Coaches could have been on opposite sidelines

Sunday’s Jets-Falcons coaching matchup could have been flipped if things had gone differently in January 2015.

Todd Bowles and Dan Quinn were interviewed for both the Jets’ and Falcons’ head-coaching openings. The Jets liked Quinn a lot, but feared waiting for him. At the time, he was the Seahawks’ defensive coordinator and they were in the Super Bowl. The Jets felt Bowles was an equally strong candidate, and his Cardinals had been eliminated from the playoffs already, so they pounced.

Quinn, who grew up in Morristown, N.J., took the Falcons’ job shortly thereafter.

“We were still kind of right in the middle of our stuff,” Quinn said this week, “and fortunately we were able to keep playing, so it made it certainly more challenging for anybody the more we were playing. But no, things worked out as they should have, and Todd is doing a great job there, and I am really happy here.”

Quinn was a Jets assistant under Eric Mangini. He remembers bonding with owner Woody Johnson over boxing. Though there was interest from Quinn in the Jets, the Falcons’ job was much more attractive with Matt Ryan at quarterback and an established general manager in Thomas Dimitroff in place.

For Bowles, he was scheduled to have a second interview with the Falcons when the Jets offered him the job, keeping him from getting on the plane.

“I had an interview there,” Bowles said this week. “I mean, you’re interested in them all when you don’t have one, obviously. You want to feel them out. You go down, talked to Mr. [Arthur] Blank and they have great GMs. I know Tom Dimitroff and everybody else, and [assistant GM Scott] Pioli. We had a good talk and a good interview.”

Jets safety Marcus Maye is not the only hard-hitting safety from Florida playing in Sunday’s game. The Falcons have Keanu

Neal, who played with Maye for three years at Florida.

“He’s one of those guys that you don’t want to get hit by at all,” Maye said.

Neal has established himself as one of the best young safeties in football, something Maye is now trying to do.