EAST RUTHERFORD -- Look: The game itself was bad enough for Todd Bowles, okay? If you're a head coach with a 3-8 record, and your team falls behind 41-3 in a primetime football game with your owner trying to impress the vice president-elect in his luxury suite?

Yeah. That's an update-your-LinkedIn-profile level of bad.

So nothing he did in the postgame press conference was likely to match the overall ineptitude and poor effort of this Jets team on the field. Then Bowles said something so outrageous, so utterly ridiculous, that it gave you serious pause about his overall leadership.

Bowles said the "plan all along" was to start second-year quarterback Bryce Petty in the final four games of the season, and that plan wasn't going to change no matter what veteran Ryan Fitzpatrick did against the Indianapolis Colts on Monday night.

"We could have won 45-0 and (Petty) would have started the last four games," Bowles said.

Let that one sink in: Fitzpatrick could have morphed into a young Joe Montana and had one of the best performances in recent team history, leading the Jets to their biggest victory in years, and Bowles insists he would have shown him the bench. No, really. He said that.

And even if you believe -- as I certainly did -- that Fitzpatrick should have started his extended audition the moment the Jets dropped to 3-7, what Bowles said after Monday night's loss still made no sense.

Why would you start a 34-year-old Fitzpatrick in a meaningless game if he was just going to be replaced anyway? Why wouldn't you just hand the keys to Petty for five games instead of four? And when, exactly, did Bowles reveal this top-secret plan to his quarterbacks?

Petty, who started the second half against the Jets with the Colts in a 24-3 hole, said he had no idea until moments before he walked into the press conference. It sure looked like Fitzpatrick had the same amount of notice, if that, when he followed Bowles to the podium.

Fitzpatrick laughed when asked about Bowles' 45-0 comment. He seemed genuinely stunned, then said he had heard about the decision from his "offensive coaches" in the locker room.

If that's true -- and, again, his initial reaction told a different story -- Bowles made a decision that might end Fitzpatrick's career as an NFL starting quarterback without pulling him aside and explaining it to him before he has to answer questions about it?

This is a head coach who is supposed to command the respect of the veterans in the locker room?

Maybe this is Johnson pulling the strings behind the scenes. The owner is reportedly in position to get an ambassadorship in the Trump administration, and it's possible that he's demonstrating that he knows how to pull the strings before he sets up shop in a London embassy.

But more likely, Bowles is just scrambling now. Revealing the "plan" to install Petty as the starter in the final four games is a good way to distract everyone from the mess that unfolded against the Colts, and make it seem like he had a direction from the start.

"That's the slot we had penciled in for him," Bowles said. "That's a good time to take a look at him."

Fitzpatrick took the high road, promising to be a mentor to Petty whether he's the backup (and Bowles wouldn't confirm that he was) or a third-stringer. It was his play early in the season that set this train careening off the rails, and he never approached the 31-touchdown performance from 2015 that carried this team to a 10-win season.

Petty will get his extended audition, but he'll have to be a lot better than he was in the second half on Monday night. He might have hit receiver Robby Anderson for a 40-yard touchdown against the Colts scrubs, but he missed several open receivers and had a pair of interceptions.

The reality is, Bowles probably couldn't have made a good decision on his quarterback no matter who he picked. Once receiver Eric Decker went down with a hip injury and the offensive line started to show cracks, this Jets offense was doomed.

Still, Bowles managed to mishandle the most important position on the field anyway. He caught everyone off guard on Monday night, including his quarterbacks, when he revealed the plan to hand Petty the keys for the final four games of the season.

The game was bad enough. The explanation? That certainly didn't inspire much confidence from the leader of this bad football team, either.

Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.