Jim Bates Still Haunting Roy Miller
June 18th, 2011
Bates needed/wanted big bodies to play his heinous two-gap system, even if the bodies on his roster couldn’t be their best selves with all that extra beef. It was an embarassing miscalculation by Raheem Morris, which led to Rock Riley chasing down Bates at a fast food joint after he was defrocked by the Bucs midseason.
It’s been about 20 months since Bates was put out to pasture, but the edicts of that woeful era are still haunting Miller, so he told “Old School” of WhatTheBuc.net, during the website’s online radio show Thursday night.
Old School: In some ways, you’re kind of lost in the shuffle in the middle there with this revamped D-line. Where can you stand out?
Roy Miller: What I’ve been doing this offseason is losing a bunch of weight. I really, I’ve been playing at a weight that I never really played at, and even in college I always stayed around 290, 285. When I first came into Tampa, my coach, we were kind of more in a 4-3, two-gap type defense and I gained that weight because they told me to gain, and I never really could shake it, man. I mean, I got down. My first year I was like 325, and coming from 285 was crazy. Last year I was down to 316. I just want to keep getting back down. I want to just get off the ball and get back to what I’m used to and just do my thing. You’re right. You could say I’m, whatever, ‘lost in the shuffle.’ That’s fine with me. I just working to do what I got to do … and produce.”
Obviously, from Miller’s comments, he felt he was lacking burst last year and was perhaps a step slow. Very telling considering he started every game and was up the gut in the Bucs’ porous run defense and weak pass rush.
In addition to losing weight, Miller said he’s still bench pressing 540 pounds and has been focusing a lot this offseason on building his hand and forearm strength, areas he said he’s never focused on previously.
Still 23 years old, there’s no reason to think Miller can’t take his game up a couple of notches. He might have to if Brian Price’s unique injury isn’t ready for the rigors of the NFL.
June 18th, 2011 at 12:18 pm
What are the chances he could step in as LB from time to time to help the pass rush? Assuming he loses enough weight and gains speed I mean.
June 18th, 2011 at 12:30 pm
That’s funny, I’ve always been around 285- 295. I passed Bates in the hall one day, and within a month I shot up to 330!! The guy is some sorta Fat fairy!! It sucks, cause I could never take Roy to an all you can eat Wing Buffet- they’d never let us in. Damn you, Jim Bates, and your perverse obsession with Fattening up inocent young Men!! You may have doomed the whole franchise into being a bunch of Chubbies!!
June 18th, 2011 at 12:48 pm
Benching 540 lbs?? That’s INSANE.
June 18th, 2011 at 1:29 pm
I think I have the solution for Roy, it’s called “cardio.” You see, you go to the gym, and spent 30-60 minutes on these magical machines that make you move, but not the same way you do when you’re lifting weights. It’s incredible. I suggest Roy look into it. There’s this thing called a “treadmill” and an “elliptical” and there are even these classes where an instructor makes the class move all dance-like which is called “zumba.”
I’d have a little more sympathy for the guy if he was originally 160 and asked to add 40 pounds to his frame but as any ‘watch-fat-people-lose-weight-show’ will exemplify, losing weight when you are already 320 isn’t nearly as difficult since you have to eat a ridiculous amount to stay that way in the first place.
June 18th, 2011 at 2:29 pm
Yeah, I’m not sure I’m buying the “I can’t loose the weight” thing. Don’t get me wrong, I like Miller and think he is going to have a breakout year. But it has more to do with good coaching than poor eating.
June 18th, 2011 at 3:31 pm
You guys don’t know anything about how they train. First of all he was asked to gain 40 pounds to turn around and lose 25 pounds it’s tough. Then he has to keep his same strength while adding some explosiveness in his legs to make him quicker. Him getting on a treadmill for 30 minutes is dumb he does much more extensive high intensity training so stop putting the guy down it looks to me that he has a goal and he’s improving in the offseason. Keep doing your thing roy good luck
June 18th, 2011 at 3:34 pm
WHAT?? It s a lot harder to lose weight when you a big guy!! If you only weigh 160, eating one less French fry knocks ya down to 155- a noticeable difference! At 320, ya gotta eat one less pig a day- and you miss that! Then you have to lose 40 pounds to notice. 40 lbs is a first grader, just so ya know.
June 18th, 2011 at 3:50 pm
No Achetti, you don’t know anything about physiology.
A pound of muscle burns calories and more calories than a pound of fat (the actual number is up for debate). Roy Miller is obviously someone who has a ton of muscle right? So his metabolism is higher than someone who was either 320 and fat, or even someone 200 in addition to having higher caloric needs to keep that weight. Ask a number of NFL players about what it takes to “maintain weight” and a number of them will discuss the amount of things they put in their mouth to keep it up. Roy Miller obviously isn’t having as hard a time with this.
http://exercise.about.com/od/exerciseworkouts/f/muscle.htm
The concept is, you either restrict the food you eat (diet) or you burn off more calories with weight training (we know Roy does this) and cardio. If Roy Miller is anything like a number of weightlifters in America he probably has at least a mild allergy to the later.
Michael Phelps ate 12,000 calories a day while training for the Olympics. He happens to be a swimmer. Figure it out.
http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/Michael-Phelps-eats-12-000-calories-per-day?urn=oly-100671
June 18th, 2011 at 4:03 pm
you guys are seriously so ignorant, your making yourselves look stupid. if he just “stops eating so much” he’s gonna lose a lot of his muscle, something essential for an NFL DT. When you weight train you have to eat a lot of food, period. losing that weight isn’t as simple as you idiots seem to think it is.
June 18th, 2011 at 4:33 pm
DAMN… THATS A BIG CAT. STRONG TOO!!
June 18th, 2011 at 5:29 pm
I saw him at the Press Box once last year in jeans and a tshirt. I wouldn’t have guessed he was post 300. Meaning: the dude doesn’t have much fat on him at all. The bulk on him is mostly muscle. You don’t bench over 500 from being fat.
June 18th, 2011 at 7:20 pm
People act like dropping 40 lbs should be a walk in the park. I’d love to see any of the jabronis that can talk tough go through a workout with big Roy and see how long they last.
June 18th, 2011 at 9:25 pm
Tom dont come at me with these articles. If Roy was an everyday fat guy losing weight might be easier. but hes not, he has to maintain a certain strength and build and lose weight in a way thats conducive to him. He played well last year and obviously he has a personal goal for himself so stop finding fault with someone who is taking their game to the next level.
June 19th, 2011 at 10:14 am
He has learned from his coach to blame others for his failures.
Since the start of 2009, no team that has not changed head coaches has lost or fired more assistant coaches than the bucs. Why? I ask. Is it because the head coach is so good? Or is it because he blames people for his inadequacies?
June 19th, 2011 at 10:32 am
Its because it was time for a change in scheme Thomas. You would like to think that coaches on the highest level (the NFL) would be able to coach multiple schemes and techniques. But apparently, they are all pigheaded and have a one track mind. Their is lots of turnover for the assistant jobs in the NFL and their always will be for that reason.
June 19th, 2011 at 11:57 am
@Achettti
“If Roy was an everyday fat guy losing weight might be easier.”
Clearly you learned nothing(!) from what I posted.
You see it’s simple. muscle and fat both burn calories. So the more muscle or fat you have, the more calories you intrinsically burn. Someone 300 pounds will burn more calories a day that a 150 pounds person assuming they both engage in the same activities etc. Muscle happens to burn 3x (or more) calories a day than fat does. Thus someone 300 pounds full of muscle burns even MORE calories than a 300 pound fat person. Making it even easier for said musclebound person to drop weight if they so choose.
Get it yet?
June 19th, 2011 at 1:30 pm
So what is McCoy’s excuse since it cant be Bates?
June 20th, 2011 at 8:11 am
The interesting part to this follow-on was that in the interview Roy was not really blaming anyone. He simply said he was asked to gain weight and he felt it negatively affected his game. Subsequently, he is working on getting to a lower weight while improving his burst.
Personal Trainer talk aside (and you guys know how physically fit I am), that is a pretty innocent and, imo, positive step. Roy is strong and I am pretty sure we (as Bucs fans) would like to see him successful. How this became an issue of him blaming someone I am not sure other than the (accurate) point about the previous scheme.
June 20th, 2011 at 9:05 am
McCoy doesn’t need an excuse. Great rookie season. Should begin to show dominance this year. By next year- a feared QB stalker! Right as I predicted.