Despite a convincing win Sunday, New York Jets owner Woody Johnson summarily fired head coach Rex Ryan and general manager John Idzik this morning. A terse tweet and statement made the long-expected news official.
“After extensive thought and reflection about the current state of our football team, this morning I informed Rex Ryan and John Idzik that they will not be returning for the 2015 season,” stated Johnson in his statement. “Both Rex and John made significant contributions to the team, and they have my appreciation and gratitude for their efforts and commitment. Over the years, Rex brought the Jets a bold confidence and a couple of great post-season runs, which all of us will remember.”
That appreciation and gratitude, however, couldn’t save Ryan after the Jets started the season 1-8. The Jets became an object of ridicule, far removed from the gritty defensive teams that Ryan led at the beginning of his tenure in Gotham. For the fourth straight season, the Jets missed the playoffs. In a league where coaches are canned after just a couple of bad seasons, and are often fired even with a winning season under their belt, Rex Ryan’s longevity was miraculous. He finishes with a 46-50 record after six seasons – the third-longest tenure of any Jets coach. Only Weeb Ewbank and Joe Walton served longer.
Ryan, though, was doomed even before the season began. His roster was shredded by GM John Idzik over the course of the last two seasons, and he never had the tools to succeed. That the Jets finished the previous season with a 8-8 record was astonishing, and down to luck more than anything else; that luck deserted Ryan in 2014. For most of this season, Ryan had wretched cornerbacks who were unable to competently play his preferred defense. How wretched? The team went from featuring Antonio Cromartie and Darrelle Revis at cornerback to Phillip Adams and Darrin Walls. The rest of the roster was equally anonymous; it says something when the “stars” on the roster are a washed-up quarterback whose best days came before going to prison for dog-fighting and a running back who last went to the Pro Bowl four years ago.
Ryan had his faults; when it came to offense, he was famously ineffective. In his six seasons, the Jets offense finished in the top 20 only once; that was in 2010, when they finished 11th. The NFL is dominated by quarterbacks; no other position makes as much a difference as that one. With the way his defenses played, Ryan only needed a competent, stable offense. He never had one. Ryan ran through three offensive coordinators, and never managed to develop a competent quarterback, let alone a great one. He came closest with Mark Sanchez, with whom he led the Jets to two straight AFC Championship Games. But Sanchez regressed horribly over his last two seasons in New York, leading to his release by the Jets in March of this year. Sanchez’s so-so showing at the Philadelphia Eagles this season, however, suggest the quarterback’s struggles in New York were due to his own failings rather than a lack of inspiration on the part of Ryan. The team drafted Geno Smith in 2012, but he, too, has failed at the position. Never was that failure more evident than in a 16-13 loss to the Dolphins on 1 December; Smith threw only 13 times the entire game, for a total of 65 yards passing.
The Jets will miss Ryan, though – badly.
Before Ryan took the reins, the Jets were an afterthought in New York, overshadowed by the Super Bowl-winning Giants in the NFC, who regularly made the playoffs. That changed under Ryan’s outspoken leadership. He guaranteed that the Jets would win the Super Bowl; in his inaugural press conference as the team’s head coach, Ryan promised that the Jets would be visiting the White House, an honor reserved for championship teams. He was made to coach a team in New York, with his swaggering, larger-than-life personality. In a profession where coaches tend to be colorless, drab functionaries, Ryan stood out brightly. It’s going to be very difficult for the Jets to replace him, and the potential replacements don’t stir the blood. One can argue that the team needs a fresh start – in his last four seasons, Ryan went 26-38 – but the only man who could match Ryan’s bravado and has a successful record is going back to college coaching.
That would be Jim Harbaugh, who is set to coach his alma mater, Michigan.
Everyone else – Josh McDaniels? Darrell Bevell? Todd Bowles? – is either a retread or an unproven commodity. None of those candidates bring Ryan’s joie de vivre to One Jets Drive; in fact, it’s perilously easy to see where they could return the Jets to their accustomed position as New York’s forgotten team. This is a team that badly needs a strong leader to serve as the face of the team, in the same way that Tom Coughlin does for the Giants.
Could the Jets lure someone like Jon Gruden or Bill Cowher back to the sideline? Sure, but neither has shown any kind of desire to leave the easy life of televised sports to undergo the punishing life of a NFL head coach, where hundred-hour weeks are common. It’s hard to imagine that they’d do so to engage in a team rebuilding project in the unforgiving stage of New York, but stranger things have happened. Absent that, though, the Jets are likely to trawl through the NFL’s bin of coaching also-rans, more likely to end up with a Dennis Allen than with another Ryan.
Speaking of Allen, there are four current openings in the league: the Chicago Bears, the Oakland Raiders, the Atlanta Falcons, and the San Francisco 49ers. While Ryan’s name has already been linked with Atlanta, it’s more likely that he joins the Raiders, Allen’s former team, who are primed for the same kind of reinvention that Ryan accomplished in New York. The Raiders have retooled their roster; despite finishing 3-13 this season, this is a team that finished 8-8 in 2010 and 2011. In Derek Carr, they have a quarterback who showed promise in his rookie season; imagine what he could do with better receivers. They’ll have the fourth pick in next year’s NFL Draft. All they really lack is a strong coach; Ryan easily fits that description. The AFC West isn’t particularly a strong division: Denver are an aging team, San Diego mercurial, and Kansas City mediocre.
It’s not hard to imagine a future where Ryan finds Super Bowl glory with Oakland. If so, it’ll be Ryan who laughs last and best, and the Jets who will be ruing this Black Monday having descended into irrelevance once more.
