Forgive Rex Ryan if he seems a bit delusional given the season he and his New York Jets have suffered through thus far this season. But if Ryan truly believes what he’s been peddling over the last several days, he may actually be far worse off than anyone could have ever imagined.
“We’re not dead,” a nonetheless shell-shocked, zombified-looking Ryan told reporters just hours before the likelihood of yet another Jets’ annihilation at the hands of their arch-rival New England Patriots. “We might be counted out, but we ain’t quitting. From the outside, it may appear like, ‘Oh, you guys are out of it,’ but that’s not the case. We’ve just begun to fight.”
Ryan is at least right about everyone counting the Jets out, and the fact that they’ve waited until Week 7 of the season, until after getting off to a 1-5 start, to demonstrate any fight at all could have a lot to do with that.
How can Rex Ryan and his men legitimately expect to turn things around when they show no real signs of even being willing to admit what they’ve done wrong?
All this week, equally beleaguered second-year quarterback Geno Smith has seemingly spent all his time trying to place all the blame for the Jets’ woeful ways—- their meager 3.1 yards per play and just three defensive takeaways over the last two games and all— at the feet of the big, bad New York City media.
“I think, obviously with everything that goes on with the media, a lot of things are, I would say, miscommunicated, and then it just gets misprinted and then misunderstood,” said Smith. “The main thing is that we just have to find a way to get a win. The hardest part about it all is losing. Those things are tougher than I guess what can be said and what is portrayed out there in the media.”
Indeed, that’s as it should be. But with the Jets, you’re often times left to wonder where the true focus lies.
“Yeah, I’d say so,” answered Ryan when asked if the Jets current five-game losing streak represents one of the lowest stretches of his five-year Jets’ coaching career. “But not by lack of effort.”
Whatever the reason, Rex Ryan this week looked and sounded like a man who in no way resembled the one that was guaranteeing Super Bowl parades for the Jets as recently as 2011. And perhaps even more telling about the ill-fated direction of the franchise, his Jets look even less like the team that gave him his only win of the year in Week 1 against the winless Raiders.
“This is the biggest rivalry we have, so you don’t have to worry about motivation,” Ryan said of the Jets’ Thursday night battle against the Patriots. “It’s going to be there. Both teams don’t like each other. There’s respect for each other, but I don’t think you really like the other.”
And if Rex Ryan truly thinks that alone will be enough to take down a ruffled-feathered Tom Brady in Foxboro, in prime-time, well, the Jets coach is simply being delusional.
