CINCINNATI — Rex Ryan was raging mad, and it was all coming too late. It was coming good and loud at halftime, and it should have come long before the Bengals began bullying Ryan’s Jets from one side of Paul Brown Stadium to the other. Raging Rex obviously should have surfaced sometime after he and his Jets were lucky to beat the Patriots and long before they all showed up hungover and left punch-drunk 49-9 losers to the Bengals.
Raging Ryan arrived when it was already Bengals 28, Jets 6, and one player described his tirade thusly:
“It was like, ‘What are you all doing? Do I need to put on a jersey?’ ” one Jet told The Post. “He did what he had to do to get us motivated.”
Much too late.
“We got to learn from this. … The Bengals came ready to play, and we didn’t,” Josh Cribbs said.
So it was over long before Geno Smith threw a pick-six to Chris Crocker on the first play from scrimmage of the second half, over long before he threw another pick-six to Pacman Jones early in the fourth quarter. It was over mostly because the head coach’s beloved defense was Rexposed by a young gunslinger named Andy Dalton.
And when it was over, Ryan had this message for Team Roller Coaster:
“Now the NFL thinks last week was a fluke. Now we got the Saints coming to our home. So we just got to keep proving to everybody that we’re a team to be reckoned with. Take this loss and say, ‘It’s not going to happen again.’
“Next time we come here, we’re a team that’s on payback. We got to come back and show what we can do.”
Ryan was asked whether some players might have gotten too high on themselves following NFL Rule 9, Section 1, Article 3.
“No. no chance,” he said. “We know we haven’t arrived, we know that.”
If they didn’t know it before, they know it now.
This was Bengals versus Bungles, and it is no way to chase a wild-card berth, much less a division title, not if you keep talking about stacking back-to-back wins and keep failing to walk the talk.
Bungle in the place they call The Jungle.
Outplayed, and outcoached.
“We had a target on our chest today, and we didn’t answer,” David Nelson said.
Ryan apparently was expecting a new rule preventing Dalton from throwing a career-high five touchdown passes to be enforced for the first time. Or maybe one negating a franchise-record four TD catches by Marvin Jones (8-122).
On a day when Ryan needed to field road warriors, he gave us road kill instead.
Hard Knocks, courtesy of the Bully Bengals.
It only made you wonder how in the world Ryan plans on dealing next Sunday with Drew Brees, who only threw five TD passes earlier in the day against Mike Pettine’s Bills.
“If we don’t play better than we did today, then hell, yeah, that guy’ll break every record known to man against us,” Ryan said.
Smith, who was overmatched by Cincinnati defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer, was the least of the problems — and he gifted Crocker a 32-yard TD and Pacman a 60-yard TD.
Antonio Cromartie couldn’t cover much better than No. 1 draft choice Dee Milliner, which is damning commentary indeed. And neither could anyone else, Ryan said.
Your shutdown corner cannot have a 34-yard pass interference penalty called on him against A.J. Green on the opening Bengals touchdown drive.
“We got beat in every coverage known to man,” Ryan said.
Your benched rookie cornerback, whose name is not Darrelle Revis, has to tackle Jones if he can’t cover him so Dalton doesn’t have a chance to toss a 6-yard TD to Jones against Darrin Walls.
“If those guys don’t hold ’em up for a second, those receivers, it’s no point in even rushing, really,” Mo Wilkerson said.
Your kickoff coverage team cannot surrender a 71-yard return by Brandon Tate immediately after Smith has inched the Jets to within 21-6 so Dalton can throw a third TD pass to Jones, Jaiquawn Jarrett on the alleged coverage.
“I think this team just needs to learn how to win, and that means everything involved — it means preparation, it means practice, it means execution, especially on the road,” Nelson said.
The Jets are 4-4, and if they do not find a way to break this up-and-down cycle of mediocrity, they’ll be no better than 8-8.
“Nobody’s going to give us respect ‘til we earn it,” Willie Colon said.
That now goes for Raging Rex too.