Buffalo Bills co-owner Kim Pegula said on the team’s website that they initially didn’t have coach Rex Ryan very high on their candidates list.
The Buffalo Bills hired Rex Ryan after he was let go by the New York Jets and the team and its fans are raving about the move just a week into the new era. While new Bills owners Kim and Terry Pegula are certainly thrilled by the hire, Kim recently admitted that she and her husband actually didn’t have Rex Ryan as high on their list as some other coaching candidates when the process began.
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Pegula spoke on The John Murphy Show via the team’s website about the head coach search and what the team wanted. When she was asked about Ryan, she noted, “we really didn’t give much thought to him.”
“We had obviously interviewed a lot of people before him,” Pegula continued. “And he came in and I think we were just very pleasantly surprised at how very down to earth he really was in person and his love of the game and some of the things that he said on what he really wanted to do with his life and where he wanted to help us as being part of the team.”
Rex always seemed more like a small town guy to begin with, given the way he has that bombastic approach combined with an ‘aw shucks’ demeanor. In a smaller market where every word isn’t turned into a full front page picture slamming him, Rex Ryan could find that life in Buffalo is quieter and more comfortable in that regard.
In return, Buffalo fans have quickly latched onto Rex’s confidence which exudes his every word and oozes big city. That attitude is something a downtrodden franchise like the Bills needs right now. Someone who won’t hedge and won’t look to the past for excuses like a certain former coach who referred to himself as a Saint.
Those are the things Kim and Terry Pegula saw when they interviewed Rex and that’s why they asked him back for a second interview before offering Ryan a lucrative five-year deal.
“I think that really resounded really well with [co-owner] Terry [Pegula] and I. And it was a little bit of a surprise, I’m gonna admit, because he was not a candidate that we had really on the top of our list as, ‘Wow, this is the guy we want, let’s go get him.’”
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