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Bowles being hung out to dry by tanking Jets

Brad Penner / USA TODAY Sports

Todd Bowles will tow the party line until the inevitable day the New York Jets fire him after what is all but certain to be a terrible 2017 season. The unassuming and passive head coach is simply not the type to call out management for essentially screwing him out of the job he spent the last two decades fighting to earn.

But he would be well within his rights to do exactly that.

Now, Bowles isn't without fault as a head coach. But he doesn't deserve the mess the Jets have given him. In a clear desire to tank this upcoming season and kick-start a much-needed rebuild, the team's hierarchy handed him arguably the league's worst roster and then made his job even more difficult in recent days by cutting two of his most reliable veterans, linebacker David Harris and receiver Eric Decker.

After unceremoniously dumping Harris on Tuesday, the Jets rolled out Bowles - who obviously wasn't in the loop and seemingly had little to no say in the move - to answer the media's questions.

Asked about Decker's status prior to the report surfacing that the veteran was to be cut or traded in the next week, he was clearly unaware of the impending breaking news.

General manager Mike Maccagnan is acting like a man confident that his job isn't in immediate danger. His decision to cut two solid veterans who would've helped the Jets win in 2017, despite not having any viable in-house candidates to replace them with, reinforced this notion.

Maccagnan is following the Cleveland Browns' blueprint from last season and ridding himself of nearly every expensive veteran on the roster - and he wouldn't doom New York to a two- or three-win season in 2017 if he wasn't sure he was the man who will reap the benefits.

Tanking is the smartest thing the Jets can do. The have basically zero chance of making the playoffs in 2017 thanks to an offense that's almost hilariously devoid of talent, and the prospect of winning the Sam Darnold sweepstakes should keep things in perspective for the fan base.

Tanking isn't good for Bowles, however.

Maybe he isn't good enough to be a head coach in the NFL - most great coordinators are better-suited to staying at that level. But Bowles doesn't deserve to have his reputation left in tatters after the Jets fail in spectacular fashion this upcoming season, which you can bet your life on happening, because ... come on, it's the Jets.

He deserves, one day down the line, a shot at being a head coach again with a team whose front office and ownership isn't dysfunctional and incompetent.

But that won't happen. The Jets are in the process of burdening him with the type of terrible season that no first-time head coach would ever be able to recover from and earn another shot.

"It was an organizational decision," Bowles said about Harris' release, according to NJ Advance Media's Connor Hughes. "I don't foresee a lot of things coming in this league at this point. Nothing surprises me after being in the league this long. It's part of the business and it's a tough part of the business."

The NFL is indeed a tough business, and Bowles is finding out just how brutal it can be.

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