With just a game to go in the regular season, the Buffalo Bills decided not to screw around. Tuesday the team announced they had fired Rex Ryan after two seasons of utter futility.
Some of you may be asking, why wait until Tuesday? The team played on Saturday, you know, Christmas Eve. Why not fire him the day after Christmas or on Christmas itself? It would have been a real present to the Bills’ hard-luck fans. But, no. Owner Terrence Pegula made you wait a whole extra day for the sweet relief of knowing Rex Ryan will no longer coach your team. Very Scrooge-ish if you ask me.
Rex Ryan has been relieved of his duties as head coach. Anthony Lynn will serve as interim head coach. pic.twitter.com/8Vf0fxqwcl
— Buffalo Bills (@BuffaloBills) December 27, 2016
The real question is why it took this long to vacate Ryan from the building in the first place and Ryan himself is the architect of that particular nightmare. As one of the best defensive minds in football, he was able to win games this season at the exact right time to stave off the reaper.
In an extra boost to the Bills’ 2017 prospects, the team fired defensive coordinator and professional shampoo model Rob Ryan as its defensive coordinator too.
Offensive coordinator Anthony Lynn has been named the interim head coach and everyone is pretending the poster child for Rooney Rule abuse somehow has a shot at becoming the next head coach of the Bills. Trust this, if Lynn is the head coach in 2017 it will only be because everyone else turned down the job.
Classy move by the Bills to let Rex Ryan go while he can still get a cabinet position.
— The Pickle (@sportspickle) December 27, 2016
Saturday’s 34-31 loss to the Miami Dolphins in overtime was the perfect storm that finally forced the Bills’ hand. On one side you had a young coach in his first year drag his team out of its perpetual losing doldrums and into the playoffs on the arm of his back up quarterback. On the other sideline, you had a guy who inherited a 9-7 team that nearly made the playoffs in 2013 and made them worse every single year. The comparison was damning to say the least. Ryan’s final record with the Bills? 15-16.
Ryan has been a head coach in the NFL since 2009 when the New York Jets hired him after a very successful stint as the defensive coordinator of the Baltimore Ravens. Ryan led the Jets to two consecutive AFC title games with Marc Sanchez at quarterback, of all people, but faltered every year since.
Ryan simply did not have an eye for talent in the later rounds of the draft. Those first two Jets teams were all hold-overs from Eric Mangini’s tenure with the team. Once Rex was part of the player acquisition process, the team took a nose dive. With the Bills, Rex was no better. benching the QB that led the team to a 9-7 record the year before (E.J. Manuel) for Tyrod Taylor.
Rex Ryan was a big proponent of Tyrod Taylor and fought to keep him as starter. His firing is bad news for Taylor.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) December 27, 2016
With Ryan gone, Taylor’s tenure with the team is almost certainly over too. Taylor has put up good numbers for the Bills, but he’s not a clutch player and should be a back up. At Ryan’s behest, the team gave Taylor a massive extension in the offseason, with various escape clauses. One of those is being option by the team this very week. They’ve ordered Lynn to bench Taylor so he doesn’t get injured and the team can escape paying him $27.5 million in guarantees they would owe him on March 11.
Don’t weep for Rex Ryan. While his head coaching career is most likely over, he’ll be on a sideline next season as a defensive coordinator and will probably be the most sought after man at that position if the Cincinnati Bengals don’t fire Marvin Lewis. Rob will end up wherever Rex goes, probably coaching the defensive line.
When some in upper management wanted to bench Tyrod Taylor, it was Rex Ryan who kept him on the field. GM Doug Whaley wants to see EJ Manuel
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) December 27, 2016
Unlike Jeff Fisher and Gus Bradley, there’s a chance Ryan gets another shot at a head coaching job. It would probably come for a similar situation that landed Mike Mularkey in charge of the Tennessee Titans this season. He’d step in as an interim coach for a fired head coach and just get to keep the job for whatever cheap, lazy reason the owners could come up with to justify it.
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