‘D’ shuts down Redskins’ run game

Washington has one of the best and most persistent running games in the NFL. But on Sunday the Jets took a onedimensional offense, and took away its only dimension, smothering the Redskins in a 3420 win at MetLife Stadium.

Gang Green — which opened up in a 43 instead of its typical 34 — held Washington to just 34 hardearned yards on 17 painful carries, their defensive line utterly dominating in the trenches all afternoon.

“They run the ball,” defensive end Leger Douzable said. “We knew they were going to come in here and try to establish the run. We said if we can stop them on first and second down, we could really go after them ... on third down.

“So it’s just the mentality that we took into the game that we have to stop the run.’’

They stopped one of the NFL’s best ground games cold.

The Redskins came in leading the league in time of possession and was 12th in rushing yards. But with running back Matt Jones sidelined, the Jets held Alfred Morris and Chris Thompson to just 33 combined yards on 16 carries.

“When we went up two scores they kind of abandoned the run,” Douzable said. “Teams, when you can stop them from running the ball early and go up two scores, then the run is really thrown out of the game.

“We really emphasized it this week. We knew Morris was going to come in here and try to run hard. I don’t think [Jones] played. [Thompson] was a guy we knew was going to try and get on the edge, and that’s the thing we talked about all week: Defend the edge and not letting him get to the edge because we knew what type of guy he was in the open field.’’

The Jets managed to clog up the field with a few shrewd moves. With Pro Bowler Sheldon Richardson back from his fourgame suspension, Todd Bowles deployed Richardson and Damon Harrison in the middle with Leonard Williams and Muhammad Wilkerson outside.

“We put an extra defensive lineman in there,” coach Todd Bowles said. “We took off the doubleteam and those guys played good single oneonone football.

“Most of their run game is based off the doubleteam, and people getting up to the linebackers on the second level. We thought we could take that away and put another guy down. They couldn’t handle all of them. [It] was just to try and combat them.”

It clearly worked.