Runner bursts onto the scene

By Ron Borges, Globe Columnist, 10/6/2003

FOXBOROUGH -- Boston College football coach Tom O'Brien was watching The Weather Channel yesterday when a reporter he was talking with suggested he might want to switch stations. When he did, everything he saw was partly Cloudy. "I just saw him score," O'Brien said an instant after his former running back, Mike Cloud, faked Tennessee Titans safety Lance Schulters out of his shoes by making a sharp inside cut on his way to his second touchdown of the day, a 15-yard run that gave the Patriots the lead to stay in a gutsy 38-30 victory at Gillette Stadium.

"He just made some guy miss like he used to do here," O'Brien said, and indeed he had. It was an unusual run on a most unusual afternoon in New England, one in which the crowd of 68,436 cheered when the Titans took the lead back late in the game because it happened to coincide with the Red Sox getting the lead back from the Oakland A's in the American League Division Series. As unexpected as it was to hear cheering at such a moment, it was no less surprising than the day Cloud put together, because when it began he wasn't expected to do much more for the Patriots than he'd been doing since August -- sitting around watching them play.

The former BC All-American has felt like he was under a dark cloud ever since he signed a free agent contract June 23. Since then, he has injured a calf so badly it had to be surgically repaired and served a league-imposed four-game suspension after testing positive for the banned steroid, Nandrolone. According to Cloud, the substance was, unknown to him, in a food supplement he was taking last season. But the NFL makes no exceptions. You are responsible for what is inside your body, it says, and because of that, Cloud has been responsible for little more than himself since mid-August.

That was the way it was until five days ago, at least, when he finally was activated because of a hamstring injury to running back Kevin Faulk. With only four days of practice in two months, little was expected of him but to provide insurance until Antowain Smith left the game with a slight shoulder injury in the third quarter. Not long after that, coach Bill Belichick cashed in that policy and Cloud broke off a 17-yard gain on his first official carry as a Patriot. It was a run like many he'd made at BC, where he is the school's all-time leading rusher and piled up 1,726 yards as a senior in 1998.

Yet few of his teammates knew what to expect of him when the day began. Few knew, but at least one had a pretty good idea.

"I knew what he was capable of," said Cloud's former BC teammate, guard Damien Woody. "He rushed for almost 2,000 yards in college. He can make some things happen."

Yesterday, Cloud made a lot of things happen, rushing for 73 yards and two scores on just seven carries, an average of 10.4 yards per touch. He was not the only back with running room, however. Smith piled up 80 yards on 16 rushes before a pinched nerve sent him to the sideline in the third quarter and freed Cloud to break into the sunlight.

The Patriots put together their best rushing game of the season and most productive one since the second game last year, piling up 161 yards on the ground to make the point they most wanted to make to the Titans from the opening snap to the final one.

"That's what the plan was from Wednesday," Woody said. "Coach said, `We're going to run the ball.' OK, then we're going to run the ball. That makes an offensive lineman smile. It's like being at a buffet looking at the menu. What can I have next?"

What Woody had much of the time was a diet of Cloud cutback runs, the best of which was a 42-yard burst behind a Woody block on his first carry of the fourth quarter. About eight minutes later, Cloud cut past Schulters and into the end zone, from where he leapt into Woody's arms just like they were back at Boston College.

"It was a basic trap play," Cloud said. "I saw the left side open up. I saw the end zone and the safety was there. I just had to make him miss and then I beat him. It was just a reaction thing."

That was what made his day most remarkable. That he could react at all after not having been on a football field for two months was utterly unexpected because while his teammates had been working on fine-tuning their timing, he had been in a room in Boston trying to fine-tune his calf. Judging by the results, running backs around America soon will be locked up in tiny rooms far from their teammates doing agility drills in silence.

"Nothing, really," Cloud said when asked what he had done to simulate game situations during his long absence from the practice field. "I did a bunch of rehab and just a bunch of agility work, footwork and stuff, in a little closed room up in Boston. There was no real football activity at all, really. I think the farthest I ran was 20 yards the whole time."

Cloud more than doubled that on one run and gained more yardage in half a game than he'd gained in an entire season in Kansas City two years ago. Whether this is a sign of things to come or merely a one-day excursion at the expense of injured teammates, no one can say. But there is one thing Cloud was sure of. He was sure this day had gone the way he dreamed it might.

"I had some ambitions," Cloud said. "As I go to bed at night, I think of myself doing some great things. You know, going into the game I felt confident that if I got the opportunity to run, with all that I did, I would do well."

In the end, Cloud did better than expected. Better than his team could have expected. Better than Woody could have expected. Better even, frankly, than he could have expected.

"It feels like old times," Cloud said. "This is the first time I've been in front of a podium since I was at Boston College. It feels real good."

It felt good to a lot of people, most notably quarterback Tom Brady, who for once did not have to see the passing game alone move New England's offense downfield. For one of the few times in the past several years, the Patriots were balanced, passing 31 times for 219 yards and rushing 27 times for 161. It was the kind of joint effort that allowed a team with eight starters in street clothes to more than match up with one of the AFC's most physical teams and, frankly, run over it.

"This isn't something we'll get over quick because other teams will see the same film and think they can stick any guy out there and run on us," said downcast Titans defensive end Jevon Kearse. "It doesn't matter if it's Mike Cloud or Mike Scow. It doesn't matter. You have to do a good job tackling."

The Titans didn't do that yesterday and the main reason was a Cloud who stepped out of the shadows and ran to daylight at their expense.

"They ran us out of there," said Titans linebacker Keith Bulluck. "Mike Cloud did a great job for them. He hit some holes and made some plays."

Just like the old days, when Tom O'Brien would be watching him the whole game instead of watching The Weather Channel.