Todd Bowles and the Jets aren't going down without a fight

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Todd Bowles is a card-carrying stoic, a coach who is often tied in the AFC East with You Know Who when it comes to expressionless media conference faces. But in a quiet moment outside his locker room on Thursday night, after his New York Jets manhandled the Buffalo Billswith a 34-21 win, Bowles suddenly broke into laughter over the most painful memory of his football life.

He was recalling that wintry Christmas Eve in Bill Belichick's backyard last year when he left a New Jersey hospital in the morning and headed straight for Foxborough, Massachusetts, to coach a game he had no chance of winning. Bowles had endured chest pains the night before, when some feared he'd suffered a heart attack before he was ultimately diagnosed with a kidney stone and gall bladder attack.

He spent the night in the hospital, underwent a battery of fun-free tests at 5:30 a.m. on game day, then boarded a plane and made it to Gillette Stadium in time for a 1 p.m. kickoff that even a Navy Seal would've watched from a room-temperature booth upstairs. Bowles coached from the sideline in a raw New England rain, and while experiencing intense pain, he took his 41-3 loss to Belichick's Patriots like a man.

"Stupidity," Bowles barked at his own expense Thursday night, the laughter rising from his toes.

As stupid as it was revealing. The Jets were 4-10 heading into that game. Nobody would've blamed Bowles for calling in sick and letting an assistant get Belichick'd and Brady'd by the team that has dominated the division since 2001. "But I don't ever want to let my guys down, and I'll go to war with them any day," Bowles told ESPN.com after the Jets' Thursday night win. "That's all it meant. I never want to let them down, and so if I was able to go that's what I was going to do.

"We're fighting and we're believing since that day, and hopefully it meant something to somebody. If it helped one person along the way get tougher, then I'm doing my job."

Yeah, the Jets got smoked by the Patriots that day to fall to 4-11. But people forget: The next week they finished a lost season by shredding the Bills by a 30-10 count. Ever since, as Bowles said, they've been fighting and believing against all odds.

The Jets are 4-5 in a season that was supposed to leave them with a 2-14 final record, give or take. They handed away their game in Miami. They've had legitimate chances to win eight times in nine attempts. The Jets are not going to make the playoffs, but the contenders on the way to the tournament are hardly enjoying the experience of facing them.

Take the Bills for starters. They entered MetLife Stadium as a 5-2 team with postseason aspirations and a chance to nail down their best halfway-point record since they went 7-1 in 1993, the season they reached their fourth straight Super Bowl. The Bills were an advanced version of the Jets. They were expected to be losers and tankers this year, and yet they'd shocked the league with an efficient, resourceful brand of football. Buffalo had committed three turnovers all season, and had taken the ball from its opponents 17 times. Not since the 2005 Cincinnati Bengals had a team managed a plus-14 turnover margin through seven games.

But the Jets recovered three Buffalo fumbles on this night, and recorded seven sacks. Tyrod Taylor was down 34-7 before he threw for a garbage-time touchdown and ran for another. ESPN analyst Bill Polian -- the executive who built the great Bills teams of Bruce Smith, Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas and Andre Reed -- spoke of how Buffalo's new coach, Sean McDermott, and general manager, Brandon Beane, had been making all the right moves even before they traded for Kelvin Benjaminbefore the game on Thursday night.

"No flash and dash," Polian had said. "It's all about accountability and doing your job the right way with people who are dedicated. You need that in Buffalo. It's not a town that believes in gimmicks. When you live in Buffalo you live in the real world, man, shoveling snow seven months a year. The climate breeds tough people and they respect the kind of tough, fundamental football this team is playing."

For one night, anyway, the Jets made the Bills look like November's answer to an April Fool's joke. The home team dominated both lines, didn't commit a single turnover and ended a three-game losing streak with its most convincing performance of the season. And when he was done saying in his news conference he believes the Jets should have more than four victories to their name, Bowles stopped on his walk back to his locker room and spoke with an edge in his voice.

"I understand we're deficient in some areas," he told ESPN.com, "but you're not just going to come in here and beat us."

Bowles was supposed to be a Dead Coach Walking this year, befallen to the ungodly season that would lead to a top draft pick -- a young Californian at quarterback -- and a fresh face to coach and develop him. Born and raised on Jersey Guy toughness a half-hour south of MetLife Stadium, Bowles has fought for his career as hard as his team has fought for its season. Asked how much of the Jets' bare-knuckle approach comes from him, Bowles wasn't shy.

"Mostly all of it," he said. "We started it in the spring and we've kind of coached them and brought them in on leadership. We had them working together, doing military drills, and having the military come in and learning how to be leaders, learning how to be team players with each other and slowly piecing it together."

Bowles was a Super Bowl champion safety for the Washington Redskins, and a player who counts Joe Gibbs, Bill Parcells and Bruce Arians among his mentors. "As a leader," he said, "sometimes you have to listen and you learn. This is my third year as a head coach, so you learn a lot of things. It's easy to place blame, but you know what you have and you try to figure out ways to help your team win as a coach. And from all my predecessors that's what I've learned to do."

Among other things, Bowles has learned that this sport is a whole lot easier when you're playing it with a high-end quarterback. Bowles has coached the Jets with Ryan Fitzpatrick, Josh McCown, Bryce Pettyand Geno Smith under center. Fitzpatrick came to the Jets with a 33-55-1 career record, and Bowles coached him to a 10-6 season in 2015, the quarterback's first winning year. McCown came to the Jets with an 18-42 record, and Bowles has coached him to 4-5.

No question Bowles has made his share of mistakes along the way, and it wouldn't hurt him with the fan base if he showed a little of that fun side he supposedly reserves for his tight circle of friends (though that approach hasn't exactly hurt Belichick). His former teammate, Doug Williams, once said this of Bowles' public personality: "He really likes Gladys Knight. That's about all you're going to get."

But Bowles' even temperament has served to steady the Jets. He hasn't proven to be a great coach, or even a very good coach, not yet anyway. He has proven to be a tough man and a leader who knows how to persuade relatively wealthy athletes to play like they're broke. Bowles' friends knew he wouldn't go down without a fight. Now it looks like he isn't going down at all.