Danny Knobler | Special to ESPNNewYork.com 9y

Rex Ryan on Jets: 'I'm not dead yet'

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- His team is a double-digit underdog at home, for the first time ever. The odds that he will keep his job are steeper than that.

Rex Ryan has every reason to want this week over with, to want these questions over with. But you should know by now that Ryan doesn't operate that way.

"I'm just going to be myself," the New York Jets' head coach said Friday. "I'm not dead yet."

Everyone else is talking about how this Sunday's game against New England could be Ryan's last game against the Patriots, and his last home game as Jets coach. The Jets players have thought about it.

"Best way to go out -- if that's the case," linebacker Calvin Pace said.

The players don't want to shove Ryan out the door. As wide receiver Percy Harvin said, rather than quitting on a lost season and a seemingly lame-duck coach, the Jets who are hurt are working to get back to play in the last game or two.

"Guys will run through a wall for Rex," Harvin said.

It's easy to understand why. Plenty of coaches facing Ryan's fate get defensive in their final days. But Ryan seems to have kept his sense of humor, showing it again Friday when he was asked again about his relationship with Patriots coach Bill Belichick.

"I probably think he's a lot better coach than he thinks I am," Ryan said with a smile. "I think it's safe to say that."

Ryan admitted that he and Belichick aren't the best of friends, but said the perception that they're bitter rivals or enemies has been badly overplayed.

"We like everyone to think we don't like each other," Ryan said. "But that's not the facts. He's not someone you hang out with -- at least I don't -- but we're cordial. It's the opposite of what people think.

"I have a good relationship with him. When we see each other, it's not like we avoid each other."

Their rivalry has been one-sided since Ryan came to the Jets, even though most of the games haven't been. While it's true that Ryan won the lone playoff game between the two (a 28-21 Jets win in 2010), Ryan's Jets are 3-8 in the regular season against Belichick's Pats, with losses in seven of the past eight meetings.

The one Jets win in that span was in overtime (30-27 last season), and one Patriots win went to overtime, too. The past three Jets-Patriots games have been decided by a field goal or less, including New England's 27-25 win in October.

"It's always a couple of plays," Pace said. "I think we match up well with them. I've always thought we've matched up well. They bring out the best in us, and I'd like to think we bring out the best in them, too."

The Patriots will go on to show their best in the playoffs, as they have every season that Ryan has coached the Jets -- his first was 2009 -- and in 12 of Belichick's 15 seasons as coach. The Jets will miss the playoffs for the fourth straight year, a drought that will almost certainly cost Ryan his job before the playoffs even begin.

But Ryan isn't crying on the way out. As he said, he's not dead yet.

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