Chris Patrick is seated as he talks to a reporter, but one gets the feeling he could leap from his chair at any moment.

Oh, Patrick is friendly and engaging — and seemingly always wired for action. His right foot taps repeatedly as he speaks. He looks at you but seems to be thinking of something else, something far more important.

“Chris is quite different. He’s kind of a little off,” says Nebraska nose tackle Ola Dagunduro, smiling and pointing toward his cranium. “Like in the middle of practice, he’ll try to pancake (knock down) somebody and start screaming. Screaming for no reason. Ahhhhhhhh! Like that. Crazy stuff.”

Crazy is part of the plan. The Huskers’ starting left offensive tackle, Patrick acknowledges he wants to be known for being mean on the playing field. An enforcer. A guy who takes no crap from defenders, he says. He genuinely despises the stereotype of a happy-go-lucky offensive lineman. It grates on him. He’s a warrior, he says, an intimidator who takes his work personally.

Say what you want about Patrick’s approach, it’s working quite well, thank you. He hasn’t allowed a sack through six games and nearly 150 pass attempts.

Although the 6-foot-4, 290-pound Patrick rarely garners mention as fans discuss key Nebraska offensive players, his big-picture value arguably exceeds that of anyone beside quarterback Zac Taylor. To be sure, Taylor is the “franchise.” But it is Patrick who plays the lead role in protecting the right-handed-throwing franchise from potential disaster — that is, an attack on his blind side from a hard-charging pass-rusher.

It is Patrick who helps keep Taylor from experiencing those feelings that could lead to the prolonged infirmity of Nebraska’s West Coast attack — intimidation, dwindling confidence, quick throws, concentration lapses, nervous feet. Indeed, a West Coast offense’s passing attack is all about rhythm and timing. Who better to disrupt rhythm and timing than a strong, explosive, fire-breathing defensive end that continually finds his way to the QB?

And who better to negate such an occurrence than an offensive left tackle with comparable size and athleticism, not to mention a mean streak of his own?

Patrick, a junior from Ithaca, Mich., materializes for an interview sporting a Detroit Tigers ball cap turned backward and three days’  worth of whiskers on his otherwise cherubic face. His long-sleeved shirt strains to cover his tree-trunk forearms. He keeps tapping his right foot nervously. The start of practice looms in a few hours. Maybe that explains his faraway gaze. As protector of the franchise, Patrick has much on his mind.

“What I really want to emphasize — what I really want Zac to know — is that I never want him to feel any pressure,” Patrick says.

Never is a long time and probably unrealistic in this case. For instance, Patrick tonight will wage battle against a group of Kansas State defensive ends who almost always perform in “attack mode,” says Nebraska offensive line coach Dennis Wagner.

“They jet those guys up the field, and as soon as you try to take away their up-field move, they’re going to try to come underneath you,” Wagner says. “So you really have to be on top of your game.”

When it comes to Taylor, Patrick speaks in reassuring tones, like a mother calming her little ones during a storm.

“I want Zac to feel totally comfortable in the pocket,” Patrick says. “He can’t be worrying about getting hit from the blind side. I’m going to do whatever it takes to prevent that guy from getting to him.”

Whatever it takes. Patrick means that with all of his rapidly beating heart. And perhaps his mind-set should be reassuring for Nebraska fans. For consider life without Taylor, the nation’s third-ranked quarterback in terms of pass efficiency and the main reason the Huskers are 5-1 overall and 2-0 in the Big 12 and the odds-on favorites to capture their first North Division title since 1999. No wonder Husker Nation cringes collectively each instance Taylor absorbs a blow.

This is where Patrick comes in. Make no mistake, all of Nebraska’s offensive linemen are important in this regard. They all protect Taylor. They all need to be athletic and tough. But the left tackle has to be the most effective pass-blocker in the bunch because he often draws the defense’s premier pass-rusher, Wagner says. There’s a reason why NFL left tackles rake in huge sums of money, in some cases more than the QBs they protect.

The thing is, Patrick’s body type hardly resembles that of a big-time left tackle. When you think of big-time left tackles, guys like 6-9, 345-pound Jonathan Ogden come to mind. Or perhaps 6-7, 315-pound Lydon Murtha, a Nebraska sophomore. In fact, Husker coaches basically handed Murtha a chance in preseason camp to win the starting left tackle job.

“Ultimately, when you look at Lydon’s body, that’s the kind of guy you want in there,” Wagner says.

In the end, however, Patrick beat out Murtha thanks in large part to greater passion and fire.

“Chris would be the first guy to tell you that body-wise, he’d like to gain a little more weight,” Wagner says. “But we don’t want to sacrifice his quickness. It’s more important to have the foot speed and ability to recover on blocks.”

You see, pass-rushing defensive ends have the distinct advantage of running straight ahead while the tackle backpedals. This factor necessitates that tackles make quick decisions and possess quick feet.

“When the outside rusher is coming off the edge, and the tackle is setting (his feet), he has to get to a point where he intersects the pass-rush lane,” Wagner says. “If he doesn’t have the feet to get to that point, it’s going to be very difficult. He has to be able to get to a spot to cut off the intersection. He also has to have the ability to cover up and not give up the underneath move.”

Patrick understands defensive ends’ movements and tendencies because he used to be one. In fact, he came to Nebraska to play defensive end. Recruited by former Husker head coach Frank Solich’s staff, Patrick hedged when new coach Bill Callahan’s staff sought to move him to offense. In fact, Patrick in November of 2004 asked for and received his scholarship release papers and started eyeing Michigan, Michigan State and Purdue.

He says now he was frustrated back then. He was young. He was sitting on the bench. But he kept working. Now he’s pitching a shutout — no sacks allowed. He says he hasn’t allowed even a quarterback hurry, though the nature of that particular statistic makes it hard to tally with much certainty. Whatever. Patrick’s tough-guy, enforcer approach evidently is working. If playing angry helps him protect the franchise, then so be it.

“Everybody on the line gets yelled at every day,” says Nebraska right tackle Matt Slauson. “It’s how we roll. You do something wrong, you hear about it for the next 10 plays. Then you move on.”

However, Patrick waits longer than the rest before moving on.

“Everything Wagner says to him, it just goes in his head and sticks there,” Slauson said. “I think he uses it as fuel. It fuels his fire.”

Patrick is still tapping that foot. He says it’s been a stressful couple weeks. A criminal justice major, he has made his way to the upper-level courses. He wants someday to work for the Drug Enforcement Administration, or some type of enforcement agency, which makes sense considering the way he approaches his left tackle job, as the ultimate enforcer.

“I want to be nasty,” he says. “I want that guy to think twice before he steps across the line and hits me. People don’t respect offensive linemen. They think we’re fat, nice guys.”

He really seems convinced people think that way.

Hey, whatever it takes to keep the franchise healthy.

Reach Steven M. Sipple at 473-7440 or ssipple@journalstar.com.