Ravens' Rex Ryan Defends Timeout Call

Ravens defensive coordinator Rex Ryan made a costly decision on Monday night when he called timeout an instant before the Patriots snapped the ball and ran a quarterback sneak on fourth-and-1. The Ravens' defense stuffed Patriots quarterback Tom Brady at the line of scrimmage, and the Ravens appeared to have won the game -- except that the timeout meant the play never happened.

But the Baltimore Sun reports that Ryan isn't backing down from that decision:

Without prompting, defensive coordinator Rex Ryan began his weekly news conference by defending his decision to call a timeout ...

"It's my job as the defensive coordinator to put our players in the best defense possible to stop what we feel is going to happen," Ryan said. "In most situations, Tom Brady is a master of that. You can do your work, you can go back and study like I did, spend as much time as I do, and know the tendencies of a football team, and if you do that, you'll see why I called the timeout.

"We had our speed team on the field at the time, which is only one defensive tackle, then we have all linebackers and defensive backs filling out the other 10 spots."

That's all well and good, but if the wrong personnel was on the field, that's Ryan's fault, too. And Ryan doesn't seem to realize that wasting that timeout also hurt the Ravens' offense on its last-ditch drive after the Patriots scored. Both by calling a timeout and by calling off the dogs, Ryan screwed up on Monday night.