GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Mike McCarthy estimated he’d done about 25 exit interviews with various Green Bay Packers veterans on Monday. One of those players the Packers coach met with was running back Eddie Lacy.
It was not a pleasant conversation.
The message? Shape up -- literally. He told Lacy, in no uncertain terms, that “he's got a lot of work to do” this offseason, that his conditioning last offseason “was not good enough” and that he “cannot play at the weight he was at this year” in 2016.
“That was pretty much the majority of our whole conversation,” McCarthy said.
That McCarthy was willing to share with reporters so much of that presumably one-sided discussion during his annual season wrap-up news conference goes to show just how exasperated the coach must have been this season with Lacy, who had back-to-back 1,100-yard seasons and scored a combined 24 touchdowns in his first two years but slipped to 758 yards (4.1-yard average) and three touchdowns on 187 carries this season.
Perhaps McCarthy’s frustration was rooted in this reality: Lacy could not have had worse timing to not be at his best.
During Lacy’s rookie season in 2013, when quarterback Aaron Rodgers was sidelined for 7½ games with a fractured collarbone, Lacy faced a steady diet of eight-man boxes and defenses loaded up to stop him but he still was productive, even while playing with a significant ankle injury late in the year. He essentially was the Packers’ offense in the game against Chicago in which Rodgers was injured (150 yards), and during the time Rodgers was out, Lacy ran for 666 yards with seven touchdowns and a 4.4-yard average.
Last season, with Rodgers back healthy, the two paired to make the Packers’ offense the highest-scoring group in the league (30.4 points per game) while finishing sixth in yardage. Rodgers won the NFL MVP and Lacy set the franchise record for most rushing yards by a running back in his first two seasons as defenses struggled to pick their poison.
But this year, with the offense losing its home-run threat in preseason when Pro Bowl wide receiver Jordy Nelson suffered a season-ending torn ACL in his right knee, the Packers needed not only other receivers to step up in Nelson’s place but for Lacy to be able to carry the load. Just as they had in 2013 while Rodgers was sidelined, defenses dared the Packers to throw against them while devoting extra defenders to stopping the run.
And yet, even with opponents focused on him, Lacy delivered -- intermittently. Sandwiched around his Dec. 3 benching at Detroit for a curfew violation, Lacy had three 100-yard performances -- 100 yards at Minnesota on Nov. 22, 105 yards versus Chicago on Nov. 29 and a season-high 124 yards against Dallas on Dec. 13.
It stands to reason that had Lacy been in better shape from the start of the season, he not only would have been better prepared for the tough sledding he was going to face, but he also might have avoided some of the nagging injuries he dealt with much of the year.
In the Packers’ season-ending NFC divisional playoff loss at Arizona on Saturday night, Lacy ran 12 times for 89 yards, but he appeared to run out of steam on his biggest play, a 61-yard run.
Lacy, officially listed at 234 pounds on the roster, declined an interview request when approached as he and other players cleaned out their lockers Monday morning.
“How do we get him back to perform at that high level?” offensive coordinator Edgar Bennett asked rhetorically. “We continue to educate him, we demand, [and] we support. I think that’s a big part of it.”