Blame Rex Ryan for the Buffalo Bills' Collapse

During one of my mother's self-improvement phases, she hung up a quote in her bathroom from Cherie Carter-Scott's "Rules for Being Human." One of those rules stands out for me when thinking of this year's Buffalo Bills:

"There" is no better than "here". When your "there" becomes a "here" you will simply obtain another "there" that again looks better than "here."

Since Doug Flutie's days, the Bills have been trying unsuccessfully to build a real, live, NFL passing offense. Buffalo has finished 18th or lower in pass offense DVOA every year since 2003. J.P. Losman, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Trent Edwards, and EJ Manuel have all come and gone. As a result the Bills have been stagnant.

Naturally, most preseason analysis flagged Buffalo's offense as a question mark. Head coach Rex Ryan entered the season with a track record of often benching quarterbacks. The decision to install Tyrod Taylor as a starter came from a playbook with little track record of success. There were also questions about how well the offensive line could play.

Ryan has shown that he could put together an NFL defense, but his offensive shortcomings were what kept people from buying into the Bills. The Jets finished with a league-average offense only once with Ryan as head coach — when they went to the AFC Championship game in 2010.

So it is with some bafflement to see that the Bills, heading into Week 15, were seventh in passing DVOA. It is even more strange to see that and to notice that the Bills have been eliminated from playoff contention with two weeks to play. Last week I wrote about the lack of sleepers in the NFL this year, and in fact, the Bills should have been that sleeper. Ryan's defense just didn't do its part.

The Bills defense has dramatically underachieved. Several fantasy football sites and magazines projected the Bills to be the No. 1 defense. The defensive line of Mario Williams, Jerry Hughes, Marcell Dareus, and Kyle Williams were dominant in 2014. They combined for exactly 40 sacks that year. In 2015, they have … 11.

This is not a good trend for Ryan's defenses, which haven't fielded an above-average pass defense since 2012 — even when his pass rush actually has been good.

Bills coach Rex Ryan to DC media: 'This defense, I think you'll see, we're not as bad as you guys think.'

— michael phillips (@michaelpRTD)December 17, 2015

Observers are puzzled. Ryan is normally brash — like the above quote — but he's taken a lot of the deserved blame for this season's flameout. Players have commented many times about how complicated the defense is—especially when compared to Jim Scwhartz's scheme in 2014.

Buffalo's defense was bound to regress from last year: Every important pass rusher aged a year; Kyle Williams suffered an injury that sidelined him for most of the season. But this wasn't a regression to the mean. The Bills tumbled even further than that.

And the "clear, fundamental disconnect" between the pass rush and Ryan is going to play out in a predictable way. Yes, Mario Williams hasn't had a stud year and is making big dollars. But releasing him, as national outlets are reporting will likely happen, is a scapegoat move.

Nothing new is really new in the NFL. But Buffalo's failure in 2015 is more about Ryan's inability to adjust to his personnel than the other way around. NFL teams have figured out Ryan's defense. But he's been too stubborn to adjust.

One of the other rules in Rules for Being Human?

A lesson is repeated until learned. It is presented to you in various forms until you learn it — then you can go on to the next lesson.

Rex Ryan hasn't learned his lesson about this defense yet. And while he'll likely improve the personnel to some extent this offseason, we still can't be sure the actual defense will improve with Ryan leading it.

Fortunately for Ryan — and perhaps unfortunately for Bills fans — he'll likely get another chance to not figure it out next year.