Bills' Rex Ryan admits 'I let my mouth get ahead of everything'
Rex Ryan arrived in Buffalo this offseason with big plans, but with one game left on the schedule, the Bills have already been eliminated from the playoffs.
By
Ryan Wilson
•
1 min read
Rex Ryan arrived in Buffalo this offseason with big plans, but with one game left on the schedule, the Bills have already been eliminated from the playoffs. That makes 16 years running, despite Ryan's gum-flapping about how things were going to change under his leadership.
Instead, the Bills have underachieved while the Jets, the team that fired Ryan after winning just four times in 2014, are 10-5 under Todd Bowles and one win away from earning a wild-card spot for the first time since 2010.
Coincidentally, it's Ryan and the Bills who can spoil the Jets' postseason hopes and dreams; the two teams meet in Buffalo on Sunday. Bills running back Boobie Dixon has already said that their 'Super Bowl is [this] week," and Ryan admits that the team fell well short of expectations.
"I think we got a great thing going here. We just didn't produce the wins I thought we would," Ryan told WGR-AM radio in Buffalo, via ESPN.com. "The thing that kind of gives this team a black eye when we're looking at it is that I let my mouth get ahead of everything. And I think if I would have come in there and just said, 'Hey, we're gonna compete,' and do all that stuff, maybe we wouldn't have such a bad feeling about this team.
"This team doesn't deserve that. This team has fought, and they've played extremely hard. We've had a lot of things happen this year where we've felt, where we've came up short. There's no question about it. But I think I could have handled it differently."
No one minded all the bravado early in Ryan's tenure with the Jets, but that was for one reason: He led New York to back-to-back AFC Championship Games. After that, the Jets were mediocre or worse, and it cost Ryan his job. And now, in his first season in Buffalo, the Bills are 7-8, and are left playing for their pride in what is basically a meaningless Week 17 game.
