"It's been a lot of ups and downs. I'm just working hard and staying focused."
Perhaps it's good that Patriots' coach Bill Belichick is safely in Houston because Ethel Cloud is down in Portsmouth and "going crazy."
The Super Bowl is days away, her son, Michael, hasn't played for the Patriots in weeks, and to make matters worse, Mrs. Cloud is in the throes of caffeine withdrawal -- her latest attempt at tempering her nervous frustration with her son's career.
"I'm yelling at the walls," she said the other day. "That's all I can do.
"If I ever win the lottery, I'll hire a detective to figure this out."
The mystery she wants solved is why her son, who was raised on Portsmouth's Turnpike Avenue, who scored 30 touchdowns his senior year at Portsmouth High School, who went on to become the all-time leading rusher for Boston College and who was drafted into the NFL in the second round by the Kansas City Chiefs in 1999, isn't playing more for the New England Patriots.
"He's played in four or five games, scored five touchdowns, two in one game," she says. "When he gets in there he plays excellent, he gets yardage, and then you don't see him. I don't see him for weeks and weeks and weeks."
On the field, she means.
Mike Cloud, who is 28, lives in East Greenwich and visits his mother and father, Charles, faithfully a couple of times a week.
His father, who has worked at the Newport naval commissary for 18 years, attends all the Patriots' home games, even though the chances are slim of seeing his son play.
Lately, Cloud hasn't even dressed for games, his mother says. A limit on how many players can be on the field "keeps him in a back room," she says, watching the game on TV.
"He was doing better in Kansas City," she says, in jest. "At least he got dressed for the games."
While her husband attends home games, Mrs. Cloud can't bear watching her son play. Ever since her older son, Kevin, injured his neck playing high school football, the thought of Michael getting hurt forces her to turn away when the offense takes the field. She'll catch the TV highlights afterwards.
During away games, Cloud's parents usually care for his dog, a black Great Dane named Boston. Often neighbors toot their horns when they see Cloud's car in the driveway -- a sign of support for the local kid who made it to the big league. And one of the few Rhode Islanders to ever make it to the Super Bowl.
But making it to the NFL and playing regularly has proven difficult for Cloud.
"It's been a lot of ups and downs," Cloud said last week at his locker in Gillette Stadium. "I'm just working hard and staying focused."
"This is a lot different than the high school super bowls at Portsmouth," he said. "It's the biggest event in all of sports."
He's ready, he says, to play Sunday if given the chance.
Belichick, when asked in the past, has never revealed much about his plans for Cloud, leaving Mrs. Cloud to chew on what she calls, "a bunch of excuses."
Mostly what she hears is that the Patriots' starting running backs, Antowain Smith and Kevin Faulk, are paid more and therefore expected to play more than her boy.
This explanation comes from many of the "hundreds of people" who have called as the Super Bowl approaches wanting to know if they'll see No. 21 running with the ball Sunday.
Mrs. Cloud has given up trying to guess. "You're better off asking the coach," she tells them. She would, but knows Belichick probably wouldn't appreciate her motherly interference.
When Cloud broke into the league in 1999, he found his role defined mostly as a backup running back for the Chiefs' Priest Holmes, who was on his way toward becoming the league's leading rusher.
Still, Cloud shone when given given the ball. Two seasons ago, he led the Chiefs with a 7.7 yards per carry rushing average, returned kickoffs, scored a winning touchdown and served as an all-around special-teams player.
But Cloud's career stumbled late last season when he tested positive for the banned steroid nandrolone. Cloud insisted the drug came from an over-the-counter protein supplement he had begun taking. Cloud filed suit against the maker, MuscleTech, claiming the company failed to list all ingredients.
The Kansas City Chiefs sent the supplement bottle in question to a laboratory for testing. It showed it contained undisclosed ingredients that would have caused a positive test for nandrolone, according to Cloud's law suit.
(U.S. bobsledder Pavle Jovanovic has filed a similar suit against the company.)
Despite Cloud's claims, the NFL suspended him for the first four games of this season. Then in the first week of training camp, Cloud injured a calf muscle which forced him to miss the entire preseason.
By the time he returned the season was in full swing. Cloud got a few chances to run for the Patriots and made them memorable.
His best performance this season came in October against the Tennessee Titans when he carried the ball seven times for 73 yards and scored two touchdowns to seal the Patriots' win.
Back at Portsmouth High School, Mike Cloud was the talk of the halls again, says Principal Robert Littlefield.
"Everyone was pulling for him and there was a lot of interest one week to the next whether he was going to be on the active roster," says Littlefield.
"Many, many people are just very proud of Mike," Littlefield says, and that didn't change with his suspension.
"Everybody here who knew Mike says that he was absolutely anti-drugs all the time he was here and at Boston College. As far as his reputation in this community, if Mike says it was a mistake and he was taking something unknowingly, everybody here believes him."
Cranston native Mark van Eeghen, perhaps Rhode Island's most celebrated pro football player, thinks Cloud may just be a victim of bad timing.
"We all saw a young running back kind of explode onto the scene in that Tennessee game," said van Eeghen, who played for the Oakland Raiders between 1974 and 1981, leading the rushing effort for two Super Bowl victories.
"It was almost, 'Wow, there is somebody who can add to the scene here.' Then I didn't really see him in after that. But timing is so important. How many great players out of college and across the league aren't getting their chance to play for one reason or another?"
Come Sunday, Mike Cloud's parents won't be in Houston. Too expensive, his mother says.
But they will be watching on TV.
And come game time, Mrs. Cloud says, "I'll be pulling my hair out."
