Eddie Lacy must slim down, says Packers head coach Mike McCarthy

When we arrived at Green Bay Packers training camp last August, we were amazed: Eddie Lacy was huge!

And, we assumed, huge, fast and well-conditioned like he had been — relatively speaking — his first two seasons. Lacy has tree trunks for legs and a thick middle. A few media members chatted with Lacy and we asked him what his conditioning routine was in the offseason.

“You know, just the regular stuff,” Lacy said.

Maybe it’s time to ditch the regular stuff.

So said Packers head coach Mike McCarthy, essentially, when he ripped Lacy’s shape in his year-ending post mortem.

“Eddie Lacy, he’s got a lot of work to do. His offseason last year was not good enough, and he never recovered from it,” McCarthy said. “He cannot play at the weight he was at this year.”

This is rare stuff from McCarthy, who clearly was irked with his third-year back throughout the season but refused to fully throw him under the bus. But on Monday, McCarthy did just that, even as Lacy looked better in the playoffs (24 rushes, 152 yards, a touchdown and a 61-yard run — for fun, listen to that play called in German in the video above — in two playoff games) than he did in the regular season, when he had his role reduced more than once.

Injuries also had their effect on Lacy, but you could make the cast that dropping 10 pounds (or more) could help that. Late in the season, he admitted he had been a little lax in his offseason work. Lacy also made jokes when he was coming out of Alabama at the Indianapolis scouting combine about his weight, saying he was “a pound or three” too heavy in school, so this is not a new issue with him.

Will things change entering his free-agent season? It’s a crucial year for him, and his future with the Packers might hang in the balance.

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