Photo

Pretend, for a second, that you’re Rex Ryan.

Your quarterbacks are Mark Sanchez and David Garrard – with more of that ilk to follow. And your best player – an indispensable player, a man you respect and adore – Darrelle Revis, is likely to be traded, the only mystery being when.

Your defense has been gutted by salary cap-related releases (Calvin Pace and Sione Po’uha, Bart Scott and Eric Smith) and free agency (Yeremiah Bell, Mike DeVito and LaRon Landry). And, though their departures are of little surprise, your starting running back, Shonn Greene, left for Tennessee, and your starting tight end, Dustin Keller, is headed elsewhere, potentially to Miami, a division rival.

It is early in free agency, early in the offseason, and the Jets will sign players, draft others, and fashion a full team in 2013 that they hope will reflect the nascent phases of John Idzik’s plan for sustainable success. The free agents who have so far drawn their interest – running back Mike Goodson, linebacker Antwan Barnes, receiver Brandon Gibson – would seem smart additions, if they’re amenable to reasonable deals.

But even so, that team will not be expected to contend next season, and if you’re Ryan, and you are coaching for your job, you can’t be blamed for feeling unnerved by all of these changes, however expected they are.

With only four returning starters under contract (including Revis), the Jets’ needs on defense are plentiful – an edge pass-rusher, linebackers, two starting safeties, interior linemen. On offense, more of the same: tight end, running back, receiver, offensive line. The stalwart right guard Brandon Moore is likely to leave. So could left guard Matt Slauson, whose playing time was slashed last season in favor of Vlad Ducasse.

You’re Rex Ryan, and many of your locker room leaders will be gone. Your talent base is eroding further – what some might call a necessary step in rebuilding – and you, because you’re a coach and because you’re you, want to win now, in a treacherous A.F.C. East, in an unforgiving conference, with an overhauled coaching staff and an overhauled roster and with no job security beyond this season.

At the insistence of owner Woody Johnson, Idzik could not choose his own coach. He inherited you for 2013, a transition year – the first of more than one, perhaps – for a franchise that two years ago was coming off its second consecutive appearance in the conference title game. You were beloved then and entrenched, and now you are not, and watching this exodus must be more than a bit unsettling.