Rex Ryan returns, leads Bills to huge, ugly win over his former Jets team
Rex Ryan hasn’t changed. Not one bit.
The boast-making, baritone-speaking head coach was not humbled when he was fired by the New York Jets, and he hasn’t changed his stripes — except for a gaudy new tattoo — since taking over the Buffalo Bills.
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That’s Ryan, who has his way of doing things from which he likely never will veer. He was on full display Thursday night in his return to East Rutherford. The Bills fought off the Jets, 22-17, in a game with Rex-ian ugliness. As in, he brings the ugly and brings it out of the opponent, too.
An opponent he knows well. And one he spent most of the shortened week denying had any special meaning to him. Just another division game.
Ryan donned a Clemson helmet, deflecting the attention off his Bills players and onto him, and he delivered an ugly, important and — absolutely — personal victory for his team. The sight of Ryan pumping his fist and shouting unsavory words once the game was sealed showed you all you needed to know about how much this one meant to him.
“I can tell you what he said right there,” LeSean McCoy said on the NFL Network postgame show. “There would be a lot of bleeps. Bleep, bleep, bleep.”
The Bills and Jets now both sit at 5-4. Catching the New England Patriots in the AFC East might not be possible, but the wild-card picture is very much open still. For once, Ryan could enjoy the Jets making a slew of mistakes in a game he was involved in.
Ryan didn’t hold back after the game, admitting that there most certainly was a level of revenge involved.
The game opened with four straight three-and-outs. Fitting for a Ryan vs. Todd Bowles games, perhaps. The Jets then drove the ball from their own 13-yard line all the way to the Buffalo 11, but Fitzpatrick misfired on two straight passes and they settled for a field goal and a 3-0 lead.
The Bills’ offense was choppy at best, so they had to lean on the defense and special teams to help get them on the scoreboard. Jets receiver Brandon Marshall dropped a well-thrown ball from Fitzpatrick in the second quarter, and it was intercepted by Corey Graham, who returned it to the New York 34.
Buffalo bogged down from there, but the Bills tied it with a field goal. Then on the ensuing kickoff, Jets rookie returner Devin Smith coughed up the ball — knocked out by the Bills’ Bacarri Rambo and scooped up by Duke Williams, who strolled into the end zone for the stunning score. Despite missing the extra points, the Bills quieted the MetLife Stadium crowd with nine points in a nine-second span.
The Bills took the 12-3 lead into halftime as the Smith fumble seemed to take the air out of the stadium. They then made it 19-3 when Tyrod Taylor, who played a clean game despite constant pressure applied to him, rookie running back Karlos Williams caught a 26-yard pass in the middle of a confused Jets secondary.
The Bills controlled the action, limiting the Jets to one offensive snap in a 53-minute real-time span over the second and third quarters. That one play was a Chris Ivory fumble, ripped by Rambo in a career game from him. The fact that Ryan had used both of his challenges by this point seemed almost immaterial.
But the Jets regained the momentum dramatically. They drove 80 yards in just over two minutes near the end of the third quarter and cut it to a 22-10 Bills lead on a Marshall 14-yard TD catch. Then after a Bills three-and-out and a short punt, the Jets were in business again. They quickly flipped the field and were in business at the Buffalo 20-yard line at the start of the fourth.
But two awful plays stopped them cold.
On third-and-2, Fitzpatrick hit Eric Decker beyond the sticks with a perfect pass, but it was dropped. Bowles then eschewed the easy field-goal try to go for it on fourth. Question the decision if you want, but the play call was what was most offensive: a quick hitch to Marshall behind the line of scrimmage. Predictably, cornerback Ronald Darby — quickly building his Rookie of the Year reputation with each game — hogtied Marshall for no gain and a turnover on downs.
Ryan, of course, wanted to make it interesting. In a decision that mirrored his challenge calls, he used the Bills’ final timeout with just under 11 minutes remaining. As it was, the decision didn’t end up hurting the Bills.
The Jets got a lucky spot after a third-down run by Ivory, the kind of play that Ryan could have challenged had he not burned them well over an hour before. After an odd QB sneak on third-and-10 QB sneak by Fitzpatrick, he found Decker with a pretty pass on fourth-and-four and then floated one to him down the seam for a 31-yard score to make it 22-17 Bills.
The Bills tried to milk some clock and gained eight yards on first down but were stoned two straight runs and went three-and-out for the fourth straight possession. And things actually appeared to get far worse: A bad snap was bobbled by Bills punter Colton Schmidt, and the Jets took over on the Buffalo 13-yard line with just over five minutes remaining.
But the Jets once more botched a fourth-down situation, passing up points in the process. Fitzpatrick hit Decker short of the line of scrimmage for a one-yard loss to Decker and then threw the ball to no one directly — little-used tight end Kellen Davis appeared close to the pass, but thoroughly confused — for the wasted possession.
The Bills effectively ran out the clock as LeSean McCoy (19 rushes, 112 yards — his second straight 100-yard game, with a sore shoulder) ripped off handoffs for 3, 5, 16, 8 and 1 yards. The Jets got the ball back with 24 seconds left and were aided by a dumb Bills penalty — again, it’s a Rex-coached team — but the Bills survived when Fitzpatrick was picked by Rambo, his third turnover forced of the game after only two forced in his first 23 NFL contests.
Ryan’s defense (which was without a sick Mario Williams almost all of the game) forced three turnovers, and the special teams added another. He returned to beat the team he formed his identity as a coach with, and he did nothing outside his character in a huge victory.
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm
