When the Seattle Seahawks signed Eddie Lacy this past offseason, their biggest concern was the running back’s weight.
So the Seahawks built some incentives into his contract—not for performance but for weight.
Well on Monday, Lacy weighed in at 253 pounds, just below the 255-pound threshold the Seahawks set. As a reward, he gets $55,000.
Eddie Lacy weighed in at 253 pounds today, two below the limit the Seahawks set: now collects $55,000 for it.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) May 15, 2017
This isn’t the end of Lacy’s weigh-ins. His contract calls for seven in total, with potential bonuses totaling $385,000. ESPN reports that Lacy will next be weighed on June 12, by which point he’ll need to be under 250 pounds. The goal is to get him down to 245, which would be more than 20 pounds lighter than what he reportedly weighed during a free-agent visit last spring.
According to ESPN, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll is satisfied with what he’s seen from Lacy.
“He looks awesome. He looks great,” Carroll said on 710 ESPN Seattle’s Brock and Salk show. “He’s huge. And he’s going to keep playing huge. He did a fantastic job. He’s done everything we’ve asked him to do. He’s doing great.
“His attitude about it has been great. He’s worked with the support system that we put in place and [has been] highly successful.”
Weight-based contract incentives feel a little invasive and paternalistic, but Lacy freely agreed to them in his contract. And it makes sense that instead of incentivizing Lacy’s performance, the Seahawks want to incentivize something that affects Lacy’s performance.
After looking like one of the NFL’s best backs early in his career, Lacy has fallen off over the past couple seasons. In 2016, he played only five games thanks to an ankle injury and failed to score a single touchdown.
The Seahawks signed Lacy to a one-year, $4.25 million deal with more than a million dollars in incentives. Given that no Seattle player rushed for more than 500 yards in 2016, Carroll and company could use a svelte Lacy putting up the kinds of stats he used to.
[ESPN]
