Ryan's fiery talk takes heat off Jets

The last time Rex Ryan suffered a loss this embarrassing, he took his Jets on an unscheduled early-morning visit to the practice field, gathered them around a hole in the ground off to the side, placed a football in a hole and shoveled piles of dirt on top.

This was three days after the Jets were humiliated, 45-3, by the Patriots on Dec. 6, 2010, in Foxboro. The Patriots thrashed the Jets so badly that Ryan felt the need to bury the loss and move on by putting one of the game balls in the ground.

Yesterday, he engaged in a slightly more conventional means of moving past the hurt from a 45-19 loss in Philadelphia. He picked up the telephone and opened his yap the way only he can.

In a 20-minute conference call with reporters, Ryan pronounced an end to any self-loathing over what happened Sunday and delivered the first trash-talking salvos in advance of the biggest Jets-Giants regular-season game in history.

"I never came here to be little brother to anybody," Ryan said. "It's on. We said it in the preseason that it's going to be a knock-down, drag-out . . . From this conference [call] on, [the Eagles' loss] is going to be behind us."

Ryan, who talks smack like no other coach in NFL history, was at it again, pumping up Saturday's nearly-do-or-die game against the Giants. By so doing, he engaged in yet another purposeful psychological misdirection for a group of players badly in need of an attitude adjustment after their Philly flop.

If you don't think Ryan deliberately put the spotlight on himself to take the pressure off his players, you haven't been paying attention. He only hopes it works as well as it has in the past.

Last year's ball-burying ceremony, for example, didn't have an immediate effect because the Jets then lost at home to Miami. But they came up huge on the road against Pittsburgh a week later and wound up making it to the AFC Championship Game for a second straight year.

He was back to the bully pulpit Monday. "I'm sure there's a lot of talk going back and forth, most of it driven by me," Ryan said. " . . . I didn't come here to be anybody's little brother. I came here to win, and to take over not just this city . . . but also this league. I haven't accomplished that yet. Saturday will go a long way toward doing that."

Ryan also said there's no doubt the Jets have been better than the Giants since his arrival before the 2009 season.

"Certainly we were the better team the first two years," he said. "We made the playoffs, went to the [conference] championship game. To say that a team is better than you that never went to the playoffs is ridiculous."

Ryan didn't take any direct shots at Giants coach Tom Coughlin, but he didn't shy away from the topic. "He's one of the best coaches in the history of the sport, and I've got a ton of respect for Tom Coughlin," he said. "My job is to go out and beat him this week, and that's what I'm planning on doing."

The trash talk continued, with the Ryan hype machine in full throat. "There's no way I'm going to be second fiddle," he said. "If we were playing the New York Yankees, I don't want to be second fiddle to them . . . I want to be the best team in football, not just be the best team in this city, but we'll start by being the best team in this city."

Ryan got Giants linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka to bite, as he cracked, "I'm not worried about anything anybody says, especially somebody who's not going to have pads on."

Eli Manning didn't respond. Nor did Coughlin. But rest assured the war of words will escalate as the week goes on.

Vintage Rex. And if you don't think there's some value to it, ask yourself this: After reading the aforementioned smack-talking quotes about Saturday's game, are you still thinking about what happened against the Eagles on Sunday?

. . . Didn't think so.