Rex Ryan Deservedly on Hot Seat Already, and It Shouldn't Get Cool Anytime Soon

If there's one thing fans and pundits alike love to do early in an NFL season, it's overreact. Win in Week 1, and it's time to start making playoff plans. Lose, and the sky is falling.

However, where head coach Rex Ryan of the Buffalo Bills is concerned, talk of his tenuous job security isn't a matter of jumping the gun. Ryan was on the proverbial hot seat long before the Bills lost in listless fashion to the Baltimore Ravens in Week 1.

He's going to remain on it regardless of what happens in Thursday night's AFC East showdown against his old team.

All the way back in January, Vic Carucci of the Buffalo News reported that team owner Terry Pegula gave both Ryan and general manager Doug Whaley an ultimatum: End the Bills' long playoff drought in 2016 or find work elsewhere.

That "postseason or bust" campaign didn't get off to the best of starts. The Bills never led in a 13-7 loss to the Ravens, and while the Buffalo defense looked much improved over last year's disappointing unit, the offense managed only 160 total yards and 11 first downs.

As Mark Cannizzaro of the New York Post reported, Ryan allowed he was at a loss for why his offense performed so poorly against the Ravens.

"We thought, obviously, that we were going to play better," Ryan said. "We had some [good] practices leading up to [Sunday], so there was no indication that we were going to go out and play like we did. We've got to come out with a great plan that our guys feel confident in."

Ryan also admitted that he doesn't expect the sledding to get a bit easier on a short week against the Jets:

"

This [Jets] defense that we're getting ready to play is as talented as there is … maybe in the league. You've got Sheldon Richardson coming back, you got Big Mo [Muhammad Wilkerson] coming back. And then obviously you've got [Darrelle] Revis and company in the back end. So yeah, it's a very talented team. There's no doubt about that.

"

Ryan isn't blowing smoke either. The Bills swept the Jets last season, but New York finished 2015 fourth in total defense and second against the run, allowing just over 83 yards a game.

Not the sort of statistic a Bills team built around running the football wants to hear, especially with star wide receiver Sammy Watkins hobbled by pain in his surgically repaired foot and quarterback Tyrod Taylor coming off arguably the worst start of his career.

This is a Jets team with plenty of added motivation against its division rivals as well. That season sweep by the Bills included a Week 17 game that knocked the Jets out of playoff contention. As Brian Costello of the Post wrote, Jets head coach Todd Bowles tried to downplay the significance of the rematch.

"We lost six games. You can pick any one of those games and say we've got to get redemption," Bowles explained. "Buffalo just happened to be the last one. We messed up in six games. We don't play all those people again. It's a new year. We've got a different team."

Cornerback Darrelle Revis, on the other hand, countered that Thursday's matchup is much more than just another Week 2 tilt. "We have a bad taste in our mouth from last year," Revis said, "and I'm sure that will carry into this game."

Throw in a crushing loss to the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 1 and a win by the AFC East conquistadors in New England, and the Jets are feeling every bit as much pressure to win this game as Ryan and the Bills are.

But when it comes to the head coaches, the temperature of their respective chairs isn't close. In his inaugural edition of the NFL coaching hot seat rankings, USA Today's Nate Davis opined that only San Diego's Mike McCoy is closer to unemployment than Ryan:

"

His beloved defense seemed much improved even without suspended Marcell Dareus, while holding the Baltimore Ravens to 13 points. Unfortunately for Ryan, he's responsible for the entire basket of buffalo wings at a time when he probably needs to lead the franchise to its first playoff berth of the 21st century to keep his job.

"

Mark Tenally/Associated Press

A win over the Jets isn't going to magically fix the situation—in large part because a month from now we're apt to be right back here all over again. With Ryan it's the same story over and over again.

In the lead-up to the season, there's bluster and big promises. When Ryan took the job last year, he told Darryl Slater of NJ.com that the Bills were playoff-bound. "I think we'll be in it this year," Ryan said. "So we'll see. ... I'm not going to say it's a guarantee. But I guarantee you one thing: Teams aren't going to want to play us. I can tell you that much."

In fact, while appearing on HBO's Real Sports (via Will Brinson of CBS Sports), Ryan went one further. "I'm not a Super Bowl-winning coach, but I'm getting ready to be," Ryan said. "And it's going to happen."

Then, when that guarantee that wasn't a guarantee fell just as short as the promises he made while with the Jets, out came the excuses, the reasons why, as he told Jenny Vrentas of The MMQB, his defense's nosedive in 2015 wasn't his fault:

"

This was the first time in my life I have ever come into a situation where the defense got worse. And so that was odd. That was different. No excuses. But I'll stand by my record; I'll stand by everything I have ever done in this league statistically. Put the numbers up. Do you want to look at one year, or a 15-year window? I specifically said I probably shouldn't have tried to combine systems last year. I should have just gone for it, this is it, blunt-force trauma, and bring in some players that knew the system and can help run it.

"

OK, Rex, let's do that. Let's take a good hard look at the totality of Ryan's resume as an NFL head coach.

Year	Team	W-L	Off. Rank	Def. Rank
2009	NYJ	9-7*	20	1
2010	NYJ	11-5*	11	3
2011	NYJ	8-8	25	5
2012	NYJ	6-10	30	8
2013	NYJ	8-8	25	11
2014	NYJ	4-12	22	6
2015	BUF	8-8	13	19

After Ryan led the Jets to AFC Championship Game appearances in each of his first two seasons as head coach, the accolades poured in. It was just a matter of time until he ended Gang Green's championship drought.

Since, Ryan has as many playoff appearances as he does winning seasons—zero. He has one double-digit win season on his resume—back in 2010. Only twice in seven seasons has a Ryan-coached team ranked in the top half of the NFL offensively, including last year when the Bills defense was MIA.

And with last week's loss to the Ravens, Ryan's career record as a head coach sits at 54-59—five games under .500.

Ryan has been living off a reputation gained as the defensive coordinator in Baltimore and in those first two years in the Big Apple for years. He talks a big game, and he makes for good TV—but as a head coach the results haven't come close to the hype. Period.

While speaking with reporters, Ryan said that the results of Thursday's game, for better or worse, would not define their season.

"I don't think win, lose or draw that the season is going to be, in the long run, altered that much," Ryan said.

In many respects, he's absolutely right.

Don't get me wrong. Ryan's an excellent defensive coordinator, although even there he hasn't been able to recapture the success he had in those first two years with the Jets.

But as a head coach, Ryan has been "of only ordinary or moderate quality; neither good nor bad; barely adequate."

In other words, the definition of mediocre.

Gary Davenport is an NFL analyst at Bleacher Report and a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association and Pro Football Writers of America. You can follow Gary on Twitter @IDPSharks.