Report: New England Patriots Have The New ‘Ironman’

Joe Thuney is the New England Patriots’ Ironman. 

After not coming off the field once during Patriots’ season finale against the Jets, the starting left guard officially played in every single offensive snap for the New England Patriots Patriots all season. Joe Thuney is the first Patriots to play in either all of the offensive or defensive snaps for a season since Brady and Ryan Wendell both did so in 2013. 

“Yeah, well, that’s huge,” Belichick said after the game when informed about Thuney’s feat. “Again, those guys train hard. They work hard and, as you said, they take a lot of snaps, not only in the games but in practice. It’s a very durable group, a tough group. Marcus [Cannon] missed a couple of times. Shaq [Mason] missed a couple of games. Those guys have been in there not only every game, but every practice and that helps our team because we get consistency and timing and so forth.

“Joe’s had a tremendous three years of durability. We know with the time he missed in the spring, which obviously is less of a setback than it is during the season. We’ve had good consistency from all of those guys. Yeah, that’s certainly a big help. Overall, our team has trained hard. I think we’ve been relatively healthy all year. I think that’s a credit to obviously the players for the hard work they do, but Moses [Cabrera] and his staff. They do a good job of getting these guys and putting them in position where they can perform at a high level and also do it over an extended period of time. Hopefully, we can continue to do that.”

Every since the Patriots selected Joe Thuney in the third round of the 2016 NFL Draft, the guard has been an very durable option for Patriots. 

Sunday’s win over the Jets did solidify the No. 2 seed for the Patriots and a first round bye. Overall, it was a dominating effort by the New England Patriots, which includes the offensive line, who kept Tom Brady pretty unscathed throughout the match. 

“We got to try to throw a wall in front of our quarterback,” Patriots center David Andrews said. “I thought for the most part today that we did that. There’s always stuff that we can do better and that’s what we strive to do each week. It’s always a challenge and it’s just going to be more and more challenging here coming up this week. It’s the NFL playoffs now, so you got to get ready to go.”