Packers coach Mike McCarthy ensured that running back Eddie Lacy’s physical condition would be a running storyline this offseason when he said shortly after the team’s playoff loss to the Cardinals that Lacy “cannot play at the weight he did” in 2016.
There were varying reports and responses from the Packers about how much of that weight the team wanted Lacy to lose, but the mandate for the third-year back was a clear one. On Tuesday, McCarthy was asked about how the process has gone.
“So far, so good,” McCarthy said, via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “I don’t know [how much work Lacy has left to do]. Eddie will be fine. I believe he’ll hit the target that we’re looking for when the lights come on.”
One of the ways that Lacy worked to drop weight was by hooking up with P90X founder Tony Horton. Horton told the newspaper that Lacy reached out to him early in the offseason and that he agreed to it despite having “never done anything quite like that before.”
“But I knew I could help him, and I knew what he was struggling from, and I think we both agreed in our meeting that he needed sort of a new perspective and a new approach,” Horton said. “And we got along really great. We just met each other up in San Francisco the week before the Super Bowl. And we said hey, let’s give this thing a try. Come hangout with me in Jackson Hole and then after that stint is done we’ll come back to LA and continue it there. We just got along, you know what I mean? We laughed a lot and we worked hard and we ate clean food and just took care of business, you know?”
Horton said Lacy made dietary changes and started taking supplements for the first time. Should Lacy bounce back with a big 2016 season after that offseason work, Horton will probably be getting more calls from NFL players in offseasons to come.