For years, opposing running backs gashed the Jets’ front line on a weekly basis, and few humbled them worse than Travis Henry. But in yesterday’s 16-14 win over Buffalo, Gang Green didn’t just contain the Bills’ Pro Bowl back; they erased him altogether.

After the power back served the Jet defense many pieces of humble pie over the course of his career, Henry yesterday found himself held to 33 yards on a dozen painful carries. He injured his ankle in the first quarter and regressed from there, until the Bills finally shelved him in the third quarter.

The first five times he faced them, he carried 118 times for 567 yards, scored five times and averaged 113.4 yards per game. He gouged them for a career-high 169 yards in a 16-7 Bills win last December, despite playing with a broken bone in his right leg and torn rib cartilage.

And yesterday, there he was trying to run with his injured ankle. But those Jet teams he’d – in Herm Edwards’ words – “knocked over like bowling pins” finished 28th against the run last year with old, slow linebackers. Yesterday, they swarmed to attack Henry faster than the fighter Jets that did a pregame flyby.

On Buffalo’ seventh play – a first-and-5 from their own 47 – S Reggie Tongue and LB Victor Hobson chased Henry down on a 14-yard run. He got hurt on the play, shuttling in and out of the lineup until leaving for good in the third quarter.

“We got two, three – sometimes more than two or three – hats on the ball every play,” said DE Shaun Ellis. “We played like a team.”

Linemen took him down on seven of his carries, he got negative or no yards on five of them, and was rendered wholly ineffective by the team he used to dominate.

“We did a pretty good job in the run game,” Edwards said. “They had some minus yards rushing and we got to the runner. That was the key for us.”