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          Corey Linsley: 2,484 straight snaps and counting for Packers center

          • Rob Demovsky, ESPN Staff WriterJan 8, 2019, 02:00 PM ET
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              Rob Demovsky is an NFL reporter at ESPN and covers the Green Bay Packers. He has covered the Packers since 1997 and joined ESPN in 2013. Demovsky is a two-time Wisconsin Sportswriter of the Year as selected by the NSSA. You can follow him on Twitter at @RobDemovsky.
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          GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers used 10 different offensive linemen this past season but only one center. They fielded six different starting line combinations, but all of them included Corey Linsley in the middle.

          He hasn’t made a Pro Bowl – yet – but Linsley has proven to be one of the most reliable members of the Packers’ offense.

          The fifth-year pro played every offensive snap for the second consecutive season. Dating to the middle of the 2016 season, he has been on the field for 2,484 straight plays. That includes the last 363 snaps of 2016 (including playoffs), all 1,047 snaps of 2017 and all 1,074 snaps of 2018.

          For the second straight season, he was the only Packer who didn’t miss a snap on his side of the ball.

          And to think there were actually questions about his durability at one point.

          Linsley had ankle surgery following the 2016 season to correct a problem that he believes led to the hamstring injury that kept him out until Week 9 of that season. When he came back midway through the 2016 season, he played 803 out of a possible 804 snaps the rest of the season, including playoffs. The only snap he missed was a third-quarter play against the Bears in Week 15 because his shoe fell off. That means he has played in 2,924 of the Packers' last 2,925 offensive plays.

          “I think that's the way offensive linemen are wired, honestly,” Linsley said after he successfully made it through the season finale without missing a play. “Whenever you can go, you've got to go. Especially when you get Aaron [Rodgers] going out there and he makes like eight times as much as anybody and he's going out there risking his body, how can you sit there? I look at my teammates and see them working and I ask myself, how could I not be out there working?"

          Linsley ranked ninth among all centers in ESPN’s pass-blocking win rate rankings this season. He wasn’t one of the three centers voted to the NFC Pro Bowl team; he was named an alternate.

          “Corey is a fantastic player,” Rodgers said the day after the Pro Bowl selections were announced. “I don’t believe in the NFC that there’s four centers better than him.”

          Of the Packers’ offensive linemen, All-Pro left tackle David Bakhtiari was the only other player to start all 16 games. Bakhtiari played every snap in 13 of the 16 games.

          Below are the snap counts for the 29 players the Packers used on offense during the 2018 season. That’s the same numbers of players who played on offense in 2017. For a comparison, here are last year’s offensive totals.

          Total offensive plays: 1,074

          Quarterbacks

          Running backs

          Receivers

          Tight ends

          Offensive line