Players also offered Ryan more fundamental gratitude. It has become anathema for athletes to endure serious injuries and play on — but not for football players. To them, toughness is the essence of the sport and anguish is a form of effort, something you nobly give. As Sutton, the former Army coach, will tell you, like soldiers who fight not for flag or country but for officers and comrades, football players make their sacrifices for their teammates and coaches. In Baltimore, players stayed in games with lacerated kidneys, torn-up knees and shattered hands for Ryan because he was, in turn, all about them.

Linebacker Mike Smith incurred a career-ending injury in a game against Tennessee. “I didn’t want to come out of the game,” he says. “I’m running around with my arm dislocated, hanging weirdly to my side. I didn’t want to let Rex down. That’s how all the guys felt. He’s like our dad. We don’t want to let our dad down. Everybody in Baltimore misses him. Guys in Baltimore who left Rex, they didn’t play as well after leaving him. Rex is the guy you drink beer with on Saturday nights, he’s the guy you go fishing at the lake with, he’s the guy you’ve always known, the forever guy. Once you play for him, you don’t want to play for anybody else.” Now Smith is a Jets defensive assistant, working for Ryan. Scott and Leonhard are Jets players. Sutton calls them “flag bearers.”

Tannenbaum says there were two events last year that made him sure of what a genuine article he had in Ryan. The first was one of those early occasions in a relationship that, when looked back upon, seems of defining, if slightly inexplicable, importance. These being men, it involved a road trip and many hamburgers. Ryan, Tannenbaum, Schottenheimer and the quarterbacks coach, Matt Cavanaugh, were going to Kansas to scout a potential draft choice, Kansas State quarterback Josh Freeman. Ryan dutifully appeared wearing a dress shirt and crisp trousers, as he had for the many business dinners and events he attended since being hired. This time, Tannenbaum told his new coach: “Rex, he’s a draftable player. He has to impress us.” Ryan’s eyes grew big. He disappeared back into his office and re-emerged wearing a flowing garment which he referred to as “the dress sweats.” The four men jetted west, landed and got their rental car, a pick-up truck. Ryan drove, Tannenbaum rode shotgun, Schottenheimer and Cavanaugh sat knees to chest in back. Stories of the Plains were told by Ryan. Soon all four were dusty. Nobody minded. They watched Freeman throw and run. They were impressed, though not as much as they would be by Mark Sanchez of the University of Southern California. Then, on the way to the airport, Ryan suggested a visit to a Sonic Drive-In for some refreshments. Most of the items on the menu were ordered, including, for Ryan, a cup of limeade the size of Topeka. The truck shook. Nobody can say why. Possibly it was many men eating. The result was that Ryan’s cup began to spill. Freshets of limeade poured everywhere. “Oh, no!” Ryan cried. “The dress sweats!” It has become an iconic line, and every time those words occur to Tannenbaum, he feels happiness.

The second moment came early in the season. The Jets were leading the Tennessee Titans. “They’re 0-2,” Tannenbaum says. “They’re desperate. It’s the end of the game. They can tie. It’s fourth down. They have the ball. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time, teams play prevent defense with a four-man rush. Rex goes all-out blitz. He brings everybody. I’m thinking up there in my box, We cannot be doing this! It was the equivalent of being ahead 5-4 in the third period of a hockey game and pulling the goalie. The ball falls incomplete, so we win. In the locker room, he’s sitting there. I say, ‘Rex, I gotta ask you this, What the hell were you thinking?’ He said: ‘Oh, I figured out their protections. I knew we’d get there.’ I said, ‘But what if they made an adjustment?’ Rex said, ‘They wouldn’t.’ I said, ‘But if we don’t get there in time?’ He said, ‘Mike, I knew what they were gonna do.’ The body language was incredible. It was, Mike, the game’s over; go see Michelle and the kids. He’s shrugging. It’s easy to him.”

RYAN WAS BORN into a family of “hard-dirt farmers and house painters from Oklahoma,” as his older brother, Jim, says. Ryan thinks of himself as an Oklahoman. He can get excited just talking about the wind: “It’s like putting a hair dryer in your face and turning it on high!” Much of what Ryan extols about Oklahomans involves their toughness, and Weeks agrees, explaining that “we like to think we’re special, the people who stayed, didn’t go to California.” But Ryan didn’t remain long either.

His mother, Doris, was a Phi Kappa Phi blonde sitting on a sorority porch at Oklahoma A&M when Buddy was introduced. “The year I met her I happened to become academic All-American,” Buddy says. They married, but football coaches are like war correspondents: they can’t keep away. Some people question why the profession requires 90-hour weeks; with men like Buddy Ryan, a game plan is their work of creation. Coaches say that on the best teams, only 10 percent of the time do all 11 players perform their roles as scripted. Every night all over America, sleeping badly on office air mattresses are overweight middle-aged men with faltering marriages.

Life as a lonely housewife was not for Doris. She divorced Buddy and, leaving the twins for two years in Ardmore with her mother, went to the University of Chicago and earned a doctorate. She became an administrator at the University of Toronto, and that’s mainly where Rex grew up, playing hockey but not much football. He and Rob were banned from the local youth league for, Rex says, “knocking the hell out of those kids.” As teenagers they were getting into so much trouble that Doris sent them to Buddy. According to Rob, “Moving in with our father saved our lives.”