Remembering Buddy Ryan, Football's First and Greatest Troll

The things that Buddy Ryan, who died on Tuesday at age 82, could do to amplify the voices inside the heads of his foes were multivaried and endlessly fascinating. Let us begin in the glory days: Back when he was the defensive coordinator of the 1985 Chicago Bears, after he and head coach Mike Ditka had butted heads so many times that they were no longer on speaking terms, Ryan spent the week of the NFC Championship game worming his way into the psyche of the Los Angeles Rams, a team he felt embodied the softness of its city, a team that played with the sort of the gauzy offensive-minded finesse that had no place in professional football.

And so, he trolled. Ryan complained that the Rams' offensive linemen were constantly holding; he also predicted that Rams running back Eric Dickerson would fumble the football at least three times.

The Bears won that game in a shutout, 24-0. Dickerson fumbled twice, which was good enough for Ryan, I suppose. There is no question that Chicago team was blessed with great personnel, just as there is little question that Ryan was a great tactical and strategic defensive thinker. But what made those Bears perhaps the most beloved pro football team in history was how they found a way to embody the pop-cultural zeitgeist. Ryan was a huge part of that, maybe even more so than Ditka, who always seemed gifted more with style than with substance. Ryan had a little of both; he understood that intimidation was a crucial element of a great defense, and he understood that one of the best ways to intimidate was to deliver messages through the increasingly accelerated and ratings-hungry channels of the modern media.

Sports-talk radio and ESPN were just on the verge of becoming real and lasting things when the Bears thrashed the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl a couple of weeks after shutting out the Rams. In a way, then, those Bears were the first modern NFL team, a one-hit wonder that blurred the line between sports and entertainment. Ryan always seemed cognizant of that—of the notion that football, serious as it might be, was also designed to give us a show in the television era.

For professional football, Ryan was the key link between old school and modern day. Here was this crusty Korean War veteran, spewing trash-talk like a professional wrestling promoter. Ryan insulted the hell out of kickers. He called quarterbacks "overpaid, overrated pompous bastards" who "must be punished." He called his own players fat; he called himself fat, too. And how could you not help but love it, even if you saw him as a heel, and even if you hated his damned guts?

After that Super Bowl victory, Ryan immediately left to become the head coach in Philadelphia, which proved to be a perfect psychic fit for him, a chip-on-its-shoulder city where "proving your manhood" meant nearly as much as winning. It almost didn't matter that those Eagles teams never won a playoff game; they intimidated the hell out of people with their defense, they abused helpless kickers for no apparent reason, and they caused people like well-coiffed Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson to repeatedly lose their shit, which I think might have meant nearly as much to Ryan as winning did. His players loved him, the fans in Philadelphia loved him, and his opponents hated him, because he refused to relent, because he could always find a way to troll you even if he lost to you.

Maybe that approach was the reason Ryan never won a Super Bowl as a coach. Maybe if he'd found a way to dial it back a little—to achieve a certain amount of balance, to let up on occasion, to focus on the bigger picture instead of the bar brawl he'd just instigated—he might have had more success in the playoffs. But this was simply not the Ryan way. This was a man who, when serving as defensive coordinator in Houston, wound up throwing a punch at his offensive coordinator, Kevin Gilbride, because he felt Gilbride was victimizing his defense with his gimmicky run-and-shoot scheme. Once you embrace the role of heel, you can't really let it go, and I don't think Ryan had any interest or desire to do so. He was going to come after you constantly, whether you liked it or not, and that meant both he and his teams—particularly those Eagles teams—often burned themselves out in crunch time.

Ryan's name, of course, will carry on with his sons, Rex and Rob, who are equally given to the sort of trash-talk that defined their father's legacy. It feels a little cheaper nowadays, in an era when insults and gimmickry are only a mouse-click away; it feels sometimes like Ryan's sons are almost trying too hard to lend some character to a league that often feels mired in its own self-seriousness. But I admire them for trying, and I hope they don't give it up anytime soon, because if there's one thing the NFL will always need, it is a reminder that it is still, at its heart, designed to give us a show.

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