“I feel like myself I’m motivated to do some big things this year,” said Raiders wide receiver Henry Ruggs III.
The 12th overall pick and first receiver taken in the 2020 draft did not do big things as a rookie. Jon Gruden describes Ruggs as a “difference-maker”, but you don’t take a receiver that high only to see him play decoy. You also don’t draft him to be one-dimensional.
Ruggs was known as a speed guy coming out of Alabama. A deep threat. And not much else. Gruden clearly sees Ruggs as his version of Tyreek Hill who is a speed guy, but a whole lot more than that. Ruggs’s answer? Bulk up.
The 5-11, 188-pounder says he packed on 13 pounds, which would put him at over 200 pounds currently.
“It was my main focus,” Ruggs said of his weight gain. It’s a man’s game now. I’m not the biggest guy, but I have to get to where I can compete with grown men now, so that was one of my biggest things that I hammered on was getting bigger, eating all the time and just hammering down in the weight room. People are saying I am noticeably bigger, so I guess it’s paying off.”
Ruggs is making a distinction between what he was able to accomplish at the college ranks and what clearly was a shock to his system at the pro level. It’s a good sign that he is recognizing that he isn’t simply going about things as he always did, but that he needed to make changes.
As you might expect, Ruggs doesn’t think the weight game will affect his speed. As he put it, he made sure to continue to focus in the weight room on “the little guy things”
The main area of the game that had Ruggs bulking up was to improve as a blocker. And he says it was mostly personal.
“Sometimes if I’m blocking I’m just like getting in the way and sometimes I’m moved out of the way and I didn’t like that personally, so I don’t want to be a guy who’s just thrown around and just trying to be in the way,” Ruggs added.
Head coach Jon Gruden said this week that the Raiders will continue to build the offense around tight end Darren Waller and he will look to the wide receivers on the team to take pressure off of his Pro Bowl tight end. Ruggs can do that by becoming more of a threat to the opposing defenses.
The question now is if packing on some muscle mass will help him with that. He hadn’t shown much of his world-class speed last season, but part of that was his inability to shed defenders. Some play strength could serve him well in that aspect. From there it will be about separating. That’s when we’ll see if his added weight has affected his speed.
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