The National Football League lost one of its all-time greats on Tuesday morning as former head coach and defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan died at the age of 85.
Ryan entered the NFL as a defensive line coach with the Buffalo Bills in 1961 and exited the league 34 years later as the head coach of the Arizona Cardinals. In between, he left behind an unparalled legacy as perhaps the greatest defensive mind the game has ever seen, and that includes greats such as Dick LeBeau and Monte Kiffin.
Quite simply, Ryan was the best of the best, and he proved that by establishing an elite defense everywhere he went. Ryan was so good, in fact, that he deserves to be enshrined with the best of the best in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Throughout the history of the league, there have been 23 coaches inducted in the Hall of Fame. All 23 have been head coaches, and at this point, it’s safe to say that assistant coaches have virtually no chance of earning a spot in Canton.
That’s a shame because in a sport where a placekicker like Jan Stenerud or a punter like Ray Guy can make the Hall of Fame, there’s no reason why Buddy Ryan should be left out. But in more than 20 years since he retired, Ryan has never even been a finalist for the Hall.
Everybody knows Ryan’s greatest accomplishment: the 1985 Chicago Bears, arguably the greatest single-season defense in NFL history. Ryan’s Bears finished first in the league in the four most important defensive categories: points allowed, yards allowed, turnovers and sacks. Their postseason run may never again be equaled, as they recorded consecutive shutouts against the best of the best in the NFC before holding the Patriots to a pitiful 123 total yards (including minus seven on the ground) in the most lopsided Super Bowl in history.
But the ’85 Bears were far from a one-year wonder, as the ’84 squad recorded a still-standing single-season record of 72 sacks. That was Ryan’s mantra everywhere he went: pulverize the quarterback. “Quarterbacks are overrated, overpaid pompous bastards who must be punished,” he would say. And Ryan’s units did that better than anyone.
Ryan, the mastermind of the ’85 defense and the most important individual coach or player on the whole team, left his famed ’46 defense in Chicago to become the head coach of the Eagles. His flaws as a head coach were obvious, and the great majority centered around the offensive side of the ball, where Ryan failed to even adequately provide quarterback Randall Cunningham with the necessary talent to make a Super Bowl run.
But that defense. Oh, that defense. It still stands as the best the Eagles have had to offer, with players like Reggie White, Seth Joyner, Eric Allen, Clyde Simmons, Jerome Brown, Wes Hopkins and Andre Waters earning All-Pro selections under Ryan’s coaching. Moments like the Body Bag game and the Bounty Bowl will live in folklore in Philadelphia, as will his 9-1 record against Tom Landry and the hated Dallas Cowboys.
Ryan, who ran the draft for the Eagles during his half-decade as head coach, shaped the Eagles into the most feared defense in the league. Although Ryan was fired after a third straight one-and-done postseason appearance in 1990, he deserves virtually all of the credit for the 1991 Eagles, who also have a claim as the greatest single-season defense in NFL history.
Fast forward three seasons to Houston, where Ryan turned the Oilers’ defense into the fourth-ranked unit in the league. They would slip to 21st without Ryan in 1994, who by that point was in Arizona, quickly shaping the Cardinals into the league’s newest defensive powerhouse. Ryan burned out quickly in Arizona, lasting just two seasons and finishing his eight-year run as a head coach with a mediocre 55-55-1 record. Ryan had difficulty controlling his temper, both with his own team and his opponents, and it was obvious that he would have been much better as a career coordinator, like Monte Kiffin or Jim Johnson.
From the expansion Bills to the Jets at the turn of the NFL merger almost 50 years ago to the end of the Purple People Eaters’ reign in Minnesota to Chicago and then Philly and finally Arizona, the brash, outspoken Ryan left his mark everywhere he went. It’s one thing for a coach to turn around a unit and keep it at an elite level for a few years. But Ryan showed not once, not twice, but six times that his work as a defensive coach was second to none, perhaps in the history of the NFL. He was to coordinators what Bill Parcells was to head coaches, a success time after time.
Buddy Ryan the head coach? It’s hard to argue that he was a disappointment. Had he paid even half as much attention to the offensive side of the ball as he did the defense, he could have brought the city of Philadelphia that elusive Super Bowl title they’ve so desperately craved for more than a half-century.
But Buddy Ryan the defensive genius? He was one of the best, perhaps THE best, who ever lived. In the end, his accomplishments and successes with multiple defenses, as well as his lasting imprint on the way defenses are played today, should be enough to earn a spot where fewer than two dozen coaches have gone: the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
