In 2014, they finished at 4-12 and Ryan was fired, along with general manager John Idzik. When the Jets were bad, he openly criticized his own team and himself and it’s helped us believe everything he’s ever said.

In an interview with HBO’s “Real Sports”, the current Bills coach told Andrea Kremer he knew entering last season he would “not have a very good team” because the team did little in free agency.

But he’s not anymore, and Rex Ryan is trying to tell us that it wasn’t his choice to leave New York and it wasn’t that of owner Woody Johnson either.

The Jets brought in Todd Bowles and Mike Maccagnan as head coach and general manager respectively. The way all of New York is accustomed to.

Only an excerpt of the interview is available at the moment, but there’s still plenty to get out of it. The full Interview will air on HBO on August. 18 at 9 p.m. ET.

Ryan has also kept Aaron Kromer, suspended for the first six games of 2015 after an assault-and-battery arrest from a charge dropped later, as offensive line coach, picked up guard Richie Incognito, who left football for a year after accusations that he bullied Miami Dolphins teammate Jonathan Martin in 2013, and grabbed Percy Harvin, whose anger management problems have been well-documented in stints with the Vikings, Seahawks, and Jets.

When asked when he knew that he was going to be fired, Ryan suggested he knew before the season began, after witnessing what the team did in free agency.

That probably won’t change here, as there is evidence to back up Rex’s claim that the Jets didn’t want to fire him. Ryan did something that – if Bill Belichick would have done the same thing, for example – would have been roundly praised elsewhere. “I know Woody never wanted to fire me”, Ryan said. The media here in New York would have KILLED him. “There’s no question Woody wanted that”.

“There’s no chance he could have brought in another GM and kept me again”, Ryan said, “There’s no way. They weren’t going to allow it”.