The New York Jets take on the Buffalo Bills in a Thursday Night Football matchup that likely won’t be evidence that the NFL is exciting. Thursday nights are already tough on NFL teams — the short turnaround too often finds offenses ill-prepared for increasingly sophisticated defensive schemes. The read: it can be ugly. And Bills coach Rex Ryan’s defenses already present problems to teams, even with adequate prep time — in the Bills week 1 loss, for example, they still held the Ravens to 13 points. Even Harvard grads can’t figure out Ryan’s schemes, it seems.
Or at least a Harvard grad named Ryan Fitzpatrick, the Jets quarterback, hasn’t been adept at it. He’s faced Ryan defenses ten times in his career, according to stats run by NJ.com, and come out on the losing end in eight of them. (NJ skips a game when Fitzpatrick threw just 8 passes.) Fitzpatrick has averaged just 165 yards passing in the ten games. In starts, Fitzpatrick is 1-8 against Ryan. Ryan and Fitzpatrick know each other well. On Thursday they get reacquainted — on short notice. Probably too short for both teams — but one will be getting its first win anyway.
