Buffalo Bills fire Rex Ryan

PHOTOGRAPHER: The Seattle Times

Former Buffalo Bills head coach Rex Ryan argues with an official during a game against the Seattle Seahawks on Mon. Nov. 7, 2016

The Buffalo Bills fired Rex Ryan as head coach on Tuesday, ending his two-year run with a franchise that has not been to the postseason in nearly two decades.

His dismissal also means that Ryan will not get to coach the Bills against the Jets, his former team, when the N.F.L. wraps up its regular season this weekend. The Jets are actually a bigger mess than the Bills are — they have a season record of 4-11 compared with Buffalo’s 7-8 mark — and their head coach, Todd Bowles, may also not be in his job much longer. But if nothing else, Bowles will make it through the 2016 season. Ryan didn’t.

Ryan took the job in Buffalo just weeks after the Jets dismissed him after the 2014 season. He had coached the Jets for six seasons, and initially was a sensation — a boisterous, larger-than-life presence who took the Jets to consecutive appearances in the American Football Conference championship game in his first two seasons in charge.

But the Jets lost both of those games and eventually began to deteriorate under Ryan’s watch. In his final season with the Jets, they went just 4-12.

In Buffalo, the Bills went 8-8 last season and showed promise at times this year, enough promise, perhaps, to lead the Bills’ front office and ownership to conclude that a different coach might have taken the Bills farther, perhaps even to the postseason.