The Green Bay Packers are going to be better next season, which is a pretty scary thought considering they won 10 regular season games and a playoff bout and came within a hair's breadth - or a Larry Fitzgerald touchdown - of reaching the NFC Championship Game in 2015. But when a team as talented and dangerous as the Packers - really, as long as Aaron Rodgers is playing, the Pack will be both talented and dangerous - sees a key playmaker like Jordy Nelson return to the field, you can pretty much assume an overall uptick in play.
Nelson, though, isn't the only Green Bay player planning a return of sorts for 2016. And to hear Nelson tell it, his comeback from an ACL injury may be matched, even surpassed, by Packers' running back Eddie Lacy's return from the eats-too-much.
"I was going to crack a joke, but I won't. He looked good," Nelson said of Lacy Monday. "We're glad to have everyone back, get ready to work."
Lacy, as evidenced by any number of photos posted to social media, has dropped plenty of poundage this offseason. Which is good, because it wasn't all that long ago that Green Bay head coach Mike McCarthy sounded like a guy ready to turn the page on the Lacy era if Lacy didn't figure out how to cut the fast food from his diet.
"Eddie Lacy, he's got a lot of work to do. His offseason last year was not good enough, and he never recovered from it," McCarthy said at his end-of-season news conference. "He cannot play at the weight he was at this year."
Lacy's always been a bigger back and was likely drafted by McCarthy and Packers GM Ted Thompson with the knowledge that he'd be a heavy, between-the-tackles runner who could add a power dynamic to the Green Bay offense.
But Lacy, listed at 234-pounds last year, saw his weight balloon. And while it wasn't ever quite Pando Sandoval-level bad, it wasn't good either, as evidenced by a 61-yard run against the Cardinals in the playoffs that by all rights probably should have been a touchdown. Instead, Lacy ran out of gas, the Packers lost and McCarthy offered his sternly worded edict.
Fortunately, it sounds like Lacy sure got the message. All that remains to be seen is how it pays off on the field in 2016.
"I think Eddie looks good, man," Packers defensive end Mike Daniels said. "We'll see when the pads come on and everything, but I do think he's a guy who rises to the occasion. He comes from a great program where they do things the right way. He came under a lot of fire, so I think he's a guy that he got put on the spot and he responded."
