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ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- If Rex Ryan is truly coaching for his job, as reports that surfaced on Sunday have indicated, his team's performance in Buffalo's 27-20 loss to Pittsburgh did not help his case in any way. The Bills have had a few clunkers this season, but this one was a start-to-finish debacle as they were thoroughly outplayed in every phase. If ever a final score did not reflect what truly happened in a game, this was it.
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Ryan and his coaches had no answers for the Steelers, and what was really telling is that the Bills -- fighting for their playoff lives just like the Steelers -- did not seem ready, nor motivated, to play.
Quarterback Tyrod Taylor put forth another poor performance, handcuffing the offense. The Steelers were determined to stuff Buffalo's league-best running game, and they did exactly that as the Bills managed just 67 yards, including a mere 27 by LeSean McCoy.
Taylor needed to make the Steelers pay for cramming eight and nine in the box, and he simply wasn't up to the task, even though he had his full wide receiver group back together for the first time since Week 2.
Taylor had 71 yards passing early in the fourth quarter when the Steelers -- after a field goal set up by a Taylor interception -- opened a 24-7 lead. Only then, with the issue pretty much decided, did Taylor begin to complete passes. He finished with 228 yards on 15 completions.
"Left some plays out there," Taylor said. "Definitely didn't play my best. I let the team down a couple plays, but gotta move forward."
As poorly as Taylor played, he looked good compared to Ryan's crumbling defense. Pittsburgh's Le'Veon Bell ran -- and on one play actually walked -- right through the Bills on his way to 236 yards rushing, the most ever allowed by the Bills and the most ever gained by a Steelers back. Throw in his 62 receiving yards and Bell had 298 yards, 23 more than the entire Buffalo offense.
Bell scored three touchdowns, and on the last one, he literally jogged out to the left, followed his blockers, got no resistance from the Bills, and walked across the goal line. It was eye-popping.
"That is disgusting when you say that stat out loud," outside linebacker Jerry Hughes said of Bell's rushing total, which is the second time the Bills have allowed an opposing back to top 200 yards rushing. Miami's Jay Ajayi did it less than two months ago.
With the Bills now out of playoff contention for the 17th straight year, all indications point to Ryan being fired at the end of the season with three years and $16.5 million left on his contract. If he is dismissed, it's another colossal failure by the Bills' organization, a team that has had seven head coaches (counting Perry Fewell, who served as an interim head coach in 2009) during its playoff drought.
Ryan said he was unaware of reports regarding his imminent termination. His players said the same thing. Defensive tackle Leger Douzable, who played for Ryan in New York, was irritated that the issue was even raised.
"That's a ridiculous statement, there's no way you can fire a coach that's in the playoff hunt in Week 14 or whatever it is," he said. "I don't understand how you can say you can fire the guy."
Perhaps, but the Bills played terribly the last two weeks in losses to Oakland and Pittsburgh, games they had to win to stay alive in the race. It was an indictment of Ryan, who hasn't gotten enough out of a roster that he continually says is talented and close to succeeding.
"They just outplayed us on every level," middle linebacker Preston Brown said. "That's something you never want to have happen, but it has happened. We definitely need to adjust."
They do, but now it's too late to matter.
