For Washington’s wide receiver Terrence Austin, this season is not just about being more comfortable with the Redskins offensive scheme. He decided at the end of last season that there was more he could do to become a better player than just keep track of the play-book.
“I came to understand that I had to become a different player if I wanted to have some success in this league…” Austin told me earlier in the week, “…strength-wise as well as mentally. And I just told myself that I was going to work hard and gain weight. I was tired of being the small guy. If you’re around 180 – 185 lbs., that’s not considered small. That’s considered average in the NFL at my position.
“Whether it’s me as a returner or catching the football and running,” he went on, “it just always helps when you have a little bit more weight on you. I mean, you’re dealing with grown men in this league… some of these guys are like squat-seven-hundred-pounds-bench-press-400-or- 500-pounds guys. So, being bigger helps you prevent injury. It actually helps in a whole lot of ways.”
Terrence weighed in at 165 lbs his rookie year and played that season at 162-163 lbs. He ended the 2011 season at around 172-173 lbs. Earlier this year, he set out on a mission to become heavier, stronger and faster. Not that he had to work too terribly hard to be faster. At his pro day before the 2010 draft, the UCLA graduate ran his 40-yard-dash in the low 4.4’s and has reported times in the mid 4.3’s as well. He is fast.
Now, after spending his off-season working out with a trainer that is a former Navy Seal, Austin is much stronger as well.
“He is very intense,” Austin said of the trainer. “He just brought a different type of training to my regime which was a lot different than what it used to be. When I trained with him it was kind of on a different level… it was crazy.”
Terrence summarized how he worked to get himself to the weight that has made him so much bigger and stronger this off-season.
“I came home in January and started working out in the weight room in February,” he explained “I was supposed to take three months off like the rest of the league but I didn’t. I was so anxious to get back to working out that I went back to the weight room right away. I was just lifting weights, lifting weights, lifting weights.
“I did a little bit of running but not really a lot,” he continued. “At the time I wasn’t worried so much about getting in shape. I knew that would be easy. I just wanted to stay flexible and keep from bulking up to much. But that actually didn’t work because I did bulk up.”
“I reported to OTAs and I was 187 lbs. I had three percent body fat and 15 lbs. of muscle mass. It was like 20 lbs. to December to April. I gained it just like that.”
“It was crazy because I had told the strength coach, ‘I’m going to come back here at 185.’ And he was like, ‘That’s a lot of weight, that’s 20 lbs. That’s going to be hard but you can do it.’”
“And then I came back and he was like, ‘Man, you weren’t playing were you?’ I said, ‘Nah.’”
Watching Austin at OTAs earlier in the offseason, it was easy to see that the extra weight had not affected his route running or quickness. He confirmed that it had not.
“I felt good at training camp,” he answered when asked about it. “I am still quick. I am still in and out of my breaks real fast and that is what I was most concerned about. I mean gaining the weight made me bigger and stronger but you also want to still be quick. That’s one of my key attributes is my quickness. I am able to use my quickness and that’s what helps me separate. I was concerned about that but it’s not a problem for me.”
Austin’s receiving and special teams’ talents are such that, at the higher weight, he will be a beast on the field. And he, like his teammates, is looking forward to the possibilities of the coming season and the talent that their new quarterback brings.
“I’m enjoying having Robert here,” Austin said. “He’s definitely going to make a difference. Everything that he’s been doing has been pretty good so far. I mean, he’s not perfect but I really do feel like he will be something really good for us in the future. This year’s going to be a whole lot different for us in terms of making something happen.
“He throws good balls and he’s very smart. He understands how the game works. He’s pretty much been having fun out there too and that’s important. He treats the game with love and he has a lot of passion for it.
“He’s going to drop back, he’s going to look around and, if nobody’s open he can run the ball because he has that ability.
“We’re excited about it”
There are a bunch of websites like espn.go, pro-football-reference.com, cbssports.com and nfl.com that need to update their statistics on Terrence Austin, that’s for sure. He is usually listed at 5’11” and somewhere around 171 – 175 lbs. That is certainly not the case now and the team will be better off having this bulkier, stronger player in the burgundy and gold.
Hail.