The Buffalo Bills depend quite a bit on the run game, and how efficiently the top two running backs are playing for them on a weekly basis. With second-year player Karlos Williams penciled in as the backup runner in 2016, you'd imagine the disappointment from the Bills perspective upon seeing him for offseason workouts.
Williams showed up overweight to OTAs and minicamp, and now he has to shed some pounds before the Bills will be satisfied about his playing shape for the upcoming season. During the team's first practice of the mandatory minicamp, Williams took part in the positional drills with the rest of the runners.
However, once that was done, he made a beeline to sidelines for extended work with Eric Ciano, the team's strength and conditioning coach. Williams was on the exercise bike, did some interval training, and looked visibly exhausted after many of the workouts.
After the practice Williams, who just by looking at him appeared to be carrying more weight, was asked about his target weight.
"I'm close. Not far off, not far off," Williams said. "It’s going to require some work, some discipline in the meal room and that’s something I have to do, I’m a professional."
While Williams believes that he's "close" to that target weight, whatever that might be, Bills head coach Rex Ryan didn't seem to agree.
"He’s not anywhere close to where he needs to be to play at a high level so we got to get some weight off him and he certainly understands that," Ryan said.
The head coach did say that they didn't want him to drop all that weight at once, which in his mind, would potentially put Williams at risk of suffering an injury. Even still, the Bills need the running back to drop quite a bit of weight for him to be as explosive a runner as he was in 2015.
The Bills, nor Williams, revealed what his current weight is at the moment, but Ryan did use "dropping 20 pounds" as a reference point during one of his thoughts. Last year, Williams' playing weight was listed at 230.
So how did he gain all that weight? In his words, it was due to the "injury of pregnancy."
"Being home and being with my pregnant fiancée. When she eats, I eat, so it’s kind of hard doing that," Williams said. "I like to eat and then her being pregnant gave me an excuse to eat, so eating anything and everything. She’d wake up, one or two o’clock, “I want a snack.” Well I’m not going to sit here and watch you eat because I don’t want you to feel bad."
Williams and his fiancée welcomed their son, Kason, to the world on May 20. With the pregnancy in the rearview mirror, the running back thinks he'll get things back on track in time for the season.
"It’s back to football," he said. "She’s getting back to working out herself so kind of motivating each other, feed off each other’s energy, and we’re getting ready for camp."
"He's clearly overweight," Ryan said. "He’s a young guy, hopefully he’ll learn from it."
