Jets coach Rex Ryan’s Super Bowl boasts no longer are confined to his predictions for the future.
On Wednesday, Ryan said that, if the Chargers had hired him to be their coach in 2007, he would have led the Chargers to at least two championships by now.
“Well, I think I would have had a couple rings,” Ryan told San Diego reporters, according to Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News. “I’m telling you, those teams were loaded.”
Implicit in Ryan’s message is that Norv Turner has failed to get the most out of that loaded team. Which isn’t exactly the best way to keep Turner from rolling his sleeves up a little higher and working a little harder to come to New York on Sunday and beat Rex’s Jets.
Perhaps realizing that he stepped in a pile of something other than dead leaves, Rex tried to scrub his shoes a little bit. “Obviously, Norv Turner has done a great job there and A.J. and everybody,” Ryan said. “That’s a great franchise. He was probably the best guy for the job at that time.”
If Rex thinks he would have won a couple of Super Bowls in the four seasons since Norv was hired, Rex necessarily doesn’t think Norv was the best guy for the job. Unless the goal of the game is to not win Super Bowls.
UPDATE 6:00 p.m. ET: The Jets have pointed out via email to PFT that “Coach Ryan called Coach Turner personally shortly after the conference call was over to let him know that his comments were meant as a compliment to what he and A.J. Smith have built in San Diego, not as a slight.” Given that Turner inherited the “loaded” team in 2007 and has failed to win a Super Bowl in the four-plus years since then, it’s unclear how the comments in question were intended to be a compliment for Turner.