Jets’ Best Weapon: a Healthy Freeman McNeil

The strange brew that has been the New York Jets’ season hasn’t been a shock to Freeman McNeil. Apparently, nothing that happens on a football field surprises McNeil anymore.

The star running back could be the key to how the Jets fare this Saturday in Cleveland. Fresh from a 35-15 AFC wild-card victory that snapped a five-game losing streak to end the regular season, the Jets face the team with the conference’s best record. The Browns were 12-4 this year.

The Jets lost McNeil--and suffered their first loss--in the second game of the season. While McNeil spent four weeks on injured reserve nursing a dislocated right elbow, the team began a nine-game winning streak that carried it to the top of the NFL standings at 10-1.

Then came the fall to 10-6 and the embarrassment of backing into the playoffs. But, during that slide, McNeil came to life.

In the last three games, he has rushed for 137. 106 and 135 yards.

“You have to expect anything at any time,” the six-year veteran from UCLA said Tuesday. “The losing is hard. I can’t accept defeat. I’ve never been able to, it’s just not in me. You have to work your way through it.

“It’s not so much the defeat of the team that gets to you. It’s when I let myself be defeated. That’s the hardest thing for me to live with.”

The Jets acknowledge that their best chance to stay alive in the playoffs is to be ahead or keep the score close so that McNeil is the major part of the attack.

“Freeman is our best weapon,” said quarterback Pat Ryan, who will get his second consecutive start in place of benched Ken O’Brien. “If we don’t have to get away from our running game, from using Freeman, we’ve got a better chance to win.”

Too often in his career, the slick moves and darting cuts of McNeil have been hampered by injuries. The only year he truly was healthy down the stretch was in 1982, the strike season. McNeil rushed for 202 yards against Cincinnati and 101 against the Raiders in the playoffs that year.

He is healthy now, as he showed against Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Kansas City the last three weeks. And, considering what the January weather could be in Cleveland Stadium on the shores of Lake Erie, a successful running game figures to be crucial.

“You have to play under all kinds of adverse conditions and circumstances,” said McNeil, who might see his fine backup, Johnny Hector, ready for action after a hamstring injury sidelined him for three weeks. “You have to be mentally sound out there because it’s easy to get rattled. You have to realize you are going into someone’s backyard, the crowd is going to be against you. You have to anticipate field conditions.

“You just have to get it in your mind what you have to do or else there is no sense going in there.”

When McNeil is at his peak, as he was against Kansas City, it makes wide receivers Al Toon and Wesley Walker and tight end Mickey Shuler that much more effective. Opposing defenses can’t gear up to stop the pass without giving McNeil more freedom. If too much attention is paid to McNeil, the receivers could go wild.

That didn’t happen for five weeks, but McNeil insists the Jets showed what they really can do in the wild-card game.

“To have been so successful early in the season, have adversity and then come back and be successful again,” he said, “that shows what kind of character we have on the team.”