GREEN BAY, Wis. -- The sweat poured off Eddie Lacy's head as he finished his first session with reporters in the Green Bay Packers' locker room in more than four months. As he walked away, he realized his mistake.
“I shouldn’t have worn a sweatshirt,” he said as he wiped his brow.
If that’s Lacy’s worst mistake, then perhaps he is a changed man.
Just minutes earlier, Lacy insisted he’s learned from the errors of his first three NFL seasons. He got away with them in his first two years, when he rushed for 1,100 yards in each of them, but we all know what happened in 2015: Poor conditioning led to the worst of his three seasons, with just 758 yards, and a few stays in coach Mike McCarthy’s doghouse. It finally culminated with McCarthy’s postseason ultimatum that Lacy “cannot play at the weight he was at [last] year.”
Call it complacency if you want, but Lacy admitted he had to learn the hard way.
“I’d agree with that,” Lacy said this week in his first public comments since January. “My first two years, I pretty much did whatever I wanted. Last year same thing, just different results. It’s something I crossed I’m glad earlier than later. You learn it and keep going.”
His biggest lesson learned?
“That I have to respond to my coach in a positive way,” Lacy said. “And everybody outside of myself and the organization, what they have to say don’t matter.”
Neither McCarthy nor then-running backs coach Sam Gash could get through to Lacy last season, even after McCarthy benched him on two separate occasions. It may have played a role in McCarthy’s decision to fire Gash after the season.
While Lacy may still have work to do on his conditioning, it looks like he’s at least on the right path.
“You get a wake-up call,” Lacy said. “That was my wake-up call. Better sooner than later.”
Don’t stop even if you think you’ve heard this before from Lacy. He said last December that “things need to happen in order to wake you up and show you that it can be taken away.” He uttered those words just days after he was benched for missing curfew on the eve of the Week 13 game at Detroit. Earlier in the season, he briefly lost his starting job to James Starks because his production was lacking.
So why believe Lacy now?
“The only thing I can say is that he’s working hard and he’s doing the things that I’ve asked him to do,” first-year running backs coach Ben Sirmans said. “I know it’s very important to him. I know he understands his importance within this offense.”
As Lacy enters the final year of his rookie contract, there’s no reason for the Packers to even think about beginning negotiations with him until he shows he can stay in shape. Part of that responsibility now falls on Sirmans.
“I think the biggest thing with my role is really just pointing out to him -- we watched some of his great runs that he had from this past season and really just making him understand when you feel like from a fitness standpoint you’re right at the apex of where you want to be, you can do even more things to be even better,” Sirmans said. “So, it’s more about the mental mindset of him knowing that he can only help himself.”