Nick Mangold the Long Islander: How beloved Jet made connections during his time here
Former Jets center Nick Mangold, right, behind the counter at Chipotle Hicksville with Mike Stallone of Kings Park, the former general manager of the store.
Credit: Courtesy of Mike Stallone
CINCINNATI — Mike Stallone said he recognized the beard right away.
Stallone was a Jets fan — still is — and had seen the pictures of the center from Ohio State drafted by his favorite team just a few months earlier. So when the Wookie-looking rookie walked into the Chipotle in Hicksville, not far from the Hofstra campus where the Jets were holding training camp in the summer of 2006, Stallone, then the general manager of the store, made his way over to the large man waiting in line.
“I wanted to talk to him,” Stallone said while recalling that day nearly two decades ago. “I wanted to say ‘Welcome to Long Island.’ ”
And then he made him a burrito.
Nick Mangold died on Saturday of complications from kidney disease. But before he became an all-time great for the Jets, before he was the 6-4, 307-pound center pushing two teams to AFC Championship Game appearances, before he started 164 games, retired and became one of the most gregarious and insightful and ubiquitous former Jets around, he was something much more simple.
He was a Long Islander.
He was born in Ohio just outside Dayton, starred at Ohio State in Columbus and played most of his career in New Jersey at the Meadowlands and Florham Park, but for three years, he was one of us. He was a guy who got lunch at the local chain shop and interacted with hundreds of others on a regular basis at delis and banks and gas stations and bars. Long Island was where Mangold first started to weave his way into the fabric of the organization and into the hearts of its fans.
Jets tight end Jeremy Ruckert, who grew up in Lindenhurst, and his father, Bill, were two of those who fell hard for him.
“My dad was an offensive lineman when he was playing and he always had an appreciation for those guys,” Ruckert told Newsday on Sunday after the Jets pulled out a 39-38 victory over the Bengals a day after Mangold died. “Every time we would watch the Jets when I was little, he would always point out how good of a job he did.
“He was a Jet for life,” Ruckert said. “When I got drafted here and I would see him around the building, he was someone I always wanted to go up to and just tell him how much I appreciated him and what he did for this organization. He was just an awesome guy. Every time he was in the room, he lit it up. It’s super-sad for his family. He’ll definitely be missed.”
That echoed the assessment of Mangold of just about all of his former teammates and coaches and the current crop of players and team personnel.
Aaron Glenn, now coach of the Jets, noted that he was a young scout in the organization while Mangold played for the Jets.
“True Jet, through and through,” Glenn said. “He was the heart and soul of this team.”
That he was seen in such a light by non-Jets, by the folks he simply ran into while going about his life, speaks more to the man than any testimonials from team notables, though.
“Just a nice guy, a really fun guy to be around,” Stallone said in a phone interview with Newsday on Sunday recalling the gentle giant with the wild whiskers. “He was never in a rush to leave. He’d stick around and talk. I became a big fan of his from the get-go.”
Stallone said after that first encounter, he figured he had scared Mangold away. But pretty soon Mangold was back, and he kept coming back as long as the Jets were at Hofstra. “Just about every day,” Stallone said.
Mangold enjoyed kibitzing with the fans who were there for their lunches, too. It wasn’t as if he tolerated Stallone just for that occasional extra scoop of rice or meat that would make the tortilla bulge to its limit. No, Mangold truly loved being among Jets fans.
Mangold often would buy several burritos at a time, one for lunch and the others for the rest of the day to eat back at his home, or in the dorm room when at training camp. Occasionally he would buy boxes full of burritos for the offensive line room. He started bringing teammates in with him, too.
At one point Mangold became such a mainstay that Stallone invited him behind the counter to make his own lunch.
Stallone, from Kings Park, no longer works for Chipotle. Hasn’t for years. But he remains a Jets fan and a Mangold fan. He bought a No. 74 Jets jersey for his favorite player in 2009 and still wears it whenever he makes his way to MetLife Stadium to catch a game.
To him, Mangold will be remembered for two things.
First: “He was a chicken and black beans guy,” Stallone said of the player’s go-to order.
And second: “He was the Jets.”
For a while, there was a third thing, too.
Mangold always did his best to fit in here and embrace us and our habits and our traffic and our passions despite having never been to the area until he was drafted. His work ethic and sense of humor and wry bemusement at the many issues that befuddled the Jets didn’t just speak to us. It felt as if it spoke for us, too.
He was a Long Islander.
Honorary? Perhaps. For only a brief time? Sure.
But a true one nevertheless.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
