< Back to front page Text size – +

Woody: Trash talk 'doesn't matter'

Print | Comments () Posted by Albert Breer November 18, 2009 04:34 PM

Tweet
E-mail

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- Damien Woody's been on both sides of this.

He's here in New Jersey now, playing for a team runs its mouth as well as it runs the ball. But he was brought to this place by a coach, Eric Mangini, who didn't exactly encourage free speech.

And before that, as well as his time with the Lions, he spent four seasons under Bill Belichick in New England. So he knows that when his new coach with the Jets, Rex Ryan, says things like he did today ("Guess what? We're gonna try to whip them. Again.") that his old coach is going to be sure to relay them to his players.

"I’m sure stuff is gonna get referenced, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter," Woody told me. "Because at the end of the day, the game is won between the white lines. I was a part of that. When situations like this came up, (Belichick) would use stuff like that. And that’s fine, that’s cool. Whatever you feel like you gotta do to get your team up, that’s fine. But at the end of the day, the game is won between the white lines, and you gotta go play the ballgame."

But Woody stopped short of saying Belichick's motivational tactics weren't at all effective.

"Yeah, we bought into it -- we definitely bought into it. Yeah, definitely," Woody said with a smirk. "Stuff being said, yeah, it would get you fired up, pissed off, all that stuff. But as I’ve gotten older, I realize that stuff can only take you so far. Because at the end of the day, you still gotta win the game, and the game is played between the white lines. Those words aren’t going to help you win the ballgame.

"It can only take you so far. Do I feel like it worked? I felt like it played its part while I was in New England, definitely."

One thing Woody emphasized, though, was that the motivation wears off quickly. And then it comes down, like he said, to playing the game.

Particularly when it's divisional rivals like the Patriots and the Jets.

"We know each other very well, we know the personnel very well, it’s gonna be one of those games," Woody said. "It’s gonna be a slugfest. You just know each other. We know each other’s tendencies. They’re a gameplan-specific team, so they might throw something new at us. But shoot, I could probably go down their roster and name almost every player, and they probably could do the same thing with our roster. It’s gonna be one of those games, it’s gonna be a battle."