Maybe the most depressing aspect of the Eddie Lacy story is that Lacy doesn’t understand where his hate is coming from.
As the Seattle Seahawks running back, Lacy became widely scrutinized for his ongoing weight problems in the NFL.
He candidly spoke with ESPN about how insults on Twitter have influenced his life. “I could tweet ‘Today is a beautiful day’ and someone would be like ‘Oh yeah? You fat,’” Lacy told ESPN.
“I could pull up my Twitter right now and there would be a fat comment in there,” he said.
So how fat is Eddie Lacy?
SB Nation reported that Lacey weighed 220 pounds as a member of the University of Alabama Crimson Tide. NFL.com weighed Lacy at 231 pounds at the time he was drafted in 2013. At one point during the last four years, Lacy weighed in at 260 pounds.
Now, in 2017, Lacy has a clause in his contract to stay under 250 pounds. The clause gives Lacy a $55,000 bonus every time he makes weight. To get his next bonus, Lacy would have to get down to 245 pounds, through the months of September to December.
Is it bad that he has weight on him?
As a member of the Green Bay Packers, Lacy dominated as a newcomer to the league. In his first season, he rushed for 1,178 yards on 284 attempts. His sophomore season he still rushed for over a thousand yards. He was slowly starting to get his weight under control. When his stats took a dip in his third season, the Packers’ patience grew thin.
Despite adversity, Lacy lost over 20 pounds during the offseason. He started the 2016 campaign averaging 5.1 yards a carry through five games. Right as he was about to turn all the hate into success, he suffered a season-ending ankle injury. He felt all his hard work went to waste.
“I literally couldn’t do anything for months,” Lacy said, “I obviously just got bigger. I can’t do nothing about it. All you can do is lay down and eat. What are you supposed to do?”
He decided to the leave the Packers in the 2016 offseason. Before trying out for some teams he had to step on a scale. The scale read 267 pounds.
Why is it so hard for Lacy to break this habit?
A kid that grew up in Louisiana, Lacy’s family was directly affected by Hurricane Katrina. He and his family escaped the storm but returned to a house that was completely destroyed and looted. For Lacy, growing up relatively poor may have also contributed to his weight gain. At one point in his life, he struggled for food. He worked for it. Now that he has the means, he has gained his right to his reward; his food. Lacy also states in the ESPN piece that even though he had tried to change his eating habits, it is still hard for him to lose weight.
How important is being “overweight” as a running back?
Some of the greatest NFL running backs were around the 200 to 210-pound mark. This includes; Emmet Smith, 5’9" 210 pounds, Walter Payton, 5’10” 200 pounds, Barry Sanders, 5’8” 200 pounds, Curtis Martin, 5’11” 210 pounds and Ladanian Tomlinson, 5’10” 215 pounds.
So Lacy at his lowest weight, performed his best. Lacy referred to the success of Jerome Bettis. Bettis played 12 years in the NFL, weighing around 250 pounds. Bettis even showed similar stats to lacy in his first three seasons.
In a time where the internet can be a wasteland of negative comments, the judgment of Eddie Lacy will depend on the reader. On the one hand, he is getting paid millions of dollars to play a professional sport, but at the same time he still is a human being with emotions and insecurities.
