Vikings old-timers remember Buddy Ryan as great guy, great coach

Longtime NFL coach Buddy Ryan died Tuesday at age 82. He spent two of his 27 seasons with the Vikings in 1976-77 as the defensive line coach and helped continue a tradition of success under head coach Bud Grant.

Several Vikings old-timers took a moment Tuesday to remember Ryan:
Bud Grant, former Vikings head coach:

"He had good character and was a good coach.

"He was a friend of [former Vikings assistant coach] Neill Armstrong when I first met him. I hired him after talking with him and he had a lot of good ideas about coaching and theories. When coaches get together, he was a good storyteller.

"He was a fine coach, but the thing he did the best, Buddy came here and he had a defensive scheme that was different than what we were running. I talked to him about it and ... I asked him if he could run under our system. He said 'Yeah, I could.' He came here and didn't push his system. He worked with us … which I thought was admirable because he had a lot of great ideas.

"He had the 4-something and he blitzed a lot. I told him 'Buddy, we don't need that. We have four guys and we turn them loose.

"He was a a good guy to have around. He helped us and we enjoyed him and he went on to great things. I have good memories of Buddy"
Jerry Burns, former Vikings offensive coordinator

"Buddy and I would always sit together on the plane and he was always working on some kind of thing he was trying to deal with and I would be over there reading.

"We were close friends. He was a dang good coach and defensive line coach.

"I thought he did a dang good job with the [Chicago] Bears. He was in somewhat of a new style in a 4-4 set with eight people there and making it pretty difficult sometimes to run plays against them. He was a good coach and players always liked him and coaches liked him."
Jim Marshall, former Vikings defensive end