[Rex Ryan and Mike Tannenbaum] denied, with straight faces, that this trade had anything to do with Mason complaining with other receivers to Ryan about the offense, as reported in the Daily News, or Mason’s critical comments about the offense after the Baltimore loss.

“It’s not like we’re singling out anybody …,” Ryan said. “It wasn’t that he wasn’t buying in … I was the most excited guy in the building when Derrick signed here. For whatever reason, it wasn’t working.”

The Jets keep looking dumber and dumber on this, denying the existence or impact of events that surely influence their decision-making process. Ryan, as much as he hates to admit it, turns out to be like most other pro football coaches when the temperature flares. He has his limits. And the Jets are not so very different from the other members of the No Fun League after all, despite the happy talk and the be-yourself rhetoric.

– Filip Bondy, N.Y. Daily News.

So if you’re following at home: The Daily News reports that three Jets receivers, including Derrick Mason, enact a mutiny against Brian Schottenheimer by complaining to Rex Ryan about the team’s offense. The Jets deny these reports, but bench Mason and trade him a few days later. The Daily News asserts Mason was traded because of his role in the mutiny. The Jets deny that too.

Who really cares? What does it matter how Ryan and Tannenbaum publicly justify the move as long as the move was made to better the Jets?

Mason is a 37-year-old receiver whose output has been in sharp decline since 2007. The Jets signed him to a two-year deal late in the weird offseason. For whatever reason, he never got in sync with Mark Sanchez and never contributed much to the offense, and Ryan and Tannenbaum felt he didn’t offer them much as a fourth receiver since he did not play on special teams. When the Jets found a taker for his contract, they made the trade.

The news item in the same paper cites a source saying that Mason struggled to grasp the playbook, but Bondy chastises Ryan and Tannenbaum for claiming they traded Mason because of his performance. Isn’t that just semantics? If you don’t grasp the playbook in the NFL, you don’t perform well.

One of Rex Ryan’s greatest strengths as a coach appears also to be his greatest weakness: He believes in his guys and wants everyone else to believe in his guys, too, and he must expect his players will in turn believe in him and strive to live up to his lofty expectations. (I suspect this works especially well on players with daddy issues.) It seems every time someone mentions a Jet to Ryan, the coach insists that guy is the very best at his role in the NFL. This player is the best backup tackle in the NFL. This one’s the best coordinator. This other dude is the best placekick holder this league has ever seen.

And that’s fine. It’s a good way for a coach to be. If Ryan were to come out and say, “yeah, we screwed up — Vlad Ducasse pretty much sucks,” maybe his candor pleases some in the media and fanbase (though it inevitably enrages others). But that would do Ryan no favors with the players in his locker room and the ones around the league he will someday woo.

Where Ryan struggles, it seems, is in recognizing when some Jet is not in fact the best player in the league in his role. Colin Baxter is not the best backup center in football. Eric Smith is not the best safety in the league. Brian Schottenheimer is not the best offensive coordinator. Derrick Mason certainly was not the game’s best slot receiver, nor would he have caught the 90-100 passes Ryan once predicted.

So it seems, then, that the Jets’ willingness to move Mason is a good sign, in that it shows that Ryan and Tannenbaum can tacitly admit a mistake and hold players accountable when they fail to meet the expectations. That they did so — and chose to compliment Kerley instead of scolding Mason — hardly seems dumb.