Eddie Lacy isn’t the only NFL player with a lucrative weigh-in looming.
Falcons nose tackle Dontari Poe has a weigh-in tomorrow. If he weighs 340 pounds or less, he gets a $125,000 bonus, according to Field Yates of ESPN.
A total of $500,000 is riding on Poe’s weight this year. He gets three more $125,000 bonus payments if he weighs in at 330 or less at the start of training camp, at the start of the regular season and in November. Poe, who was listed at 346 pounds last season, has said he’s confident he’s going to make weight.
Weight is really not the best way to measure a person’s fitness, and when Lacy was on the Packers the team made a point of assessing him not with a scale, but with a body composition analysis that measured his fat and muscle mass. A player could hit a weight goal by losing muscle mass, or by spending a few hours in the sauna and shedding water weight, but that wouldn’t be a healthy way to go about it.
However, body weight is simpler and easier to verify than body composition, which is why teams and agents generally put weight clauses in contracts. For Poe, the weight clause is worth half a million dollars.