Great article from Pasquarelli

[Fatman]

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/stor..._len&id=2074914

 

Basically a big slam on Ricky Williams, but it does contain a bunch of interesting stats about the playing weights of running backs in the league. Good stuff.

 

 

 

Let's assume, since agent Leigh Steinberg has never told a fib in his life, except for the old whopper about not recruiting college players, that Ricky Williams really does want to return to the NFL. The erstwhile tailback and holistic healer-in-training is serious about resuming the lucrative career he abandoned 11 months ago.

 

And let's assume, too, that all those reports about Williams tipping the scales at 195 pounds, apparently soaking wet, are legitimate.

 

Seems that if Point A is accurate and Point B isn't just a fuzzy fabrication Williams conjured up in some purple haze-induced e-mail to Mike Silver of Sports Illustrated, then we've got a weighty Point C, for Conundrum, on our hands here, folks.

 

Ricky Williams rushed for 1,372 yards in 2003, before retiring prior to the 2004 season.

Think about this: For Williams to suddenly be in compliance with the league's substance abuse program, the one in which he has tested positive at least three times, he has to lay off the demon Josh Gordon, right? But for Ricky the Rasta Man to gain back the 30 pounds that he dropped during his football hiatus, he might sorely require the kind of munchies attack that we're told ganja can induce.

 

Oh my, it is the knottiest of problems, indeed. Can the once-powerful Williams bulk up again without lighting up? Will he be able to feed his face without feeding his habit? Can he swear off tokin' for toting a football for the Miami Dolphins again, and will he even be physically capable, given his relatively emaciated state?

 

OK, so we're not attempting to make light here (pardon the intentional pun) of Williams' lack of bulk. Maybe, as his various mouthpieces have suggested, Williams can add back the 30 pounds he left floating in the Ganges River just like that. The point: He'd better, since a 195-pound tailback is the NFL equivalent of a 98-pound weakling sunning himself on the beach. The only good news for Williams is that, if he continues to wear a visor on his helmet, linebackers can't kick sand in his face.

 

Then, again, if Williams returns to the field at 195 pounds, a shaky shadow of his once-robust self, linebackers will take glee in kicking a much lower portion of his anatomy.

 

Here is a true fact: The average weight of the 32 starting tailbacks in the NFL last season was 217.8 pounds. Only half of the 32 starters dented the scales at less than 220 pounds. Extending the point one step further, the average tonnage of the top two tailbacks on the 32 rosters was 219.9 pounds. And how many of the 64 tailbacks who were either first or second on depth charts in 2004 checked in at less than 200 pounds? That would be exactly two: Atlanta Falcons star Warrick Dunn (180 pounds) and Charlie Garner of Tampa Bay (190 pounds). The New York Giants' marvelous Tiki Barber, at 200 pounds, was the only other back under 205 pounds.

 

Last time we checked, all three were noted more for their quickness than their power, although Dunn and Barber in particular are deceptively strong inside runners. As for Ricky Williams? Well, not especially quick, at least in the humble estimation of several of the defenders who spent five seasons playing a flattened Wile E. Coyote to Williams' bulldozer-piloting Road Runner.

 

"I always thought [Williams] was a back who could run past you," Buffalo linebacker Takeo Spikes said, "but who preferred to run over you."

 

But at 195 pounds, the weight reported by Williams himself, there will be very little running over anybody at the NFL level. In its most quintessential form, especially for a running back, football is a contact sport. For most 195-pound tailbacks, it becomes a catastrophic undertaking instead, unless you've got some wiggle. For five years, Williams was about walloping people, not wiggling past them.

 

When you've been a power runner for all your football life, age 28 is a little late to try to perfect the fine art of finesse. And so Williams – whose weight ranged from a high of 236 pounds from 1999 to 2001 to 228 pounds in 2003, according to the NFL's annual Fact & Record Book – had better start quaffing down those industrial-sized protein shakes.

 

In his now-celebrated e-mail missive to Silver, who needs to get Williams to the nearest sushi bar, the prodigal running back suggested he has two seasons and 4,000 yards left in him. There have been five men in NFL history who have rushed for 2,000 yards in a year, and the average weight of the quintet in the season they notched that feat was 214.4 pounds. Three words of wisdom: Start eating, Ricky.

 

Over the last 10 seasons, the average weight of the league's rushing champion was 211.8 pounds. Not since Charles White led the NFL in the 1987 strike season at a wispy 190 pounds has there been a league rushing champion of less than 200 pounds. We reiterate: Start eating, Ricky, and don't stop until you've consumed mass quantities.

 

Of course, even if Williams packs on the pounds, there are a ton of other factors that could scuttle his proposed return.

 

Since he can't return to the league until late July, Williams will have missed all of the Dolphins' offseason program. With a new coach in Nick Saban, there is a new offense to assimilate, and as best we can determine, Williams has yet to lay eyes on the 2005 edition of the Miami playbook. Assuming Williams plays in the preseason opener, the Hall of Fame game against Chicago on Aug. 8, it will have been 619 days between carries. A lot of oxidation can collect on a body in what amounts to 20 months of relative inertia. Williams still owes the Dolphins $8.6 million and owes the league a four-game suspension. And there are already indications the two sides might not be able to reach a speedy agreement on Williams' compensation for 2005.

 

Those are, even if Williams appears for training camp in late July resembling a sculpted Adonis, a lot of hurdles to navigate, a lot of hoops through which to jump. Which means, despite all the rhetoric and teasing, the return of Ricky Williams to the NFL remains little more than a hash-pipe dream for now.

[Chargerz]

I agree. For Ricky to return this year alot of things would have to fall into place (gain weight, get in shape, learn the playbook, come to terms with the Dolphins, and serve a 4 game suspension)! Good luck, Ricky!!!

[Swampnuts]

I think it's funny how none of us (me included) think Ricky will do squat this year, but regardless, he'll be drafted in EVERY league.

[Chargerz]

I think it's funny how none of us (me included) think Ricky will do squat this year, but regardless, he'll be drafted in EVERY league.

 

831987[/snapback]

 

 

 

Hey, when you get to those late rounds, why not give him a shot??

[Swampnuts]

Hey, when you get to those late rounds, why not give him a shot??

 

831990[/snapback]

 

 

 

 

 

I agree 100%, I just think it's funny how we're all a bit paranoid about players. We all will bash on players like Ricky or David Boston but we all end up drafting them.

[Fatman]

I agree 100%, I just think it's funny how we're all a bit paranoid about players. We all will bash on players like Ricky or David Boston but we all end up drafting them.

 

831993[/snapback]

 

 

 

 

Yeah, it is true - if they can do something for you, you're willing to look past a lot. Think the Dolphins players feel the same way?

[BS Miscreant]

but we all end up drafting them.

 

831993[/snapback]

 

 

 

Not all of us.