Jets’ Blair Thomas Follows McNeil’s Master Plan Well

They are Freeman McNeil and Blair Thomas, not to be confused. They are the generations of running backs, father and son, so to speak. When McNeil sees Thomas, McNeil is looking at himself.

They make guys miss. Thomas will for some years, if he has McNeil’s durability. McNeil, used prudently, still does. They can take the defense’s aggressiveness and make it a liability.

See the Tampa Bay linebacker and safety rooted in the plastic as McNeil cut back for the Jets’ touchdown in theiv home opener Sunday. See the Tampa Bay defensive end and cornerback rooted in the plastic as Thomas cut back for a first down on the way to the field goal that staved off a devastating reversal of form.

Of course, McNeil -- being McNeil in his 11th season -- wouldn’t put the relation of the old man to the young man quite that way, but it’s in the films. Jim Sweeney, the center who has been watching McNeil for eight seasons, recognizes it. Thomas calls McNeil “the master.”

McNeil said, “You can’t tell a guy like him how to run.”

Thomas carried the ball 23 times Sunday, the most carries in his two-year professional career, for 92 yards and an average of four yards. McNeil, the league’s 15th-leading all-time rusher, carried twice for three yards.

“Blair knows it’s time for him to come on,” McNeil said. “He’s the man now.” McNeil is 32 years old, an old man among running backs in terms of longevity, but more particularly in terms of wisdom. “I’m trying to pass it on to him,” he said. “It’s just football.”

For him, the elder was Clark Gaines, who didn’t have the dazzling moves but had the insights. “He’d tell me, ‘You come in here, you’re No. 1; you better do this and that,’ ” McNeil related.

McNeil has his own style. “We have a good relationship,” Thomas said. “He tells me a lot of things to get by in this league: Take care of my body, stretching, stretching in the sauna, why he does some things. And you know Freeman’s philosophy; he’s going to add a little more to it.”

As a wide-eyed rookie, Thomas saw McNeil catch defenders going east and west while he was headed north and south. “He does make a lot of guys miss,” Thomas said. “He has a great sense of setting guys up to make them miss. Sometimes it feels I’m not getting my feet right to get by the defense and I go ask the master.”

McNeil can be his own visual aid. The Jets had third-and-goal midway through the first quarter when they had driven 79 of 80 yards, when a developing team needed to get into the end zone. Quarterback Ken O’Brien rolled right and threw a two-handed basketball toss to McNeil.

“He got them going like he was going to the pylon,” Thomas said. That’s how the play was designed, and those two Buccaneers had his route cut off. So McNeil cut to his left. “I just reacted,” McNeil said with a shrug.

“They should have had him stopped,” Sweeney said in admiration.

In tennis it’s known as wrong-footing the other guy. It’s hard to do. “A guy who can run full speed toward the sidelines and cut back without losing speed, that’s a sign of a great runner,” Sweeney said.

It’s what McNeil has been doing for a long time, modestly. “Blair’s the high-tech back,” he said. “I’m old style. I’d like to keep the focus on him; he’s the man.”

He studies Thomas as only a man who knows the sensations firsthand can. “He has strong moves and a low center of gravity,” McNeil said. “He can throw his complete body in a different direction. It’s amazing. I’m really delighted at the way he’s come on.”

He could be jealous of the younger man. After all, Thomas is taking McNeil’s job. “If you really know Freeman, you know he’s not going to hold anything back,” Thomas said.

Thomas loved the work Sunday. He loved carrying 23 times, catching a pass, and being relied on when the game was there to be won or to be permitted to escape.

Tampa Bay had just struck for the 65-yard touchdown pass that wrenched away the lead the Jets had nursed since the first quarter. This is e Jets team that lost four games in the fourth quarter last season. It was perilous time for the psyche of that team. Nice tries are not enough this time. Same old stuff wouldn’t do.

The Jets are, after all, second-city in the city. The building is Giants Stadium. It’s the Giants who have the waiting list for tickets. They are the champions. It’s the Jets who have to cultivate their own crowd after dark seasons. “To get our fans behind us, we have to start producing for them,” Sweeney said.

So Thomas was called five times in eight plays. The threat of his running got Bruce Coslet$into the double-think mode. “I figured they’d be counting on us to run the football,” he said. So he had O’Brien fake the handoff to Thomas and toss to Rob Moore for 25 yards to the Bucs’ 25. No time to fumble. Thomas carried twice more and it was time for Pat Leahy’s educated foot.

It was the Buccaneers who could be angry. Thomas remembered how he used to make the defense angry when he was doing his stuff at Penn State. “Constantly,” Thomas said, delighting at the recollection. “If they beat their man and they’re right there in front of you and you make them miss, it’s really frustrating.”

McNeil’s expectation is more professional. “He’ll make them apprehensive,” McNeil said. “They’ll stop going for his moves. They’ll back up and wait.”

And then Thomas will have to find new moves as McNeil did.