Ryan Makes It Hard to Be a Buddy : Pro football: Ram and Eagle coaches live at opposite ends of the NFL spectrum.

He almost cannot help himself, so deep is the divide between them.

Buddy Ryan tries, sometimes, to hold himself back, to resist popping off a quick one-line lash directed straight at John Robinson’s chest. He truly wants, sometimes, to cool down the white-hot rhetoric he has spewed at Robinson and the Rams for half a decade.

But most of the time, Ryan, who seems to define himself by the blood feuds he can provoke, cannot help himself when it comes to the Rams and the man who coaches them.

Together, Robinson and the Rams are simply too obvious a target, too much a symbol of the kind of team James David (Buddy) Ryan, coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, abhors.

Coach Mike Ditka of the Chicago Bears may be Ryan’s greatest enemy, but that is because they are too much alike, too stubborn and loud to stand each other for long.

John Robinson, urbane, witty and strictly Californian, is the NFL antithesis of Oklahoma-born hellcat Buddy Ryan, and there is nothing either can do about it.

Nothing except stand across the field from each other, as they will Sunday at Anaheim Stadium, and watch their contrasting football teams battle one another.

“You’re going to see the great Ram team,” Ryan recently told a reporter who was about to move from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, his voice laced with sarcasm.

“They’ve had great teams for years. They’ve been in the playoffs, what, four years, and they finally won their first game the other day?”

Actually, the Rams are 4-6 in the playoffs under Robinson, but Ryan’s point was made: The Rams under Robinson, in Ryan’s view, are a big-talent team with a small-talent heart.

“Well, I’ve always respected the Rams’ personnel,” Ryan said. “They’ve had some of the best talent in the league forever.

“But I remember beating them out there in ’86 (Ryan’s first victory as Eagle coach), and I didn’t have anyone. And I remember a couple years ago (in 1988), too. Always seem to do pretty well against them.”

Then Ryan laughed. He can’t help it.

Ryan even redirected questions about his own team’s consecutive playoff failures right at Robinson. His answer this time was 100% unalloyed Ryan, and surely, across a continent, Robinson’s ears were on fire.

“Go out there to L.A. and ask them these questions,” Ryan said. “I don’t know. I’ve never been on a team that lost that many games in the playoffs. You have Robinson call me back on that one.”

Ryan is the quintessential defensive man, who cannot survive without being under attack at all times from all sides. His teams--both the Bear defense that stormed to the Super Bowl title after the 1985 season and the present collection of Eagles--reflect him, his fury, his mouth.

And Robinson is an offensive coach, a team man, who prefers to stay above the gutter-battles Ryan so often seeks to instigate.

“It doesn’t hurt me,” Robinson said of Ryan’s frequent attacks. “In fact, I don’t pay much attention. I’m not even aware of what he says about us.

“I don’t think I ever remember looking across the field at the other coach and thinking personal stuff.”

The first acknowledged Ryan knifing came in 1985 when, as the Bears’ defensive coordinator, he loudly predicted that Ram running back Eric Dickerson would fumble the ball three times in the teams’ NFC Championship matchup. The Rams did not take the comments kindly, especially after Dickerson fumbled twice in the Bears’ romp.

After the Rams upended the Eagles in last year’s NFC wild-card game, Ryan ridiculed the Rams’ soft zone defense used to stifle the Eagle offense, calling it in at least one interview “a junior high school defense,” and in another, simply “ridiculous.”

Even deeper, Ryan infuriated many of the Rams during the week before that game by repeatedly referring to his desire to play the 49ers, the team the Eagles would have played if they had beaten the Rams.

But Robinson goes out of his way to avoid retaliating, with this probable reasoning: What in the world could he gain from a word war with the man who practically has made it a martial art? Why give Ryan the pleasure of returned fire?

“I don’t think it gets to him,” said Marv Goux, Ram defensive line coach and longtime Robinson associate. “You never worry about things like that. That’s Buddy Ryan’s way of doing things, and he’s a hell of a coach.

“But I learned this a long time ago: Never wrestle with a hog. You only get dirty, and the hog loves it.”

And, the Rams say, the hog is only doing it to make you mad, to get you so dizzy with anger that you lose perspective and fight only to maim, not win.

“Damn right he does,” Robinson said tightly. “Yeah, I mean, I think it’s a technique that people would use like any other technique.”

So, does it ever occur to Robinson that he and Ryan, who so often seem to run into each other in big games, are at nearly exact opposite poles of NFL thought?

“I don’t think about him at all,” Robinson said. “I mean, he’s not of much interest to me. And that’s not to say I don’t have a lot of respect for his coaching ability, his team, all those things.”

Even when it comes to dealing with Ryan, Robinson remains the savvy diplomat. He stays calm and he expects his team to do the same.

Ryan believes that by provoking chaos and anger, he forces teams and individuals into mistakes. He blinds them, and they swing wildly.

Jeff Fisher, who is uniquely qualified to assess both men because he played under Robinson at USC and now is Ryan’s right-hand man and defensive coordinator, said the differences between them could not be more pronounced.

“I don’t know that Coach Robinson could ever put down an opponent week in and week out, because, perhaps, of the fear of pumping the opponent up,” Fisher said. “It’s the old cliche: Don’t wake the bear up if he’s sleeping; let him sleep, and sneak in there and surprise him.

“And on the contrary, Buddy is going to wake the bear up; he’s going to walk up and kick the bear and say, ‘Hey, we’re coming in.’ ”

The Rams have felt Ryan’s kick more than once. Now, every time he opens his mouth, even if it is not to utter some sneering gibe, the Rams hear an insult.

Every time they are asked about him, they quietly burn. And every time they play his team, they desperately want to shut him up for good.

“We’re going to have to deal with the Eagles’ defensive line on the field, and Buddy’s mouth off the field,” said quarterback Jim Everett, normally a Robinson-like statesman.

“I forgive, but I don’t forget. Buddy is what he is. And I guess that’s acceptable to him. But it isn’t to everyone.”

Said defensive end Doug Reed, speaking for his team directly to Ryan: “Tell you what, Buddy, bring it on. Bring it on. We’ll be right there.”

And so will John Robinson, standing across the Anaheim Stadium field, striving to ignore everything Buddy Ryan does, says and is.