Seattle Seahawks' Eddie Lacy Opens Up About Public Struggle With Weight

Running back Eddie Lacy started his career with four seasons in Green Bay’s frozen tundra, followed by a $5.5 million contract with the Seattle Seahawks this past offseason.

You’d think that sort of pedigree would be cause for celebration among fans in the northwest, but the back has dealt with nothing but negativity. The target of fat-shaming memes, Lacy has become the laughing stock of internet troll-ville, something that would be a tough swallow for any professional athlete.

ESPN The Magazine scored an interview with Lacy to talk about his weight issues, the haters, and everything else in between. RealClearLife has teased out the feature’s best parts below.

-Lacy bemoaned his social media presence to ESPN’s Kevin Van Valkenburg: “I could pull up my Twitter right now, and there would be a fat comment in there somewhere,” he told Van Valkenburg. “Like I could tweet, ‘Today is a beautiful day!’ and someone would be like, ‘Oh yeah? You fat.’ I sit there and wonder: ‘What do you get out of that?’”

-When Lacy signed a one-year contract with the Seahawks, he also had to agree to do periodic weigh-ins. He assumed they’d be private, but the first one was publicized within 20 minutes. (He need to keep his weight at 245 pounds.)

-When Lacy was in high school, his family’s house was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. Speaking of seeing the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, Lacy said, “It pretty much brought back everything that happened to me. …Nobody’s life will ever be the same there. It just sucks.”

-After Lacy’s rushing numbers decreased after his third season in the NFL, Packers’ coach Mike McCarthy told reporters at a year-end news conference that “He’s got a lot of work to do. His offseason last year was not good enough, and he never recovered from it. He cannot play at the weight he played at this year.”

-Lacy says he’s taunted online when other people order junk food. “People are always tweeting at me stuff like: ‘I’m about to go get [Chinese] food, shout out to Eddie. …Or, ‘Hey, Eddie, this [Chinese] food is why you weigh 260 pounds.’ You want to say, ‘Dawg, that was five years ago. How is something that happened [then] still relevant?’ But nobody cares. The negativity is always there, whether you’re doing good or you’re going through a funk.”