FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- As Bill Belichick remains under siege in New England, holding his breath until the NFL issues its verdict on a stash of game-day footballs gone mysteriously soft, there is no need for the league to investigate this one act of perfectly legitimate deflation:

Belichick long ago let the air out of the New York Jets.

The day he walked out on them in 2000 -- 24 hours after agreeing to replace the retiring Bill Parcells as their head coach -- goes down as the worst day for a franchise that has had more than its share of really bad ones. Belichick's Patriots have won the AFC East 12 times in 14 tries and are about to make their sixth trip to the Super Bowl, a place the Jets haven't been since Belichick was a student at Annapolis High.

So as the latest Belichickian drama picked up where Spygate left off, perhaps leaving the Patriots at the mercy of a weakened commissioner who needs to make a stand, the Jets quietly introduced the two men hired to outwit Belichick and Tom Brady at some point over the next few years. Todd Bowles is their coach, and Mike Maccagnan is their general manager. Whenever the NFL is done punishing Belichick, if he's punished at all, he's still the man the new guys have to beat.

Can they do it? Can they find the magic formula that eluded Rex Ryan, who huffed and puffed and then lost six consecutive division titles to the Patriots before getting himself fired?

New Jets coach Todd Bowles, right, set his sights on emulating the Patriots' success in his introductory news conference with new GM Mike Maccagnan. Julio Cortez/AP Photo

Nobody has a clue after one news conference that amounted to the polar opposite of Ryan's introduction, remembered for promised trips to the White House that would never come to be. Over the seasons, ol' Rex did an awful lot of talking about Belichick's ring collection, which isn't something Bowles seems inclined to do.

"I'm going to work on getting my own rings," he said Wednesday. "[The Patriots] are the cream of the crop of the division. That's why they're in the Super Bowl. They're somewhere that we're striving to get to, and that's what we're going to work towards."

They've got a million miles to go from 4-12 and four consecutive seasons out of the playoffs to the top of the AFC East. Bowles, the Arizona Cardinals defensive coordinator, and Maccagnan, the Houston Texans director of college scouting, come across as earnest football men who won't waste time guaranteeing things they can't deliver.

Ryan kept faking it with Geno Smith, kept trying to persuade people to ignore the mounting evidence and take his word for it that Smith would someday soon become a big-time pro. Bowles? The best he could do on Smith was a description of him as "a great college quarterback," and until Smith's play demands something more, that's the way it should be.

Let's continue with the apparent positives here. Bowles and Maccagnan are card-carrying Jersey guys, and the last time a Jets owner (Leon Hess) hired one of those, Bill Parcells needed only two seasons to turn Rich Kotite's 1-15 roster into the second-best team the franchise ever fielded, a Super Bowl contender that would've beaten either of Ryan's AFC Championship Game teams by a touchdown or two.

Parcells is a big fan of Bowles, a former aide of his. "He taught me how to see the overall game," Bowles said.

Parcells didn't need to teach him about toughness and perseverance. Bowles told of how he dislocated six bones in his wrist before his senior season at Temple, an injury serious enough for some to predict the safety would never play again. He missed the first three games.