Intimate look at Rex Ryan part of Thursday Night Football's new approach to show opening

Pete Radovich called it a creative "nightmare."

But it was one he asked for when he suggested ditching the usual approach to prime time NFL television opens, with a consistent theme or narrator or musical number, in favor of radically different styles and stories week to week.

"As the words left my mouth, I'm literally asking myself: What are you doing?" Radovich said, recalling his initial pitch to CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus.

But Radovich, the creative director behind the pieces that set up CBS/NFL Network's "Thursday Night Football" games, has known since the summer that there was at least one game on the schedule that would not require much thought:

Rex Ryan's return to the Meadowlands as coach of the Bills for Thursday night's game against the Jets on NFL Network.

Radovich and his team correctly assumed the week leading up to the game would feature plenty of Rex-related bombast and controversy, so the idea was to present a toned-down, contemplative Ryan.

"We wanted to get a little more intimate with Rex and get inside his head a little bit and get beyond the headlines and the outrageous statements," Radovich said of the piece, in which Ryan is shot in black and white.

"I think it shows a different side of him . . . We weren't looking for him to be outrageous, boast-and-stand-on-a-table Rex, put-on-a-wig Rex."

The open or "tease," usually is shown at around 8:20 p.m. and must tell its story in 120 to 150 seconds. Hence the weekly creative "nightmare."

"I felt strongly it was an opportunity for us to distinguish ourselves with a different type of open rather than do the literal song and dance," Radovich said. "We wanted to tell stories and do them in different ways and different styles every week."

The goal he said, is that "eventually people would look forward to seeing, 'What's the hook this week? What are they doing this week?' As opposed to, 'Here comes the open we're expecting.'"

Radovich said he often reminds himself of a favorite quote by the "Mad Men" character Don Draper: "Fear stimulates my imagination."

Said Radovich, "Basically that's the way I'm wired . . . In a weird way I was built for this. Even though I think in the long term this will cost me a few years down the road."

Radovich said his favorite so far was a Week 3 mini-film featuring Lawrence Taylor and John Riggins in advance of the Giants-Redskins matchup.

Another highlight was the segment before the Patriots-Dolphins game in which young fans at three schools in New England discussed their team's dominance, DeflateGate and Tom Brady, all with just the right tone of Patriots-driven cockiness.

Not every week is as easy as Bills-Jets. Radovich said that as of Wednesday, his team had not yet settled on an idea for next week's Thursday nighter.

That matchup understandably could be a bit of a challenge: Titans at Jaguars.

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.