Jam-Jam back? (US Presswire) |
Every year it seems like JaMarcus Russell has lost a few (but just a few!) pounds and is attempting a comeback. Well, for the first time in 2013, JaMarcus Russell has reportedly lost a few pounds and is attempting a comeback.
According to Kristian Dyer of Yahoo! Sports, Russell is, um, down to 308 pounds and "has been focusing on cardio conditioning the past six weeks" to get down from the 320 pounds he weighed in the fall.
"My first year out, I couldn’t watch football but after a while, I couldn’t keep the TV off. I got that itchy feeling but now I gotta watch it, gotta watch,” Russell told Yahoo! Sports.
“The last few years, the things going through my life, football is my job and it is how it feeds my family. People would say [that] I didn’t love the game, but that pisses me off. People don’t know the real you, but I want people to know the real me and see what I can do. People are always saying that I’m a bust. I want to show them I’m not. I’m committed to this now."
Russell, who is still somehow just 27, hasn't played in the NFL since 2009, his third season with the Oakland Raiders. The Raiders made him the No. 1 overall pick in the 2007 NFL Draft following his junior season at LSU.
He attempted a comeback in October 2010 after doing an in-depth interview with Inside the NFL on Showtime about his struggles. A month later, the Dolphins were reportedly interested in bringing Jam-Jam in for a tryout after losing Chad Pennington and Chad Henne to injury on the same day, but ultimately nothing materialized.
This time around, Russell's got, according to Yahoo!, the help of a lot of big names. His mentor is Mike Clayton (formerly of LSU, drafted by the Buccaneers) and he'll be working out at TEST Football Academy, supposedly with Jeff Garcia and Marshall Faulk, among others.
Look, it's great that Russell wants to come back to the NFL. Comebacks are what make America great. But if he's still weighing in at 308 -- so nothing's changed? -- and has been out of football for four years after already struggling with the nuances of the game in the first place, it's hard to imagine that he's suddenly going to hop on a roster and be a productive quarterback.
Good luck to him in his comeback and better luck to any NFL team that thinks signing Jam-Jam is suddenly going to turn around their franchise.