After a Week One loss to the Ravens, Jets coach Rex Ryan instituted an old-school approach to penalties. If one player on defense committed a penalty in practice, the other 10 men had to do 10 pushups each.
“I know it’s an old high school trick, but sometimes those old high school tricks still work on this level,” coach Rex Ryan said at the time.
Nearly two months later, where do we stand?
“That didn’t work,” G.M. Mike Tannenbaum told Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News. Another 11 penalties in Sunday’s game against the Lions placed the Jets at No. 27 on the NFL’s list.
So Ryan expanded the approach on Wednesday, requiring the entire team to do 10 pushups whenever someone commits a penalty. And the tactic spread like a Walking Dead zombie virus.
“It snowballed, where the coaches did it,” Tannenbaum told Mehta. “So I’m like, ‘Screw that. If they’re doing it, I’m going to do it.’ So Woody’s out there with me. So Woody does it. I was right next to him. The trainers, the video people . . . everyone starts doing it. I did them with Woody.”
How far will it go? “We’re actually thinking of the media [doing them],” Tannenbaum said. “Hey, we’re all in it together.”
It’s a win-win situation, really. Either the Jets will iron out their penalty issues, or Tannenbaum and the other coaches and aging front-office types who have gently fallen out of shape soon will be looking more buff than Khan.
