Since Woody Johnson purchased the New York Jets in 2000, the team has sampled coaches from the Tony Dungy tree, the Bruce Arians tree, the Bill Belichick tree, the Peyton Manning tree and the Kyle Shanahan tree. All of them had their merits and all of them have produced successful seedlings in other locations, but the reality of Johnson’s ownership to this point is that the one successful hire he made was Rex Ryan.
Given the benefit of hindsight, the reason that Ryan was so successful now seems obvious: He eschewed the idea of a tree. He came in as a steamroller, bulldozed the forest and had everyone in the Jets’ building fall into line behind the force of his personality—including Johnson himself.
