What happened to Rex Ryan?

I watched almost the entire Jets game last night (missed the first six minutes of Q3), and had seen all of the Cincy-Jets and Chargers-Jets games the past couple weeks. Most of the focus for the loss last night (Full disclosure: I'm a huge Giants fan. No horse in this race) seemed to be on:

A.) Peyton playing out of his mind;
B.) Austin Collie and Pierre Garcon looking like Holt/Bruce circa 2000ish;
C.) the Jets' defense getting exposed.

The last point is the one that I couldn't get over after the game. Darrelle Revis, Kerry Rhodes and Co. didn't seem to play with less effort or focus, and the tackling seemed pretty similar in both halves - the Jets didn't seem like they were falling apart all of a sudden.

What did seem to happen was a change in strategy. After getting burned long a couple of times by Manning, Rex Ryan made a decision to drop his corners off the line and drop his safeties deeper, essentially giving Manning the pass underneath in an attempt to stop Garcon and Collie downfield. While watching the game this seemed like a weird idea, and in retrospect a horrible one.

The Colts don't really have a running game. When the offense is performing at its peak, they want Brown/Addai to carry the ball 15-20 times combined, and let Manning air it out the rest of the way. They make up for the lack of running production with Manning's absurd efficiency throwing underneath - anyone who saw the Ravens game knows exactly what I'm talking about. Dallas Clark creates lots of matchup issues, and the Colts have three WRs in Wayne, Collie and Garcon who are all strong route runners, a key component of Manning's success in throwing passes in the 5 to 15 yard range.

Dropping the safeties and corners off a little also changed the complexion of the Jets' blitzing packages, which had been extremely successful this postseason. Even when they don't get a sack, Ryan's schemes utilizing unique talents like Rhodes in the pass rush causes the opposing o-line all kinds of problems. And the corners, Revis in particular, play absolutely fearless tight coverage off the line, even if it occasionally results in a deep completion.

The biggest problem with this strategy change, though, came on the other side of the ball. By allowing Peyton to mask the lack of an effective running game with his short passing, Ryan and the Jets' ceded their biggest advantage against the Colts - the ability to control the pace of the game by pounding the ball behind an offensive line that sent three player (Ferguson, Faneca and Mangold) to the Pro Bowl this year. While the Jets capitalized on a few big plays (the Sanchez pass to Braylon Edwards, Smith's Wildcat bomb) to take a halftime lead, they hadn't been a "big play" team all year. The Jets won this year by minimizing offensive mistakes while holding the ball as long as possible, reducing the amount of time opponents with better offenses had to comeback against that suffocating defense.

While this is probably longer and less link-driven than I'd like, I thought I'd put it out there to see if anyone else picked up on this vibe. Especially since if I read another piece on Favre as some Oedipal tragic-hero, I'll chuck my mouse across this office.