The big nas­ties deserved the game ball for Sunday’s win over the Jack­sonville Jaguars.

When an offense runs for 269 like the Jets did — not count­ing the Braden Mann fake field goal run for four yards — that’s a tes­ta­ment to the offen­sive line.

With­out that offen­sive line dom­i­na­tion, Gang Green prob­a­bly would not have snagged their fourth win of the sea­son. Dur­ing the Week 16 matchup the unit con­sis­tent­ly made like Moses part­ing the Red Sea, allow­ing Michael Carter and com­pa­ny to run wild. Carter fin­ished with 118 yards on 16 car­ries and Tevin Cole­man ran for 57.

The offen­sive line also aid­ed in Zach Wilson’s 52-yard touch­down run. The Jaguars sent pres­sure and the Jets’ unit blocked it well, which allowed Wil­son to even­tu­al­ly scram­ble and turn into “Zach Vick.”

And that impressed Robert Saleh, who watched the game from a hotel room while iso­lat­ing with COVID-19

“The amount of aggres­sion. The way the new line of scrim­mage was being cre­at­ed,” Saleh said Mon­day. “Just all of it was pret­ty damn impressive.”

What’s more eye-pop­ping was that Jets run­ning backs aver­aged 2.1 yards before con­tact, which was fifth most in the NFL for Week 16, accord­ing to Next Gen Stats. Cred­it that to the Jets’ offen­sive line mov­ing the Jags’ defen­sive line­man. And 20% of the Jets’ runs were over 10 yards, which was sec­ond most in the NFL for the week.

Against a loaded box with eight defend­ers, the run­ning backs put up 71 yards. That’s a com­bi­na­tion of Carter and Cole­man mak­ing defend­ers miss, and the offen­sive line cre­at­ing holes against those looks, as well — the run­ning backs ran for four yards before con­tact, which was also sec­ond most for the week.

“They were mov­ing peo­ple out the way,” Carter said postgame. “Between the offen­sive line and receivers block­ing we didn’t real­ly have to do all that much, we just had to make our guys miss at the sec­ond level.”

And the offen­sive line was able to accom­plish all that with­out mul­ti­ple starters. COVID-19 side­lined Ali­jah Vera-Tuck­er and Lau­rent Duver­nay-Tardif and cen­ter Con­nor McGov­ern suf­fered an MCL injury in the fourth quarter.

So back­up line­men Greg Van Roten, Dan Feeney and Isa­iah Williams played plenty.

But it was not a prob­lem for the Jets.

“That’s what we were look­ing for, was to estab­lish it, to show the dom­i­nance up front, run­ning backs hit­ting it hard, they did an awe­some job.” Wil­son said postgame. “And we just kept going to it, that’s where games are won, espe­cial­ly this point in the year. And the guys were grind­ing… of course the O‑line upfront.”

MEKHI BECTON

With two games remain­ing on the sea­son, it doesn’t seem like­ly the Jets fran­chise left tack­le will return.

“Bar­ring a mir­a­cle, but right now he’s prob­a­bly not going to be here this week,” Saleh said. “Bar­ring any­thing chang­ing, we’re not rul­ing him out, but something’s going to have to change.”

Bec­ton injured his knee in Week 1 against the Pan­thers in a 14–19 loss. The for­mer No. 11 over­all pick dis­lo­cat­ed a kneecap and suf­fered MCL and car­ti­lage damage.

It was ini­tial­ly thought to be a sea­son-end­ing injury, but he opt­ed for surgery in mid-Sep­tem­ber to try to pre­vent that. The timetable for return post surgery was thought to be four to eight weeks, accord­ing to Saleh.

Around the eight-week mark, how­ev­er, when the Jets were prepar­ing for the Bills, Bec­ton still wasn’t healthy enough. Every cou­ple of weeks Saleh gave a “no update” update.

That looks to con­tin­ue to the end of the season.

“He is a very big man. Every­one heals a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent­ly,” Saleh said. “I know he had a lit­tle bit of a cleanup in there and it didn’t go the way every­one was expect­ing, but it didn’t mean that there were set­backs or any­thing. He’s still work­ing, he’s still putting in the effort. We’ll get him back, if some­thing doesn’t change — obvi­ous­ly where we’re able to get him back for next week, if we work off the assump­tion where he won’t be back — I know he’ll be back for 2022. He’ll be ready to roll. It’s not that there was a set­back, it’s not that any­one has been lazy, it’s none of that, it’s just a mat­ter of everyone’s body heals differently.”