Meshing on all cylinders

The coach of the football team, the Philadelphia Eagles, was asked about the team’s collapse last year:

“Last year is over. We don’t care about last year,” Sirianni said on Sunday. “We learned what we needed to learn from last year and what we needed to do off of that. This year, it’s a different group of guys. This is a different team that’s gelling and meshing on all cylinders right now. With that being said, you are only as good as your last game. We’ve got a big game coming up this weekend.” Here is the link to the entire interview:

This is a mashup of “meshing with (someone)” (working well together) and “hitting on all cylinders” (performing at maximum efficiency). Both idioms describe working together and the malaphor could thus be a congruent conflation. Props to Linda Bernstein for spotting this one in the Philadelphia Inquirer and sending it in!