Rex Ryan Can Only Blame Himself For Jets Woes

Hey New York Jets fans, where have you heard this before? The Jets get behind early, their offensive play calling is terrible, wide receivers are dropping passes and the defense can’t stop the opponent late in the game. This was how the Jets played in the AFC Championship game last January and it is also how they played Sunday evening against the New England Patriots.

As a Jets fan, whose head coach said they would go to the Super Bowl this year, I should not see the same mistakes twice. Jets Head Coach, Rex Ryan, had 8 months to fix this problem but as Sunday proved nothing has changed. Now the Jets are a 2-3 team and are headed nowhere fast. Rex has no one to blame other than himself for this mess.

Let’s take a look back at where Rex has gone wrong. Ryan backed Offensive Coordinator Brian Schottenheimer after the AFC Championship loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers despite four terrible calls at the Steelers goal line. Schottenheimer has come into this year and his play calling has been just as bad. The fact is the Patriots came into Sunday’s matchup with the 32nd ranked defense in the NFL. The Jets finished the game with 255 yards of total offense. This shows that this man has no pulse on his team and their offense. The Patriots were ready for all of their short passing, something the Jets haven’t been able to change in 3 years. The Jets once again didn’t get a big play vertically and while the offensive line hasn’t been good, a bootleg/rollout and deep throw isn’t impossible for any offense to do. It is time for Rex to ask himself this question, if you had to face a Schottenheimer led offense would your defense be scared? Would it keep you up late at night? I guarantee you the answer is no and that is why Rex’s first mistake was not letting this guys go.

The next mistake Rex made was not making adjustments so that his defense can stop teams when it counts. It is clear once again that Ryan’s Jets defense can’t lineup and stop a team in a pressure situation. With 7 minutes to go in regulation the Patriots had the ball up 6. Did Ryan’s defense stop the Patriots? Did the Jets offense get the ball back with a chance to win the game? The answer is no. It is the same situation that came up in Pittsburgh last January. Why couldn’t the Jets fix this? They got new defensive linemen, they got a quicker LB in Jamaal Westerman, they got Jim Leonhard back so what gives? Ben Garvis Green-Ellis is not Adrian Peterson so stopping him shouldn’t be that hard but it was impossible for the Jets. The biggest thing here is Tom Brady didn’t even have to do much in that last drive, it was all Green-Ellis.

As the Jets head back to New Jersey, their head coach has a lot to think about but he should think about himself first. It is time for Rex Ryan to look at himself and see what he must do to turn things around. He should have a bigger hand in the offense that has not grown at all. He should give them an identity their Offensive Coordinator is incapable of giving them himself. He should find a way to get his defense to come up big when it counts. But most of all he needs to find a way to not make the same mistake twice or in the Jets case three times.