From coaching the Jets these last 10 months, Todd Bowles knows his players pretty well. He tries every game to maximize their strengths and disguise their weaknesses — and hope that other teams do not notice.
Only one other person might have the same intimate knowledge of Bowles’s team. On Thursday night, that person happened to be prowling the opposite sideline at MetLife Stadium.
That person, Rex Ryan, coaches the Buffalo Bills. He recognizes the Jets’ defensive liabilities because they have not changed. He understands the tendencies of their quarterback, Ryan Fitzpatrick, because Ryan has foiled him several times.
After all the fiascos he oversaw as Jets coach, how disorienting it must have been for Ryan to revel in — and help cause, really — all the mistakes that contributed to a 22-17 Buffalo victory that recalibrated the balance of power in the A.F.C. wild-card chase.
Credit Ben Solomon for The New York Times
All because he had marched into his former stadium and toppled his former team, catapulting the Bills — 5-4, like the Jets — to the No. 5 seed in the conference standings and the tiebreaker advantage over the Jets, who lost for the third time in their last four games.
“Without question,” Ryan said, “pretty satisfying.”
How familiar it all looked to Ryan, even while standing in unfamiliar territory: the team in green and white self-destructing, committing four turnovers, missing tackles, falling behind by 19 points, misfiring at critical moments.
One came on the second play of the fourth quarter, on fourth-and-2 from the Buffalo 20-yard line with the Jets trailing, 22-10. The Bills disguised their coverage to make the Jets think they were sending a blitzer from Brandon Marshall’s side of the field. That blitzer stayed back to cover Marshall and thwart the hitch that Fitzpatrick threw for no gain. The route was short, Bowles said, and the ball thrown to the wrong location.
The other pivotal play came after Fitzpatrick, on the eve of his thumb surgery, connected with Eric Decker for a 31-yard touchdown that narrowed the deficit to 22-17 with 7 minutes 23 seconds left; after Muhammad Wilkerson stuffed Karlos Williams on third-and-1 to force a punt; and after Bills punter Colton Schmidt botched the snap, giving the Jets the ball at the Buffalo 13-yard line with a chance to take the lead late in the game.
After Chris Ivory ran for eight yards on first down, Decker said he thought to himself, “You can’t really be in any better situation.” Second down: loss of 1. Third down: loss of 1. Bowles made the call to go for it.
Bills quarterback Tyrod Taylor looking for running room against the Jets’ defense in the first half. Throwing the ball, he was 17 of 27 for 158 yards, with one score.
Credit Ben Solomon for The New York Times
“I don’t know if we would have gotten the ball back,” Bowles said.
On fourth down, Fitzpatrick looked toward tight end Kellen Davis, who had been thrown to four times all season. Davis got jammed at the line, then bumped into Decker, preventing him from reaching where he needed to.
Ryan departed the Jets in an understated fashion after he was fired, slipping out during a highlight montage shown to the team, and he returned to MetLife Stadium in much the same way. As a phalanx of television cameras waited more than an hour for him beside the Bills’ tunnel, Ryan remained inside for warmups.
Not because he did not want to grow emotional seeing his former players or protect his eyes from further exposure to the teams’ monochromatic uniforms, but because he wanted to deflect attention from himself.
“You guys made it all about me,” Ryan said. “That’s why I stayed in.”
Running out 15 minutes before kickoff to a chorus of mild boos — and not, as he had figured, to “one finger and all that stuff” — Ryan embarked on a mission steeped in pride, not vengeance. The same man who said he had a stellar working relationship with the former general manager John Idzik dismissed the notion that this game meant more to him, although his reaction in the final minute made that difficult to believe.
Buffalo Coach Rex Ryan after the Bills’ win. The Bills and Jets now have identical records at 5-4.
Credit Ben Solomon for The New York Times
The Jets contained Buffalo for the first quarter before LeSean McCoy, who rushed for 112 yards on 19 carries, started evading defenders and bursting through holes. Those missed tackles helped the Bills gain critical yards on scoring drives that improved their lead at halftime to 12-3, an advantage that swelled on the 80-yard touchdown drive that opened the second half.
On that series, Tyrod Taylor (17 for 27, 158 yards, one touchdown) exploited the Jets’ struggles covering running backs and tight ends by connecting with them three times, including a 26-yard score to Williams that roasted Demario Davis. When the Bills turned Ivory’s fumble on the Jets’ next offensive play into a field goal to go ahead by 22-3, the crowd fell silent, only to roar again when the Jets stormed back late.
The entropy that governed Ryan’s six years with the Jets defined the buildup to Thursday night.
The first two days this week, Ryan panned Fitzpatrick’s beard, disparaged the Jets’ 2014 draft class and observed how loaded this Jets roster is, a jab at Idzik that was sledgehammer-subtle.
All that paled to his selection as a captain Ikemefuna Enemkpali — the Jet turned Bill who on Aug. 11 socked Geno Smith in the jaw — in a decision he considered neither a motivational ploy nor glorification of workplace violence, but an adherence to a longstanding custom of honoring players with local ties. Had there been news media access Wednesday, Ryan might have announced himself as a captain, too.
Except for the second-year safety Calvin Pryor, who on Tuesday criticized most things Ryan (that zinger about the draft class, in particular), the Jets did not engage with his antics. Desensitized to Ryan’s audacity — and accustomed to Bowles’s equanimity — they shrugged. They laughed.
They spoke of how odd it would be to see Ryan in this context, but not about much else.
Not the potential for in-game retribution against Enemkpali — “It’s not TMZ, it’s just football,” Marshall said — and not the coin toss, when he was greeted by the Jets’ captains (Smith was not one of them) with handshakes. Then, actual football was played.
Befitting a coaching matchup of two defensive specialists, the Jets and Buffalo combined to punt four times in the first six minutes. On the Jets’ third possession, Fitzpatrick (15 for 34, 193 yards, 2 touchdowns, 2 interceptions) neutralized the Bills’ speedy defensive front with a 36-yard screen pass to Ivory that set up a 29-yard field goal by Randy Bullock.
That 3-0 lead evaporated within a 12-second span of the second quarter. After the Bills converted Fitzpatrick’s first interception since Week 6 into a field goal, the rookie receiver Devin Smith compounded a poor decision with a worse play.
Running out the ensuing kickoff despite being pinned 5 yards back in the end zone, and in the corner, Smith — who returned all of one kickoff his final two seasons at Ohio State — had the ball dislodged while falling. Duke Williams grabbed it and returned the fumble 19 yards for a touchdown.
“He made a play,” Smith, deflated, said of Rambo, who stripped him. “He hit the ball and it popped out.”
The only saving grace for the Jets was watching Dan Carpenter miss the extra point. It was, for the Jets and Bowles, one of the highlights of the night. For Ryan, the fun was just beginning.
“How do you think it feels?” Ryan said. “Dang right, it feels great. Absolutely.”
EXTRA POINTS
Zac Stacy fractured his left ankle on the kickoff return that ended the first half. … Cornerback Antonio Cromartie, bothered by what the team is calling a left thigh bruise, missed the first game of his 10-year career with an injury. Marcus Williams started in his place. … Rontez Miles, who recorded the first defensive snaps of his career last week, started at safety. … RYAN FITZPATRICK is expected to be available for the Jets’ next game, Nov. 22 at Houston.