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I can easily imagine Ruggs was wide open because he was the fastest player in last year’s draft and simply outran the coverage.

And you imagined correctly. The issue was that the defense that was called allowed Ruggs one on one coverage and removed any possible help in the defensive backfield that a team winning with 0:13 seconds left against a team with 0 timeouts would have normally called.

Normally, in that situation, you have a three man rush and drop 8 people back in coverage. You have at least two deep safeties a few yards short of the goal line to prevent a TD. Your remaining six defenders are all pass coverage players that cover every possible deep zone. You would never blitz leaving receivers in one-on-one coverage with no safeties dropped back to help them.

The reasoning to me is simple. The Jets wanted to know that they COULD play with the Raiders. Which they did. Once that goal was reached, they did what they had to in order to not actually win the game and jeopardize their draft pick.

This is far from unprecedented. I think teams do it all the time. Here's what I think happened having seen Gregg Williams in action here in Cleveland:

1. The players WANTED to win.
2. Adam Gase (Jets Head Coach) probably wanted to win.
3. Gregg Williams wants to be Jets next head coach.
4. Gregg Williams wants #1 draft pick Trevor Lawrence to be his QB as he assumes his role as Jets HC.
5. Gregg Williams calls the worst defense he can to try to ensure the Jets lose.
6. Gregg Williams attempts to justify the call to the front office as simply being aggressive and wanting a sack. That it was the best call with the "talent" he was provided as Defensive Coordinator.
7. Gregg Williams HOPES he can weather the call but that this gets Gase fired so he can lobby for the job.

Williams didn't just gamble the game on his call. He gambled his career on it. He lost both.

Or the Jets are trying to tank. Teams don’t tank by asking players to not try their best. Teams tank by putting the wrong players on the field and putting them in bad situations, such as putting an inexperienced practice squad CB in man on man single coverage in a situation where only a big play TD can lose the game. This was literally the worst possible defensive call in that situation. Williams isn’t dumb enough to not know that. He took one for the team and was fired so that the tanking isn’t blatantly obvious.