FLORHAM PARK, N.J. (AP) -Damien Woody and the rest of the New York Jets’ offensive linemen have been inseparable for the last two seasons.
And not just on the field.
“We’re tight, our families are cool and we’ve got a special bond,” said Woody, the veteran right tackle. “We’re able to just joke on each other all the time. It makes coming to work and working together so much easier. We’re at a point now where the football stuff is almost like second nature to us.”
It certainly seems that way. The Jets have the top rushing offense in the NFL, thanks in large part to their five-man wall of consistency.
Woody, center Nick Mangold, left tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson and guards Alan Faneca and Brandon Moore are expected to play in their 30th consecutive game together – the longest active streak in the NFL – against the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday.
his is just rare. It’s something that years down the line, we might all look back on it and say, ‘Man, we had a damn good line.”’
The Jets lead the league with 169.1 yards rushing per game, and are tops with 474 rushing attempts. The offensive line has also helped paved the way for Thomas Jones, who’s the NFL’s fourth-leading rusher with 1,167 yards. Jones now has three straight 1,000-yard seasons with New York.
“This is the best offensive line in the NFL,” Jones said. “Every one of these linemen deserve to go to the Pro Bowl. Every one of them. They work extremely hard. They watch a lot of extra film. They do a lot of extra things in the weight room and the training room to prepare themselves.”
Faneca, Mangold and Woody all have been to Pro Bowls, and Ferguson and Moore are making cases to go to their first. Jones has had six games in which he has rushed for 100 yards or more this year, and 11 during the last two seasons behind this group of big blockers.
“When the game’s over with and the dust settles, that’s one of the first questions if you’re on the offensive line,” Faneca said. “You want to know, how many rushing yards we have and how many rushing yards does T.J. have? Did we crack 100, and how far over did we crack it? We take pride in being able to let him get his thing done.”
And that’s even with teams stacking the box, knowing the Jets are going to run.
some loaded boxes and loaded fronts and T.J. has made some great moves, and the other backs, but I’m just a keep-things-in-perspective guy,” Moore said. “This is no time to start touting ourselves as the best group of guys out there. It’s really not a good job until it’s finished.”
There’s no denying that they’ve been really good, though. They have a combined 545 career starts, second in experience only to the 566 Dallas’ line has. They also have allowed only 46 quarterback hits, fourth-best in the league.
“It’s a function of time,” Ferguson said. “When you have time, it allows for the nuances to be keyed upon. It’s the little things, it’s the nonverbal communication that makes the O-line great. Knowing what the person is going to do beside you without really having to talk to him or say anything. Knowing how a person is going to react to a certain play.”
The Jets’ Five Guys have nicknames that make them sound like something out of a biker gang or a high school comedy. There’s Brick (Ferguson), Meat (Moore), Big Wood (Woody) and Maneca – a combination of Mangold’s and Faneca’s last names because, as Woody put it, “those guys are always together all the time.”
That chemistry was nearly lost this offseason when the Jets cut Moore in the offseason and pursued free agent Chris Kemoeatu, who ended up re-signing with Pittsburgh. New York quickly re-signed Moore, a move for which Rex Ryan and the rest of the line are thankful.
`That’s huge,” Woody said. “In this day and age of free agency, it’s really hard to have your starting five offensive linemen together for a long period of time. For us to be in our second year together, that’s amazing. You look at that, and that’s a direct correlation to our running game.”
A lot of the success this season can be attributed to offensive line coach Bill Callahan adopting a zone blocking scheme, in which the line blocks an area and the running back runs parallel before choosing a hole to run through. The line, along with Jones, gradually got used to the new scheme, which caused the running game to be less than dominant early this season.
“It takes time,” Moore said.
And lots of confidence in each other.
“You go into games just feeling really comfortable,” Moore said. “There’s no doubt in your mind that the guy next to you or two people down is going to do their best job.”
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