were trying to get after the opposing quarterbacks.
Those defenses were littered with Pro Bowl and Hall of Fame caliber players, but the singular unflappable force of Darrelle Revis turned this style of defense into a cultural footprint that is necessary when explaining the ebbs and flows of defensive schemes in the NFL.
Welcome to Revis Island
The intensified media coverage of New York sports (no matter the quality) combined with Rex Ryan’s willingness to speak his mind and the allure of a newly minted franchise quarterback in Mark Sanchez put a unique spotlight on the 2009 Jets. Ryan and Sanchez, for whom they traded up into the top five of the draft, were viewed as the final pieces for a solid team to get over the hump and make a run through the playoffs.
The microcoverage of those Jets teams, particularly when they went to back-to-back AFC title games in 2009 and 2010, ended up highlighting an indomitable fact about life in this uber-aggressive style of defense: playing cornerback is really hard!
The Revis Island bit was really not an exaggeration. He was on an island out there locking down the top wide receivers in the league with no safety help. One-on-one in the truest sense of the word. And he was spectacular. (Seriously, if you’re a younger NFL fan who isn’t as familiar with how dominant he was, fire up YouTube.)
The 2009 season was a masterpiece and the six interceptions he grabbed don’t even begin to tell the full story. According to Pro Football Focus, Revis allowed only 41 of the 111 targets that came his way to be completed, a staggeringly low 36.9% completion rate, especially considering the volume. Quarterbacks throwing his way had a passer rating of 32.3 for the season (for reference, 39.6 would be the passer rating if every single pass was simply incomplete). He was credited with one missed tackle on the season, and perhaps the craziest stat? Twenty-three forced incompletions. The next highest was Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie with 16. Truly an all-time season.
What Revis was asked to do on a play-by-play basis was preposterous. Much like his father, Rex wasn’t hiding his intentions as a defensive play-caller. The Jets loved using a “mug front” which walked two linebackers over the center in the “A” gaps, putting six men on the line of scrimmage: and everyone knew they were coming. Blitz six, five defensive backs playing in coverage on the back end, with Revis totally locking down his side of the field. Real Madden cheesers know the “mid blitz” that became popular in the game following this run of Jets football. .
Because they had a guaranteed winner in man coverage where they decided to deploy Revis, the Jets were able to get funky with their pre-snap looks into a new blitz picture post snap, like this sack against the Chargers from the 2009 season. The Jets lined up seven players on the line of scrimmage before the snap, but they dropped one of the linebackers and sent safety Kerry Rhodes screaming off the edge unblocked. Not only was it a great call to get Rhodes free for a big strip sack on Philip Rivers, but look at the direction in which they pushed Rivers with the blitz — toward Revis. Want to avoid a sack? Just complete a pass against the best cornerback in the history of the game with an unblocked safety crashing on your head. The Jets’ elite run defense just kept putting opposing offenses in situations where they had to play to the pace and tempo New York wanted, and it was completely overwhelming.
The personnel is what makes this scheme possible, but the willingness to play with their hair on fire consistently is what made this unit so legendary. Eventually, they added Pro Bowl cornerback Antonio Cromartie across from Revis prior to the 2010 season and they were able to lead another dominant defense, ranking first in dropback success rate (39.9%) for the season.
Rex Ryan’s fingerprints remain on NFL defenses today
While Ryan and Revis and the gang have been away from the gridiron for a while, their impact on the game is still felt. Revis eventually won a Super Bowl ring in New England, erasing wide receivers for the Patriots. Bill Belichick and later his defensive coordinator Brian Flores continued to refine their approach to aggressive defense when New England signed Stephon Gilmore, who was an All-Pro on the Super Bowl-winning Patriots of 2018 and then won Defensive Player of the Year in 2019.
Flores, now with the Vikings, in particular has blended his own meticulous defense into something that features a bit more coverage variety than what Buddy Ryan has passed down (probably because he doesn’t have a Gilmore-level corner anymore), but the idea of pressing the action and trying to attack the quarterback remains key.
Dean Pees, who succeeded Chuck Pagano in the post-Rex Ryan years as the Ravens defensive coordinator, became famous for stacking the line of scrimmage and showing blitz but only rushing four, also known as a “sim pressure.” This is where the evolution of the game gets really fascinating, with each newer generation of coaches getting to build from old ideas.
The trickle down effect from Rex Ryan’s evolution of the 1985 Monsters of the Midway is still a part of the NFL today. From Chicago to Baltimore and the bright lights of New York, this style of defense was able to become a legitimate cultural moment for the NFL, and it continues to evolve today while never straying from the original message: Bring. The. Pain.
