A photograph taken from an unflattering angle turned Green Bay Packers rookie Eddie Lacy into a trending Twitter topic Monday. All other photos and a Vine video showed Lacy to be in reasonable shape, but the perception remained that Lacy arrived to camp severely overweight.
Packers coach Mike McCarthy dispelled that notion Tuesday, telling the assembled media that Lacy was "fine" going through the training-camp conditioning test.
"If we had any concern about any of the guys," McCarthy explained, "they wouldn't be on the field."
Lacy maintained his conditioning is "exactly where I want it to be."
"I've always been big. I'm a power back," Lacy said, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "I get the tough yards and I'm fast enough to get around the outside and make big plays. No, I don't have any problem with any aspect of the game.' "
And Packers defensive end Mike Daniels, for one, didn't view the much-discussed photo of Lacy as a negative.
"I'll tell you what, when defenses see him and see his tape, they say, 'The bigger they are, the harder they're bringing that wood when they're coming downhill,' " Daniels said. "They're not looking at it laughing. They're looking at it like, 'Crap.' The people who know, they're looking at that like, 'That boy has some weight to him. He ain't going to go down easy."
Describing Lacy's running style, McCarthy said Lacy "definitely falls in the category of a 'big back,' and big backs fall forward." McCarthy specifically mentioned the red zone as an area where Lacy will help the Packers this season.
With fellow rookie Johnathan Franklinimpressing early and veterans James Starks and Alex Green sharing first-team reps, Lacy hardly is assured of leading this backfield as a rookie. DuJuan Harris remains in the picture as well, though he's missed early-camp practices with a minor knee injury.
Other nuggets from McCarthy's Tuesday presser:
» Starting cornerback Tramon Williams might be out a couple of weeks after sustaining a knee injury in practice. McCarthy is not concerned that the injury is of a serious nature. A source informed of the injury told NFL.com's Ian Rapoport that it's a cartilage issue as opposed to a ligament tear. Williams already underwent an MRI, and the expectation is that the injury is indeed minor.
» McCarthy expects the battle for the backup quarterback job between Graham Harrell and B.J. Coleman to continue throughout training camp. A third-stringer last season, Coleman "probably made the biggest improvement" carrying it over from the classroom to the field this season, McCarthy said.
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