With the Chicago Bears playing in Super Bowl XLI, it was only a matter of time before the NY Times caught up with Buddy Ryan, the architect of the suffocating Bears defense that dominated the game the last time the Bears played in the Super Bowl (1985).
Ryan holds a special place in the hearts of Houston football fans. During the 1993 season, while passing through Houston as the defensive coordinator for a pretty good Oilers team, Ryan hauled off and slugged fellow Oilers assistant coach, Kevin Gilbride, on the sidelines during a nationally televised game. The reason for the outburst was Ryan’s frustration over Gilbride’s dubious coordination of the Oilers’ mercurial Run ‘n Shoot offense in that particular game. Local sports wags still shake their heads over that incident.
Although volatile, Ryan was a superb defensive football coach and certainly one of the best in NFL history. He was most well-known for that fine defense on the 1985 Bears Super Bowl championship team, but he may have done an even better job in coordinating the defense on the 1969 New York Jets team that upset the mighty Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. Most people remember Joe Namath’s famous prediction from that game, but the the Jetsí offense only scored 16 points. On the other hand, Ryan’s Jets defense held the high-powered Baltimore offense to 7 points after Vince Lombardi’s Packers had put up 35 and 33 points in the first two Super Bowls. Most folks before Super Bowl III thought that the AFL teams were chronically overmatched in playing against the established NFL powers, but the Jets and the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl IV changed that perception forever.
Ryan’s genius was the unmitigated aggressiveness with which his defenses played. Focusing on sacking the QB (“We’re trying to find out the identity of the opposition’s second team QB,” Ryan would quip with a wink), forcing turnovers and and stopping the offense on third-down, Ryan ushered in the era of bringing zone blitzes from everywhere on the field to disrupt the offense. Interestingly, the underdog Bears’ chances of winning today are largely dependent on whether the Bears’ defense can effectively pressure Colts QB Peyton Manning. Ron Rivera, who played for Ryan on the 1985 Bears championship team, is the Bears’ defensive coordinator trying to figure out how to do that.
As with many top notch coordinators in football, Ryan was not a particularly effective head coach. He was fired from NFL head coaching jobs at Philly and Arizona before retiring to his Kentucky horse farm in 1995 after 34 years of coaching in the NFL. He continues to raise horses there while caring for his Alzheimerís-ridden wife of 36 years and following the careers of his two sons, both of whom followed him into coaching.