ASHBURN – The man of the moment emerges, sweat dripping from his forehead, and Redskins coach Jim Zorn shouts a question.
“They want to know your weight,” said Zorn, surrounded by reporters.
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Mike Williams wasn’t sure of his exact weight. But he did know one thing.
“We’re sub,” Williams replies.
Sub as in sub-400. And that’s progress. If Williams wants to play football again then his weight must continue to head south until it reaches around 370 pounds, a goal Williams calls highly likely by June.
Since a renewed focus on his weight earlier this year, he’s already lost 55 pounds. And he’s shed approximately 15 since the Redskins signed him April 24. The combination of watching what he eats — more turkey, salads and chicken — and conditioning has done the trick. After the organized team activity Monday, Williams jogged the length of the field 10 times. He planned two different conditioning sessions for later in the day.
“The weight will come off,” he said.
Williams and his good friend, and current teammate, Derrick Dockery once vowed to take better care of themselves as they turned 30. So Williams, 29, enrolled in a fitness program at Duke.
“My mindset was changing the outlook of my body and the way I eat,” he said. “During the process I decided I might as well play football because I was feeling really good.”
The fourth overall pick in the 2002 draft by Buffalo shared that desire with the Dallas Morning News on April 23. The Redskins read of his desire and that he was living with Dockery and set up a workout. Now they hope he’ll challenge for the right tackle job.
“He can change directions pretty well,” Zorn said. “My charge to him is being able to do that 70 times a game for 16 games. É [But] he has a lot of lean mass. He’s not a fat guy.”
Williams played four years in Buffalo and never lived up to expectations, partly because of back and ankle injuries. His back prevented him from playing when he signed with Jacksonville in ’06.
One word never felt right to him: retired.
“I’m not motivated by trying to erase what happened,” said Williams, who runs an oil fields business in Texas. “This is a clean slate. I’m built for this game. I’m made to hit people. When my time is up in football I will know and my time wasn’t up.”
