Source: https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2012/12/29/brandon-moore-interview/ I only copy/paste the beginning of the article because it was really long. SM: Looking at your grade distribution for this year, it’s been a dramatic improvement in the second half of the season. Were you carrying an injury over the first half that we didn’t know about? BM: I don’t make excuses for my play. I thought I had a decent beginning to the season, but it wasn’t what I wanted it to be. You always want to finish strong and get better as the season goes along. You know you don’t want to be playing your best ball and then tail off at the end. You’d like to be more consistent, but some things you have to manage during the season and you just try to improve as you go, and I think that’s the one thing I’m happy to see. I think it started after the bye week; I started feeling more comfortable in our offense and doing better physically. I was also working on the things I need to work on and I think it’s translated to the field. I wouldn’t say over the first half of the season I laid a goose egg. I have a high standard for myself. Was it where I would like it to be? No, but I think I could probably say that for other seasons as well. SM: You’ve been in the league a while now, what kind of things do you need to work on during the season? BM: Well you know, things can slip, like your punch in your pass set. Things you take for granted over the course of the season, or in training camp, can kind of dwindle if you don’t work on them or focus and make that conscious effort to do it in practice and to translate that to games. It can be your angles on certain run blocks, or how you step, or your footwork or keeping your feet alive on certain blocks. These are all these things that I know, but you need to realize that your playing life depends on it and the team’s fortunes depend on it — you never stop learning or trying to improve as a football player. You’ve always got to just tighten up things that can get a little loose over time. SM: How good was Damien Woody when he was playing next to you? BM: Oh man, of course… he was a force. Playing next to him made my job a lot easier. We didn’t have to communicate a lot of things; he had played center, guard and tackle so he understands football and line play in general so it was a lot of fun to play with him. He understood what we were trying to do, he was athletic and had great feet. To be able to go from center to tackle and to have the strength and the feet and athletic ability to be out on an island is pretty impressive. I can’t say enough about the job he did and the time I had playing next to him. SM: And he went out still playing great football, you don’t often see that. BM: Yeah, I mean that last year when he got hurt, of course he could have come back and played if he had really wanted to work through that injury and come back, but he’d had success in the past and had some family and business things that he wanted to take part in, but he went out playing at a high level. That last year before he got hurt you weren’t sitting there saying ‘Oh, boy, they might want to go in a different direction from him’. He was playing at a high level. He went out on top. SM: How hard is it to replace a guy like that? Wayne Hunter had his struggled trying, but Austin Howard has developed and improved since his rocky start at RT. BM: Yeah, he has. He’s done a good job of handling a little adversity. It’s hard playing on an island like that at tackle in the NFL, you know, his first full year starting. There’s a lot of things you’ve never experienced, but from Game 1 he came out with a great attitude, had a great day against Mario Williams and through the season it’s been up and down and he’s had some hiccups, but I think for the most part the good has outweighed the bad. I think his ability to move past mistakes or certain things and focus on techniques in practice and try to bring those to the game and have that confidence that you need to actually do it in the game and have it be successful is the biggest thing he has. A lot of times guys may try things in practice, but when they get in the game — the lights go on and the stage is big — they don’t trust their technique and trust the work they put in and let it come out on the football field, you know. That’s one thing I think he’s really done a good job with. SM: People talk about how tough it can be to change positions, but you actually changed sides of the football from college to the NFL, going from defense to offense. What was that like? BM: It was very tough in the beginning. It’s a totally different mentality; you go from trying to get off blocks to trying to stick on blocks. It’s a different mentality you have to have over there. It wasn’t easy at all, and I had a lot of help along the way, a lot of patience from coaches and friends and family. It took a lot of work and a lot of dedication went into it. Just staying after practice and working with my old coach Bill Muir then (Doug) Marrone, who’s now up in Syracuse, and some other coaches along the way like Bill Callahan. I’ve taken from all of these people, but it was definitely not easy in the beginning making that transition, but you know, fortunately I’ve had some teachers that were patient with me and it kind of worked its way out. I had a good attitude about it, wasn’t opposed to it, and I’ve been blessed to play this long and have the career I’ve had. SM: Players have O-line coaches come and go like you just said, but how much does the basics and fundamentals differ from line-coach-to-line coach? BM: I mean, you can have one coach that might want you to step a little more this way, more lead step as opposed to zone step, a lateral step on some blocks, or certain little tweaks in how you want to do a double team, but when you boil it all down it’s all the same. Moving from point A to point B, but you’ve got to learn. I’ve been through four O-line coaches I think and in the beginning they come in with what they want to do and you try it out, and that’s what the offseason is for. You try it out and decide how you want to incorporate it into your game and decide if it can work and if it doesn’t, you work your way through it and maybe combine it and pull on your strengths from the past and use it that way. But you’ve got to be able to — especially in my position when you play for so long, there are definitely things where I feel confident about and things I’ve picked up along the way from coaches — but you’ve got to lean on things you’ve trusted for a while, as well as trying to add some new tools to your bag. SM: You’ve played a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of quality interior defensive linemen this season, who is the best guy you’ve had to face? BM: Uh, I guess it would probably have to be JJ Watt. Of course, he’s a possible league MVP or Defensive Player of the Year, and he was pretty good. He’s definitely a young player with a lot of physical tools that help him play well. Vince Wilfork is always a tough guy to go against, but I’ve been playing him for the past 10 years nearly and he’s always tough. [/cont'd] @ https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2012/12/29/brandon-moore-interview Good interview on Jets topics which most other media is ignoring because it doesn't bring drama-filled headlines.
