Ray Rice had a good season last year.
But he hopes that actually having offseason workouts with teammates helps him have a better one this year.
Rice wasn’t around for OTAs last offseason, working out on his own while a new contract was being negotiated. Now, all he has to worry about are the increased demands on his time after a Super Bowl win.
But he said he was glad to be able to create a routine by participating in team workouts.
“I’ll be honest, it was different this year,” Rice said, via Aaron Wilson of the Baltimore Sun. “It was different. I’m a guy that my body is my temple. Last year, I didn’t get a chance to be here. I was in shape, but when you have to recover from a Super Bowl, it’s totally different, because then you have appearances. You have different things that you normally don’t have an offseason. But I was able to get a lot of the offseason program in. I only missed one OTA for a family reason.
“I got to do all the OTAs. I’ll be here for mandatory minicamp. I wasn’t playing football at this time last year. That was totally different. I’m picking up right where I left off. It took me about a week and a half into camp to get my football stuff back. Now that I’m actually playing football, when training camp comes, start throwing stuff at me again, I will be able to pick up on it right away.”
Rice’s numbers were down last year, but that was as much to do with creating an impossible standard in 2011 (2,068 yards from scrimmage and 15 touchdowns) than not being in shape.