The headline on the Baltimore Ravens' official website really says it all: Dang, Trent Richardson Has Shed Some Serious Weight.
The former No. 3 overall pick in the 2012 draft, who is starting anew with his fourth team this summer, will be coming to camp more than 20 pounds lighter than his heaviest listed weight of 240. Per the Ravens site, Richardson is 218 now, which is even lighter than he was at Alabama.
Here is some proof:
It's great to see Richardson working with some confidence again. The Ravens experiment seems like his best chance to fulfill all the promise he carried with him heading into the 2012 draft. Very good talent evaluators labeled him one of the sure things coming out of Alabama -- and if you ask players who have come through Nick Saban's system, they will all tell you that you cannot be average and do what Richardson did there.
The one problem, though: Was weight ever really the main culprit here? Sure, during the collapse in Indianapolis, there were some anonymously sourced reports about weight gain. Richardson did puff up a bit during a time when he was dealing with a hamstring issue, and according to Richardson himself, some personal issues.
Before that happened, we saw Richardson struggling with some of the basic aspects of the running game in the NFL. Former Alabama star and Seahawks all-timer Shaun Alexander had a nice breakdown to Yahoo Sports around the time Richardson was flaming out with the Colts last February.
"The NFL bombards you with X's and O's, learning the schemes and getting up to speed on the knowledge of the game. You can slowly become robotic and so worry about being right that you forget what made you a talent," Alexander said.
"You have these shoulders and these legs and you're exploding through the hole, and you didn't know what would happen like you were riding a wave. All of a sudden you pop a big one. If you're too hindered by X's and O's, you lose that. All those things that made you special, they can be restricted by the scheme sometimes."
The hope is that one thing leads to another. Richardson getting into the best shape of his life brings on a new-found confidence in his skill set and in turn, we all get to see the player we were promised coming out of the draft in 2012. Everyone wins.
