GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Even after Eddie Lacy won the NFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2013, it was worth wondering how long he might be able to last in the NFL.
As for how long he'd last with the Green Bay Packers, the answer was four years, after Lacy signed what ESPN's Adam Schefter reported was a one-year, $5.5 million deal Tuesday with the Seattle Seahawks.
Lacy’s battering style combined with his injury history and weight issues ultimately took a large toll on him. Make no mistake about it, the Packers were interested in bringing Lacy back for another year. But there were concerns.
It should come as no surprise that Lacy’s weight ballooned again after the ankle injury that ended his 2016 season in Week 6. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Lacy weighed 267 pounds for one of the three teams he visited during free agency. He wrapped up his visits with the Packers on Monday after going to Seattle and Minnesota last weekend.
Lacy, who was listed at 234 pounds last season, looked bigger than ever when seen around the team facility late in the year while he was on injured reserve and unable to run because he was in a walking boot.
Still, the Packers were prepared to go through another season with Lacy because of his talents and his 5.1 yards per carry last season in a short sample size. He was an 1,100-yard rusher in each of his first two seasons. But his weight likely caught up to him. In Year 3, he couldn’t muster 800 yards rushing, and after the season coach Mike McCarthy said Lacy could not play at the weight he played at in 2015. That prompted a high-profile partnership with P90X founder Tony Horton, who put Lacy through extensive workouts in the offseason.
By the time last season started, Lacy appeared to have regained at least some of the weight he lost under Horton’s tutelage.
That’s the Seahawks’ issue now, but it still leaves the Packers with a sizable hole on their depth chart. The only running back under contract for 2017 is converted receiver Ty Montgomery, who made the position switch in earnest after Lacy’s ankle injury last season. Don Jackson, an undrafted rookie last year who spent part of the season on the active roster, was tendered as an exclusive rights free agent but hasn’t signed it yet.
It’s not out of the question that the Packers would go after one of the other veteran running backs -- Adrian Peterson, Latavius Murray, LeGarrette Blount and Jamaal Charles all remain on the market. But now that Lacy has signed, the running back dominoes could fall quickly.
It’s also a relatively decent draft for running backs. The Packers met at the combine with at least two of the possible first-round picks: Florida State’s Dalvin Cook and Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey. But general manager Ted Thompson has never drafted a running back higher than the second round, and the Packers haven’t taken one in the first round since 1990.