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Sielski: Eagles' McLeod shows power of athletic intelligence

Until the football finally settled into Rodney McLeod's hands, one of the most important plays in the Eagles' victory last week over the Cleveland Browns appeared to be complete chaos, when in truth it was anything but.

Until the football finally settled into Rodney McLeod's hands, one of the most important plays in the Eagles' victory last week over the Cleveland Browns appeared to be complete chaos, when in truth it was anything but.

Late in the second quarter, the Browns had possession at the Eagles' 28-yard line, trailing by just three points, and Robert Griffin III tried to complete a slant to wide receiver Corey Coleman. The pass sailed behind Coleman, and linebacker Jordan Hicks deflected it with his right hand. The ball then caromed off the right shoulder of cornerback Nolan Carroll and shot straight into the air, allowing McLeod to swoop in, like a centerfielder pursuing a pop fly, for an interception. Again, chaos. Or so it appeared.

The Eagles signed McLeod to a five-year contract in March to play safety alongside Malcolm Jenkins and to make plays such as this. The reason he can make plays such as this is that he did not see chaos. He saw, first, the Browns' offensive formation, and he recognized it from the hours he had spent studying film of them. He knew, based on the alignment, that the receiver on the far side of the field would not be running a vertical route, so McLeod didn't have to worry about a deep pass toward the end zone. He could focus more of his attention on the opposite side, on Coleman.

"I just slow-played things," he said of a thought process that lasted no more than a few milliseconds. "From there, it was Hicks getting his hands on the ball. The ball ricocheted off Nolan as well, and I was just there, from a downhill break. If I round it or do any of that, I might not be there for the pick. That's all going back to practice, working on those breaks and angles.

"After a while, your body - it's almost like it's programmed to know what to do."

Quickly and effortlessly

McLeod did more than describe that sequence in exquisite detail. In doing so, he cut to the core of a cliché that is common throughout sports. You hear it all the time: that a certain athlete "raises his game when it matters most." In hockey, for instance, there have been certain players who seem to play better once the postseason begins, going from above-average to Gretzky-like once the games matter more. In that sport's jargon, "the puck just seems to find his stick."

It sounds like randomness. It's not. In stressful situations, elite athletes "can make connections automatically and quickly and effortlessly in a way that might seem impossible," author Jeff Wise, who wrote the 2009 book Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger, said in a 2011 phone interview. "They're seeing the opportunity, the chance. They're able to play the odds in a way a less sophisticated person wouldn't. There is a kind of athletic intelligence that can emerge most powerfully in a clutch moment."

Like, say, when your team is close to giving up a go-ahead touchdown in its season-opener to an inferior opponent. If McLeod doesn't recognize that formation and make that hard break to the correct side of the field, maybe that awful Griffin pass falls for an incompletion. And maybe the Browns get a second chance to score a touchdown. And maybe they do, and they take the lead, and their collective confidence grows. And maybe then the Eagles aren't 1-0 entering their game Monday night against the Bears at Soldier Field. And if this all extrapolation sounds silly, ask yourself: If life is a chain of events, how do you separate even one link?

'He has that grit'

McLeod is 26, and he is listed at 5-foot-10 and 195 pounds, though Eagles rookie cornerback Jalen Mills said, "Rodney plays like he's 6-5, 220. He plays fast. He's hitting guys. He's not being soft or timid. Even if he is playing press man on the tight end, you see him getting muddy in the guy's face. That tells you a lot about him. He has that grit."

His athletic intelligence, as Wise could call it, frees him to play with such speed and tenacity. As a freshman football player at powerhouse DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Md. - the alma mater of former Eagles running back Brian Westbrook - McLeod sat in on lunch-break film-study sessions with his elder teammates. It was just part of the culture there, he said. Instead of goofing off in the cafeteria, he would immerse himself in preparing for his next Friday night. That diligence is part of the reason that he earned a scholarship to the University of Virginia, that he has developed into one of the NFL's better safeties despite having not been drafted, that in his mind's eye complete chaos can appear to be perfect order.

"Once it's in you," he said, "you just continue. I don't think you can get enough film study in. The point of the game is to eliminate certain things. When you recognize certain formations, you're eliminating others, and then you react if they do something different. You want to always have in your mind, 'These are their tendencies. This is what they run out of these plays. But if they don't, I'm going to react out of that.' It helps you clear a whole bunch of clutter.

"It's funny how the brain and the body work."

msielski@phillynews.com

@MikeSielski