Vikings legends remember Buddy Ryan, a longtime NFL coach

Longtime NFL coach Buddy Ryan, who died Tuesday at age 82, spent two of his 27 seasons with the Vikings in 1976-77 as the defensive line coach and helped continue a tradition of success under head coach Bud Grant.

Several Vikings legends took a moment Tuesday to remember Ryan:

"He had good character and was a good coach.

"He was a friend of [former Vikings assistant coach] Neill Armstrong when I first met him. I hired him after talking with him and he had a lot of good ideas about coaching and theories. When coaches get together, he was a good storyteller.

"He was a fine coach, but the thing he did the best, Buddy came here and he had a defensive scheme that was different than what we were running. I talked to him about it and … I asked him if he could run under our system. He said, 'Yeah, I could.' He came here and didn't push his system. He worked with us … which I thought was admirable because he had a lot of great ideas.

"He had the 4-something [defense] and he blitzed a lot. I told him, 'Buddy, we don't need that. We have four guys and we turn them loose.'

"He was a good guy to have around. He helped us and we enjoyed him and he went on to great things. I have good memories of Buddy."

"Buddy and I would always sit together on the plane, and he was always working on some kind of thing he was trying to deal with and I would be over there reading.

"We were close friends. He was a dang good coach and defensive line coach.

"I thought he did a dang good job with the [Chicago] Bears. He was in somewhat of a new style in a 4-4 set with eight people there and making it pretty difficult sometimes to run plays against them. He was a good coach, and players always liked him and coaches liked him."

"It's a big loss to football. I think he's a great coach. I hate to see him go."