Rex Ryan gives full hard sell to Jets coaching job. Could it actually work?

Rex Ryan, the former Jets coach, wants to be the future Jets coach. You know that, of course, because since Robert Saleh was fired on Oct. 8, Ryan has been telling anyone with an Internet connection and a mild interest in football that he’s interested in returning to coach the Jets.

So when the chaos at Jetsland reached a fever pitch this week with the firing of general manager Joe Douglas, the revelations of owner Woody Johnson’s heavy involvement in … everything, and the team seemingly poised to enter some sort of reboot, the fittingly, Ryan ramped up his pursuit of the Jets job to full throttle Thursday in an appearance on ESPN New York’s “Bart & Hahn.”

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“I look at it this way,” said Ryan, who has been an ESPN analyst since he last coached the Bills in 2016. “Blow it up? We’re going to blow the opponents out. There’s too much talent on this team to play the way we paid. And how hard can you get a guy to play. No one’s going to play as hard as this team will in the future , believe me if I is the guy. And that’s what’s going to separate me from all these other guys. Your (Jon) Gruden’s. Give me one pause. They’re not the New York Jets. I’m all about the Jets.”

Make no mistake, it’s a direct appeal to Johnson that he doesn’t need to wait for success and an obvious effort to get fan support behind the idea of ​​him returning to coaching, with fan frustration at an all-time high with the Jets on . their way to a franchise-worst 14th straight season out of the playoffs and long for the days when Ryan took them to back-to-back AFC Championship games.

Ryan, who has been an ESPN analyst since shortly after the Bills fired him in 2016, took his pursuit to a new level Friday on the network’s morning show, “First Take,” Ryan citing the “unfinished business” of getting to a short game. Super Bowl in the 2009 and 2010 seasons when he was asked if he wanted to save the Jets.

“I’d like to,” Ryan said. “I’ve let everybody know I’d be interested even though I have a great (TV) gig. … I have some unfinished business with that franchise … I just think I’d get back into it if I could make a difference , and I could make a difference with that team.”

Ryan once again seized on the things that have most frustrated the fan base and, of course, Johnson: the way this underachieving team seemed helpless and dead in the water as it watched the season slip away long before Thanksgiving.

“If I took it over, it would be turned around in about two minutes,” Ryan said. “It starts with the passion and the energy that I would bring and the ‘We don’t take no poo’ mentality.”

Ryan knows this fan base and he knows this owner. He knows that right now he has the chance to get the attention of both, six weeks before the full hiring process begins.

And he knows that if the fans get behind him, there’s actually a chance Johnson can make a hire that seemed unthinkable a few weeks ago.

It’s also why Ryan mentioned he wanted to fix an offense that has been behind the curve for more than a decade, further tapping into the deepest frustrations of the Jets owner and his fans.

But Ryan has not explained how a defensive-minded head coach whose teams struggled to score throughout his tenure as head coach plans to adapt to a game vastly different from the one he left eight years ago.

Even then, Ryan’s heavy-handed, hard-charging style felt outdated in a league where the best teams differentiated themselves with speed and generated big plays on offense.

And while a return to Ryan’s final days would be welcomed by most Jets fans as a huge improvement, it’s important to remember that by putting on the sweater vest again, Ryan guarantees there will be flashbacks and emotions , but there is no guarantee of similar results.

Ryan’s push for power is understandably appealing to Jets fans because of his track record and obvious passion. But his appeal to Johnson and the fan base is a continued embrace of the chaos that got the Jets to this point, not the true change this team needs.

But it’s hard to blame Ryan for continuing the hard sell.

“I’ll know if I get the opportunity to interview it,” Ryan said. “I want to get the job.”

And the way Johnson has run the Jets, you can’t rule out Ryan being right about that.