Shaquil Barrett is a stud. With just one career start and only eight total games under his belt, the outside linebacker from Colorado State is proving that he has just as much upside as any young defender in the league.
So how did the kid who has 3.5 sacks, 31 tackles and four forced fumbles in limited minutes go undrafted just two years ago?
Well, he was fat.
Robert Klemko of MMQB went down to Dove Valley to see what was behind Barrett’s remarkable rise to stardom, and what he found seemed to surprise even Barrett.
“I didn’t realize how bad I was until I saw that picture,” Barrett said. “How come nobody told me I looked like that?”
The picture he’s talking about is a rather unflattering photo that popped up on the pass rusher’s Timehop earlier this season. In the image, you could see Barrett, his No. 56 Rams jersey and … a world-class muffin top.
Barrett may have been one of the most effective defenders in college football during his senior season, notching 12 sacks and a Mountain West record 20.5 tackles for loss, but his 24 percent body fat stood out as a major concern for NFL scouts and is the fundamental reason for why Barrett slipped out of the draft entirely.
And if you’re wondering how an elite athlete can let fat get in the way of a career in football, it’s actually pretty simple: Sugar, sugar, sugar.
“In college I put sugar on my spaghetti or lasagna,” Barrett said, claiming that he would use up to seven packs a sitting. “That’s why I have to stay away from pasta, because the only way I can eat it is with sugar.”
But it wasn’t necessarily Barrett’s fault. As you can gain from his reaction to the Timehop image, he had no idea how bad it had really gotten. And when you’re a husband and father of three living on a minimal student-athlete budget, making wholesale changes to your diet isn’t exactly a top priority.
“The college budget and a healthy diet don’t really fit, because the healthy food always costs more,” Barrett said. “And it wasn’t really what we were thinking about. We always paid the rent first so we’d at least have a roof.”
Everything changed, though, when Barrett landed 70 miles south of Fort Collins at the Denver Broncos practice facility, one of only 12 in the NFL to retain a full-time dietician. From the second Barrett met Bryan Snyder, who has been with the organization since 2009, he was all in, ready to do whatever it took to make his NFL dream a reality.
“With some players it takes a couple of weeks to start the process,” Snyder said. “I met with Shaq in the morning, and at the end of the day, after he lifted, he came to me like, where’s my recovery shake? He was holding me accountable.”
And this week, as Barrett prepares to make his second career start (at just 11.5 percent body fat), it’s clear that he’s done everything within his power to transform himself into an elite NFL pass rusher.