mcfadden does have chicken legs compared to those archetype backs. Ever seen the commercial, where he's running through different backgrounds?
I can't help but to notice that his legs are like a wideouts.'
I wonder what he's squatting.
JUST A TID BIT OF INFO FOR POJ
Darren McFadden's Muscle Building Program
Inside the NFL's Muscle Factory
Oakland Raiders rookie Darren McFadden had a simple goal: to be the fastest and strongest running back in the NFL. So he put on 15 pounds of muscle in 6 weeks. Here's how
Luckily, Johnson had plenty of raw materials to work with: "As good as Darren is," said Lance Walker, the center's 38-year-old director of performance, "he still has so much upside."
No other major sports league rewards blue-chip rookies like the NFL does. Players drafted early are set for life. This year's first overall pick, Jake Long, already earns more than any offensive lineman in football. Heck, he earns more than Tom Brady made last year. If he excelled at the NFL Combine, McFadden would be paid like a superstar, before he took a single handoff. That's a lot of pressure on a 21-year-old.
"Superior athletic ability is not enough anymore," Johnson said as he showed me around. "You can have talent and a great work ethic, but if you're not working smart, you're not getting better. We show our athletes how to work smart."
As he said this, McFadden slid onto a bench, prepping his grip on the 225-pound bar. At the Combine, athletes are judged not on how much weight they lift, but on how many reps they can complete. McFadden took three deep breaths and began.
"Come on! Explode!" Walker encouraged. McFadden picked up speed and hammered out 16 reps--a below-average total for a running back.
Walker turned to me. "He's still recovering." Indeed, McFadden was battered and bruised from his junior year at Arkansas, when he averaged almost 40 touches a game and ran for more than 1,800 yards.
If you're looking for a one-game microcosm of his season, go back to Baton Rouge on November 23, 2007. LSU was the number-one team in the nation and hoping to stay on track for a BCS title shot. The game was in Tiger Stadium, a.k.a. Death Valley, where LSU had won 19 straight. When McFadden took the field, he faced the best team in the country, fueled by 90,000 delirious fans.
Then, over 4 grueling hours, he silenced them with 206 yards and three touchdowns rushing, including a 73-yard run in the third quarter. He also threw a critical TD in the fourth quarter. After the triple-overtime thriller, defeated LSU coach Les Miles admitted he had assigned two of his best defenders to shadow McFadden for the entire game. "He didn't go down," Miles said.
Indeed, McFadden plays every game, every play, at full speed. And it takes a toll. When he arrived at Johnson's facility, he hadn't done a single squat since a knee injury and surgery in high school (and still never missed a game). His college coaches wouldn't let him. "When you have a star like Darren, you don't want to mess him up," said Walker. "But it's our job to find holes in his potential, so he can optimize his performance. And the squat trains the knees, hips, and ankles in a way that's functional for football. It can make you faster and it allows you to feel more stable on cuts and breaks."
Almost on cue, McFadden moved to the squat rack and did a light set at 135 pounds. He was improving, but he had a ways to go.
(The average NFL player can squat 500 pounds.) "We're starting slow," Walker told me. "But soon, we'll have his core and joint stability back to where it should be, and we'll add some load to him."
Two weeks later, McFadden squatted 405 pounds five times.