NFL

Jets coach can’t shield himself from attacks anymore

Rex Ryan has gotten a little taste of what life on the New York griddle is like the past couple of weeks, has discovered that his act — which was a bigger hit than “The Book of Mormon” when the Jets were reaching back-to-back AFC title games — can wear ever so thin when he loses eight games and half his locker room.

The jokes aren’t quite as funny then.

The bluster isn’t quite as charming.

It doesn’t mean he has to be on a slippery slope out of town. It does mean he has gotten his first bloody lip and his first black eye, which means we get to see now what kind of punch he can take.

Especially now that his human shield is gone.

Yes, for as long as Ryan has been here, preaching like Billy Sunday about defense and about how tough his team is going to be, he has had barely a passing interest in his offense. When times were good, it allowed him to look like a great delegator, entrusting Brian Schottenheimer with his half of the ball while Rex and Mike Pettine went about building the perfect beast on the other side.

When times weren’t so good — which means much of this season, which means large chunks even of the first two seasons of this shotgun partnership — it meant Schottenheimer was led into the public square of public opinion and flogged mercilessly and branded a simpleton with a familiar surname. Ryan never quite joined along in the stonings and the shootings, not technically.

But there always was a sense about his answers to tough offensive questions that if you wanted to really know what was happening with the offense — Why did the running game dissolve? Why did Mark Sanchez calcify in place, if not regress? Why is it that every other team in football slings the football down the field except for the Jets? — you would be better off asking someone else.

So Schottenheimer is shown the door now, which in itself isn’t news. You can survive a dysfunctional unit if it produces, and you can survive a productive unit that’s dysfunctional. But when you have the Daily Double, as the Jets did this season, there is no other choice. You have to go. And Schottenheimer goes now.

Rex?

This at last, officially, for keeps, makes the Jets his own, soup to nuts. He had Schottenheimer foisted upon him, and was willing to play ball when he was given the opportunity to lead a team for the first time. Now he gets to hire his own man, Tony Sparano, and it is officially HIS man. Officially HIS team, all of it. No more delegation. No more passive leadership.

Head coaches have to fire assistants sometimes. Giants coach Tom Coughlin has fired two defensive coordinators. It’s a grown-up part of the job. And so is this: accountability, not just for the part of the team that interests you most, but all of it.

Schottenheimer goes and so does Ryan’s buffer, his human shield. It’s all on him now. He had better be big enough for it. Because that door Schottenheimer just walked out?

It isn’t locked shut. Not by a long shot. Not forever.