Decorated safety won't let injuries keep him sidelined -- By Craig Juer
(Daily Staff Writer)
HARRISONBURG — Though he'd be loathe to admit it, this season is fraught with uncertainty for James Madison free safety Tony LeZotte.
That's not how it's supposed to be; after three All-America seasons, two playoff appearances, a national championship and a 38-game consecutive-start streak, his senior year ought not to have any surprises.
The 2007 season has not even begun and already LeZotte's consecutive-start streak — which has included every game of his career and has withstood a plethora of nagging injuries — is in jeopardy.
The iffy hamstring which has plagued him throughout preseason camp — he practiced for the first time on Aug. 20 — has vacillated back and forth between playable and restricting in recent days.
"I think that will come," he said, referring to getting back into playing shape in so few practices. "I feel like 2 1/2 weeks is enough time for me to get ready to roll."
But by Monday's press conference with head coach Mickey Matthews, the hamstring itself was once again the cause of LeZotte's slow progress.
"He certainly didn't look well Saturday in terms of being ready for this [Saturday's] game," Matthews said. "I thought he was really making some progress, but we can't get the dadgum thing well. We can't get it well and it's driving me crazy."
Though LeZotte has insisted he'll play against North Carolina on Saturday — in a game Matthews has publicly downplayed the Dukes' chances of winning — the coach isn't so sure.
"We're going to put the guys that give us the best chance of winning. And certainly, when he's healthy, he's the best player in the country," Matthews said. "But what you get into is, when he's 70 or 80 percent, would you be better at switching your secondary around? And I know him — he wants to play. If his hamstring had bailing wire on it, he'd still want to play. But that's why they pay you to be the coach: to make that decision."
LeZotte's presence in the secondary is of the utmost importance to the unit.
"He's like the brains of the operation," cornerback Scotty McGee said. "He's like the quarterback. He knows everything that's going on, where everybody's supposed to be, and he's a playmaker."
Matthews agreed.
"We would really miss him in terms of our checks," the coach said. "He's made all our checks for three years, so if he was not in the lineup it'd be concerning to all of us."
Once LeZotte's hamstring does heal and he's on the field for sure, his surroundings will look markedly different from last year. In 2006, all-conference linebackers Akeem Jordan and Isaiah Dottin-Carter collected 221 combined tackles, 10.5 sacks and 23.5 tackles for loss. Having the workhorses at linebacker kept teams from drawing up plays with designated run blockers intended for LeZotte — a strategy that contributed to his tackle total dropping from 144 in 2004 to 95 in 2005 (another factor being JMU's failure to make the playoffs in '05). Now, with unproven junior linebacker D.J. Brandon and solid senior Justin Barnes filling the holes, it remains to be seen how much teams will go back to sending a blocker after LeZotte.
"There's no question that after he was so dominating as a run-stopper from free safety [as a freshman] that we started noticing in films that people were including him in their blocking scheme, which is unheard of," Matthews said. "Now last year, he didn't have [that] because our linebackers were so good. I guess it depends on how we play at linebacker. I can't answer that until I watch us play."
LeZotte, for one, is convinced Brandon and Barnes will be more than adequate.
"I think as soon as we get on the field the first game, everybody's going to see how well they've progressed throughout the fall and last spring," he said. "We expect them to play really well. Isaiah and Akeem were great players. It's going to be hard to replace them. But we feel that we reload, we don't rebuild."
If LeZotte's temperamental hamstring allows him to play at full speed in every game, and if the linebackers prove good enough to let him do his job (and not theirs), the three-time captain is still in uncharted waters. This year, he has to be more of a vocal leader than in seasons past while overseeing a team that's installing a different offensive scheme to complement new quarterback Rodney Landers and finding replacements for nine all-conference starters.
"When I was a sophomore, I got voted on [for captain] mostly because of the things I did on the field — not really the vocal guy," he said. "I let the seniors do that stuff."
Despite their No. 8 national ranking (by the Sports Network), the Dukes' status as contenders is more in question than it has been since LeZotte first arrived in Harrisonburg.
Of course, that's not how LeZotte sees it.
"Every year I expect to be consistent," he explained. "With that, I feel that if I'm consistent, then the team's going to be consistent.
"We've been pretty consistent the past three years, and I don't worry about a drop-off."
