It goes without saying that Brandon Marshall thrived in his first season as a Jets receiver in 2015. His 109 catches for 1,502 yards set team records, and his 14 receiving touchdowns tied a team record and tied for the NFL lead.

But Marshall was banged up for a while. Even down the stretch, he often appeared on the Jets' injury report with a toe injury on one foot, and an ankle injury on the other.

Marshall was always reluctant to discuss his injury status. He's no doubt one of those players who believes that to acknowledge how much he's hurting would be to give an opponent some kind of advantage, however insignificant that may seem to those of us on the outside.

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But now that the Jets are finished for the year, Marshall is free to discuss what was up. And it turns out that even though Marshall didn't miss a game, he played through a high ankle sprain--the kind of ailment that typically can sideline a player for several weeks.

"I had a high ankle sprain this year, and it put me down for four weeks," Marshall said Tuesday night on Showtime's "Inside the NFL," on which he's a regular panelist. "I was able to go out there [and] still draw coverage because teams didn't know what I could do; they didn't know the severity of my injury.

"But when you have an ankle at the wide receiver position, you're pretty much dead in the water."

Marshall was in many way the ideal piece for the Jets' offense, which finished the season 10th in passing DVOA, per Football Outsiders. He never showed any noticeable limp or any signs he was hurting; as he mentioned he continued to draw attention from defenders that only helped the rest of the offense work.

Marshall was also in many ways an ideal teammate. But to learn he played through a high ankle sprain also shows how tough (or maybe crazy?) he was, too.

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Besides, it's not like Marshall never showed how gross and swollen his ankle had gotten at one point. Remember this?

Dom Cosentino may be reached at dcosentino@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @domcosentino. Find NJ.com Jets on Facebook.