Plank credits his mentors for his coaching passion

It doesn't take much imagination to guess what kind of coach Doug Plank will be, considering the kamikaze way he played the game and who his mentors were.

Plank, the newly hired Jets assistant defensive backs coach, played five of his eight years for the Bears under defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan and, before that, for Woody Hayes at Ohio State.

"I have to say, I've never played for a finesse coach," Plank said with a chuckle. "Woody Hayes would rock your world, and he'd rock the worlds of the other team's players. He was tough and demanding. Guys like Mike Ditka and Buddy Ryan, those were tough guys, too."

Not that Plank ever needed "tough" lessons from anyone. Leading with the crown of his helmet, the 6-foot, 200-pound safety was an intimidating deterrent to any opposing receiver venturing into the Bears' secondary from 1975-81. His own reckless style and the resulting concussions limited him to one game in his final campaign, the strike-shortened season of 1982, Ditka's first as head coach.

He was a major player in Ryan's trademark 46 defense, which took its name from Plank's jersey number. Plank was one of Ryan's favorites, and his destructive style of play exemplified the scheme that powered the Bears to the Super Bowl XX championship. The alignment featured two linebackers stationed next to each other near the line of scrimmage in addition to the four down linemen and sometimes a safety (usually Plank) and another linebacker in the box.

Ryan's twin sons, Rob and Rex, 46, are graduates of Stevenson High School, and both followed in their father's footsteps. Rex spent the previous 10 seasons as the Ravens' defensive coordinator, but he was hired as the Jets' head coach Jan. 19.

One of his first moves was to hire Plank.

The former Bears hit man was the head coach of the Georgia Force in the Arena Football League and a defensive coordinator with the AFL's Arizona Rattlers. He worked as a part-time assistant with the Falcons in 2008 to get his foot in the NFL door, which Ryan swung wide open for him last week.

Plank's relationship with the Ryan family goes back a long way.

"When Buddy was our defensive coordinator, Rex and Rob were ball boys," Plank said. "And then when Buddy came to Arizona (as the Cardinals' head coach in 1994 and '95), I saw Rex and Rob a lot, and I always kept in touch."

The twins were assistants on their father's Cardinals staff, and in those days, Plank was working as a radio and TV broadcaster, analyst and color commentator.

"I would run into them while I was doing broadcasts," Plank said. "This past year when I coached for the Falcons, we played the Ravens and the Raiders (where Rob was the defensive coordinator, but he has since taken the same position with the Browns)."

Plank once owned as many as 13 Burger King franchises, and he says he uses everything he has learned along the way as an entrepreneur and communicator to be an effective coach.

"All of those experiences were all very important to me," he said. "One of the most important parts of coaching is being able to communicate, to take something that might be difficult or complicated and make it easy to understand for someone else.

"I was down at the Senior Bowl (last week), and I met a lot of coaches looking for jobs who are brilliant guys and have all this knowledge in their heads, but maybe they can't communicate it to players as well as some other coaches."

It's only natural to wonder how someone as driven and devoted as Plank will react to young players who don't share his passion for the game. But he puts the burden for instilling that kind of spirit on himself.

"Sometimes you have to put responsibility on the coaches," Plank said. "One of the things I'm really excited about is that when you see Rex's players, they're inspired. That doesn't always come naturally. They need instruction and direction. He's putting a defense on the field that's physical and motivated. Other teams do not look forward to playing Rex's teams. It's a combination of coaches and the player himself to develop that attitude of reckless abandon."

Plank has tried to take something from each of his football role models and blend it into his own style, which he sums up in basic terms.

"You learned from them that every inch of the field was valuable, and you didn't want to give any of it up," he said. "I just want to try to maintain the same philosophy.

"Even today, I sometimes laugh because I think about them almost every day. They didn't just talk to you about football, they talked about life. And everyday in life you think of those guys and how they would react or how they would handle an everyday situation, and it becomes part of your internal thinking."

Almost everyone who coaches has entertained the idea of being the head man, and Plank is no different, but that isn't his current focus.

"Everybody has aspirations," he said. "But the first order of business is to be as proficient as you can be at your job.

"Right now, I'm just trying to digest the Jets' system and be the best coach I can be whether it's coaching the (whole) secondary or the safeties. It's a series of baby steps along the way and obstacles that you have to overcome."