Jameel McClain admits he has a Napoleon complex. It’s the boxer in him. Back when he was a ‘pudgy little thing’ splitting time between the football fields at George Washington (Pa.) HS and the ring at Champ’s Gym in North Philadelphia, McClain trained in the shadow of greats like Bernard Hopkins.

McClain won’t overwhelm with his size. He’s done his best to fill out his 6-foot-1 body, but at 256 pounds there’s no escaping the fact he’s a bit undersized as a defensive end.

‘It always comes out on the football field,’ McClain said about his boxer’s mentality. ‘I always feel like I’m the smallest person whenever I do anything.’

After a breakout junior season, there’s now a lot of weight bearing down on McClain’s shoulders. For starters, there’s the pressure to be a difference-maker and improve a porous Orange defense that allowed 24.6 points per game. But there’s a more intense and individualistic set of expectations being thrown McClain’s way as well.

McClain is immersed in another shadow now. Six muggy Augusts ago, Dwight Freeney was an undersized, converted defensive end fresh off his own breakout year. Thanks to parallels in their physiques and early careers, the comparisons of McClain to Freeney have persisted since the bell tolled on another disappointing Orange season in 2006.

When word spread that McClain spent time over the summer working out with Freeney, the christening of McClain as a replica of the Indianapolis Colts’ All-Pro seemed almost obvious.

McClain doesn’t have Freeney’s eye-popping speed and physical gifts, but he still has every intention of producing a season worthy of mention alongside Freeney’s record-setting senior campaign. But while he may look up to Freeney, McClain never needed any comparisons to Freeney to buoy his own aspirations.

‘Most of the expectations come from myself,’ McClain said. ‘I set high goals for myself. I expect myself to be better than last year, if not statistically, then as a leader, so there’s a lot of pressure coming from myself.

‘You have to embrace being compared a great player such as that, but of course I want to be my own man, and I set my own expectations.’

Those lonely, personal expectations were about the only ones anybody had for McClain this time last year. Originally a reserve linebacker and special-teamer, McClain collected just 31 total tackles and one sack over his first two seasons.

That ineffectiveness combined with a dearth of quality on the defensive line prompted McClain’s coaches prior to last season to move him to defensive end – the position he had played in high school.

McClain didn’t take long to find his comfort zone. In just his second game at defensive end for the Orange, McClain turned in a two-sack performance against No. 14 Iowa. From there, he amassed a Big East-best 9.5 sacks and second-team honors in the conference.

McClain’s emergence was one of the few bright spots in an otherwise dim 4-8 season for the Orange.

‘You talk about Jameel, he creates issues, and he’ll continue to do that,’ SU head coach Greg Robinson said. ‘You want to put one guy on him and he’ll make plays. … I already know he can be (consistent). He has been. He was very consistent last year. All of a sudden the double teams came, but he creates things.’

As McClain’s junior season unfolded, it didn’t take long to notice his career path mimicked that of Freeney.

McClain will need to do well to repeat his predecessor’s senior season. Freeney followed up a 13-sack junior year with an Syracuse single-season record 17.5 sacks, a Big East co-defensive player of the year award, an unanimous All-America selection and the honor of being the 11th player taken in the 2002 NFL Draft.

No one will condemn McClain if he doesn’t quite match those accolades, but McClain is undoubtedly the most hyped defensive end since Freeney roamed the Carrier Dome carpet.

It’s seems all too perfect that McClain should get a chance to work out with the All-Pro himself.

McClain was introduced to Freeney this summer by Syracuse strength and conditioning coach Will Hicks and his assistant Hal Luther. Freeney spends several weeks in Syracuse fine-tuning his game and his physique with Hicks and Luther. Hicks, who still designs Freeney’s workout programs, introduced the Colts’ star to the SU defensive linemen.

McClain managed to secure an individual session with Freeney.

‘It gives you a taste,’ said McClain, who playfully refuses to disclose what exactly Freeney taught him. ‘It gives you a feeling of how an All-Pro works. How does he think? How does he train? The thing is when you’re standing around a person of that magnitude, you can still learn. So we would run and we do sprints and do drills and techniques. Anything he gave us was useful, even just standing there talking about football.’

Throw in another year of experience and McClain is primed for a Freeney-like season. Still, at least one person isn’t ready to buy into the comparisons.

‘I never coached Dwight Freeney,’ Robinson said. ‘I’m fairly slow to compare people to others. I always felt that was unfair to do. I think Jameel is a very good football player.’

Robinson is right to refrain from judging the two against each other. Freeney’s game is a constant state of explosion – beating backpedaling tackles off the snap with superb quickness and either running around them with sub his 4.5 40-yard dash speed or maneuvering around them with his now-trademark spin move.

To say McClain, who runs a 4.75 40, has the same freakish physical ability as Freeney would be stretching it.

‘He’s a different kind of athletic specimen,’ McClain said about Freeney, who recently signed the most lucrative deal ever for an NFL defensive player. ‘He’s just athletically gifted, and everything he commands, he deserves.’

The senior certainly isn’t a slouch in the speed or acceleration department, but perhaps McClain’s best attribute is his motor. A laid-back comedian off the field (at media day, he petitioned loudly for a picture to be set up of himself being held by his teammates), McClain is a man possessed when the ball is snapped – a flurry of spins, swim-moves and bull-rushes always properly directed towards the football.

That engine is more of a requirement for McClain. He isn’t big enough to simply fill space on the line, and his legs have to constantly churn and propel his body towards ballcarriers.

But McClain’s tireless work ethic, Hicks said, is where the comparisons to Freeney really stick.

‘One of Dwight’s calling cards is that he outworks other guys – the guys who get paid to block him, he wants to make sure he outworks them,’ Hicks said. ‘Dwight’s a little-bit bigger guy, but Jameel gets after it. He’s got that same desire, that same fire and he’s turned his game up so it’ll be interesting to see what he can do.’

McClain will have to be at his fittest if his senior season is to mimic Freeney’s. McClain isn’t going to sneak up on anybody this season, and he will have to battle through the double teams that greeted him more and more frequently towards the end of last season.

Still, the Napoleonic leader of the Orange defense said he has set ambitious goals for himself. Even in his own aspirations, McClain has a hard time avoiding the guy everybody else is comparing him to.

‘I really don’t believe I’ve had a breakout game yet, in my opinion,’ McClain said. ‘To constitute a game as breakout I’d have to do what the greats did at this school. I’d have to get like five sacks and look like Dwight Freeney. That would be a breakout game right there.’

Published on August 30, 2007 at 12:00 pm