For much of the 20 minutes during his weekly Monday press conference, Rex Ryan looked and sounded like a defeated head coach.
Two days ago, Miami delivered the death blow to the Bills’ postseason dreams with a 34-31 overtime victory at New Era Field.
“That’s about as painful of a loss I can remember,” Ryan said as he stepped to the mic. “To come up short, and the magnitude of the game, it’s painful.”
Despite being Christmas Eve, there’s a good chance Ryan didn’t get a wink of sleep before "Santa’s Big Day."
Ryan told reporters he’s tussled with the decisions made on Saturday in Orchard Park.
Punting on 4th-and-2 in overtime in Bills territory, in a must win game, was the most criticized by fans and analysts.
“It says 4th-and-2 but it’s a long two. It’s more than that,” Ryan said. “Let’s pin them back. We’ve done a decent job of stopping them at the end. I thought we’d get the ball back and that’s why I made the decision. Now sure, it’s easy to say absolutely you should have gone for it and we would have lived to fight, and maybe we convert and go down and win, but at the time I don’t think it was the appropriate call.”
Ryan followed that up by shooting down any notion he believed a win against Miami would have solidified his job for next season.
“Your livelihood’s not riding on it, where mine is," he said. "I’m with wins and losses, so whether I have to win this game or whatever, I’m just saying I’m paid for wins and losses. That’s how you get judged as a coach so yeah that’s it, you’ve got to make that decision and you’ve got to do what you think is appropriate and that’s what I did.”
While many view the season as “over”, there is still one game left -- a New Year's date with his former team, the Jets.
That’s not lost on Ryan, who is now 15-16 in his two years calling the shots in Buffalo.
“The only person that it needs to affect, the only people, is Terry and Kim Pegula. That's who is going to make that decision on whether I'm here, this person is here or whatever. That's who makes that decision. So, whatever they think is fair is the only thing that matters. As a coach, that's why I said I want to try to win this game. Trust me I'm going to try and win this game. It doesn't matter it doesn't mean anything. To me, it means a lot. I want to win the game."
Sounds like a guy coaching for his job in 2017.
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