To hear Bryant McKinnie tell it, there’s no mystery to his absence from minicamp practices last week.
To be specific, there are nine reasons.
McKinnie said in May he weighed 365 pounds. The Ravens want him at 345, max. He told WNST radio host Glenn Clark (via BaltimoreRavens.com) he left minicamp at 354, and is optimistic he’ll be cleared for training camp.
“They just told me when I had the meeting, just for precautionary [reasons], not to go out there and get injured during minicamp and just do the running and the lifting and stuff,” McKinnie said. “So I was just in there, lifting and running for the whole two and half hours.
“And then at the same time still getting the conditioning and everything together. We’re just trying to work to get there without anything slipping up or going wrong.”
Anytime weight is an issue, there’s a chance something’s going wrong with McKinnie.
The Vikings cut him a year ago for being out of shape, but the Ravens don’t seem so inclined. Coach John Harbaugh told reporters last week “It’s not as simple as some of you want to make it.”
Pragmatically, Harbaugh has reason to defend McKinnie. He could move Michael Oher to left tackle, but the preference is obviously to try to motivate McKinnie back into the kind of shape he was in when he was a Pro Bowler.