Freeney Gives Colts a Rush

The horseshoe on their helmets could just as easily stand for U-turn.

The Indianapolis Colt defense, once a sad sidekick to football’s most explosive offense, is the NFL’s out-of-the-blue success story of the season.

In their 31-10 trampling of the Tennessee Titans on Sunday, the Colts nearly made league history. Already, they were only the fourth team in the Super Bowl era to hold its first three opponents to fewer than 10 points. And they nearly became the first team to do it four times in a row, just missing when Tennessee scored its only touchdown with less than five minutes to play.

If there’s a dominant leader on the Colt defense -- a counterpart to MVP quarterback Peyton Manning, if you will -- it’s defensive end Dwight Freeney, who led the league with 16 sacks last season and arguably has emerged as the most disruptive defensive player in the NFL.

“He doesn’t just spin, he spins with velocity,” said Tennessee tackle Brad Hopkins, who played remarkably well against Freeney, keeping him away from quarterback Steve McNair all afternoon. “Dude can snap ankles.”

In the end, Freeney, 25, could wind up snapping records too. He has 44 sacks in 51 games, which, according to Stats LLC, is the highest per-game average since sacks became an official statistic in 1982.

From his squatty size to his Terminator-like training methods to his unorthodox diet, the 6-foot-1, 268-pound Freeney doesn’t fit the mold of typical defensive ends.

“I’m like that wildflower in a field of daisies,” he said. “I’m that unusual animal you’ve never seen before.”

*

Pro football’s Terminator plopped into a leather recliner in his bedroom, hiked up the legs of his shorts and revealed thighs that looked as thick as Gatorade buckets. He attached conductive pads to his arms and legs and plugged them into an Accelerated Recovery Performance (ARP) machine on the floor next to him. The device zapped him with a steady electric current that stimulates blood flow and helps speed recovery after a workout.

At his fingertips was a laptop computer, loaded each week with offensive video clips of the upcoming opponent. The game tape is shot from the sideline and end-zone angles, and it features dozens of plays sorted into very specific categories. The Colts use playing-card terminology to catalog the various formations, so, for instance, the plays are broken into groups called ace passes, queen passes, king passes and the like.

As the volts pumped through him, Freeney used a remote control to wheel back and forth through plays on his 60-inch plasma TV. He made liberal use of the frame-by-frame, looking for the most subtle of pre-snap clues that might indicate what an offensive lineman was going to do -- the twitch of a leg muscle, a tiny glance, an all-but-imperceptible leaning one way or another.

“Sometimes, I know the play even before the ball’s snapped,” he said. “Looking at film is like studying a crime scene. I’m the investigator.”

Watching film can be deathly boring, and Freeney admitted he has been known to doze off in the chair, remote in hand, ARP machine crackling away. But he doesn’t sleep for long. He’s usually jolted awake by the unsettling thought of some 300-pound lug squashing him with a block.

In reality, offensive tackles have a difficult time reaching to get a hand on him. Freeney lines up wide -- far wider than typical defensive ends -- and is relentless in his pursuit of quarterbacks. He led the league in sacks last season, despite being double-teamed on a regular basis. He came off the ball against Cleveland last week and was met at the line of scrimmage by the threesome of tackle L.J. Shelton, tight end Billy Miller and running back Reuben Droughns.

“I was laughing hysterically,” Freeney said. “We were all laughing. Billy Miller was looking at me like, ‘It [stinks] we have to do this. But we got you.’ ”

When Freeney attracts special attention, it creates opportunities for his teammates on the line. Defensive tackle Montae Reagor, who lines up next to him at right defensive tackle, collected five sacks through three weeks, one more than his combined total in his four seasons with the Denver Broncos.

“If you’re going to double- or triple-team Dwight, other guys are going to make plays,” defensive tackle Larry Triplett said. “That just makes me feel good.”

Last season, Freeney became the first Colt to lead the league in sacks. Anything he can do to disrupt the charmed life of a player he calls the “golden child.”

“There’s just something about quarterbacks,” Freeney said. “All their life they’ve been considered the untouchables. Protect the quarterback. Like he’s the king of the game. It’s just ridiculous. So when I get back there, I want to dismantle him.”

Freeney needs no reminder that the most revered, recognizable player on the Colts is quarterback Peyton Manning.

“I like 99% of Peyton,” he said. “But he’s a quarterback.”

Football is never far from Freeney’s mind, even when he’s relaxing in the modest two-story tract home he shares with Mike Whalen, a buddy from high school. When the two nearly bump into each other in the hallway, Freeney doesn’t step aside but instead muscles past him with a playful swim move.

On the road, Freeney treats every red light as a chance to test his reflexes. His is the first car to move the instant the light turns green.

On the field, there’s no player who reacts quicker to the snap of the ball. Freeney often is on his second step to the quarterback before the left tackle he’s facing has taken his first. At times, it looks almost unfair. And whereas most defensive ends specialize in one or two pass-rushing techniques, Freeney’s arsenal sounds as if it were devised by a deranged butcher -- the bull rush, bull swim, bull rip, chop rip, slap-chop-rip, slap-chop-rip-swim and others.

Then, there’s the way he “cheetahs” quarterbacks. Freeney, an avid Animal Planet watcher, has done a frame-by-frame breakdown of the way a cheetah catches a gazelle. The cat gets just close enough to reach out a paw and trip its prey by slapping a back hoof. Colt defenders practice a similar move. That explains the cheetah statuette in Freeney’s bedroom and his cheetah-spotted bedspread.

At the request of a visitor, he recently took a look at a DVD of his highlights that was assembled by his agent, Gary Wichard. In one clip, Freeney whistles past Baltimore’s Jonathan Ogden and flattens quarterback Kyle Boller. In another, he picks up 320-pound Kansas City tackle Willie Roaf and tosses him into an unsuspecting Trent Green. In a third, he chases down Oakland’s Kerry Collins and cheetahs him before he can throw.

“I consider what I do an art,” Freeney said.

And like any true artist, he suffers. His diet is so restrictive, he has been known to turn back steaks (he orders them in pairs) if they’re garnished with sprigs of parsley. When he turned pro four years ago, he hired nutritionist Sari Mellman to not only help him maintain his ideal playing weight but to help him overcome a problem with cramping that had bothered him since high school.

He doesn’t have cramping problems anymore, but he only eats four or five very specific dishes, ones that don’t affect his white blood cell count. So he eats red grapes but not white ones, tomatoes but not ketchup, sea salt but not standard table salt -- and certainly not black pepper, which, he believes, caused him to retain four pounds of extra water weight in a day. Untouched is the large basket of chocolate-chip cookies on his counter, a gift from Wichard. Freeney said he plans to eat a cookie one of these days.

“He understands his body better than anybody I’ve ever been around,” Wichard said. “He’s his own Dr. Frankenstein.”

At the moment, he’s unwilling to eat anything that might make him a nanosecond slower. He weighs himself every morning except on game day (“It might freak me out if I was little bit heavy,” he said) and bulks up or slims down depending on whether the Colts are playing a running team or a passing team.

Four years ago, many if not most NFL scouts had their doubts about whether Freeney was big enough to play the position effectively, even though he led the nation with 17 1/2 sacks in his senior season at Syracuse -- 4 1/2 of which came in a jaw-dropping corralling of Virginia Tech’s Michael Vick. Many draft experts projected Freeney as a second-round selection, and they thought the Colts were reaching when they used the No. 11 pick on him. The only people reaching for Freeney now are all those overmatched tackles.

“He brings out the best in me,” said Hopkins, Tennessee’s left tackle. “Because I know that this dude, he can’t beat you, he can embarrass you.”

As a unit, the Colt defense has embarrassed its first four opponents this season. But that’s not to say the performances have been perfect. McNair was the best quarterback Indianapolis has faced -- the others were Boller, a beat-up Byron Leftwich, and Trent Dilfer -- and the Tennessee quarterback scrambled 40 yards in four carries. In future weeks the Colts will face New England’s Tom Brady -- whose team ended the Colts’ ast two seasons with playoff victories at Foxborough, Mass. -- Cincinnati’s Carson Palmer, Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger, San Diego’s Drew Brees and others. So Freeney understands if skeptics are waiting for the other cleat to drop.

“Based on our history, I’d be waiting for that 500-yard performance against us too,” he said. “I think this is the year that changes.”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Rush more

The top five NFL sack leaders from 2003 through Sunday’s games (sacks are from regular season):

*--* Name Team Sacks Dwight Freeney Indianapolis 31 Simeon Rice Tampa Bay 30 Bertrand Berry Arizona 30.5 Michael Strahan New York Giants 26 Shaun Ellis New York Jets 24.5

*--*