If your team lost 45-3 the last time out to an opponent it was about to face again in the playoffs, what would you do in order to try to turn the tables?
Well, clearly you would try to get your players to play better. You would alter your game plan. But in non-football terms, you would try to create a smokescreen. Shoot a bunch of pennies out of your sleeve, a la Gob Bluth, and then scoot away to the end zone on your Segway. And that is exactly what Rex Ryan is doing. He's the new Phil Jackson – the crude Zen master. He is the master at getting under a team's skin and taking their focus (even ever so slightly) off the task at hand and onto the distraction. As much as Bill Belichick might be urging his players to take the high road and stay out of the fray, you can judge for yourself from the video above whether Wes Welker jumped into the muck with, ahem, both feet by making copious references to the words "foot" and "feet" in a recent interview (tweaking Ryan over the foot fetish story that came out a couple weeks back, of course). Cornerback Antonio Cromartie called Tom Brady a [redacted], and though Brady replied well with humor, the bottom line is he was asked about it and it's part of the consciousness now. Will it have an impact on the field? That remains to be seen. it's worked for Jackson plenty of times over the years. And while we doubt Ryan is giving his players books on philosophy to read like the Lakers coach does – books on [redacted] are more likely – the two are more alike than you might think.
