Wright Attitude, Wrong Workout

On the opening day of training camp, Bears GM Ryan Poles was astounded at the transformation first-round draft pick Darnell Wright made with his weight and body fat.

"This offseason he busted his butt," Poles said of his right tackle. "He's down. He lost weight. He lost body fat, He actually crushed the conditioning test. Like didn't break a sweat. So he's focused. He cares. He wants to be really good."

There's a reason he crushed it and lost 16 pounds as it turns out.

"Yeah, just working out in the offseason, I thought we had like more," Wright said. "I was looking at the wide receivers' running portion of the workout, so I was doing theirs.

"And then I came back and obviously we have different stuff (for linemen)."

The receivers run longer distance and need to get lower times.

Wright isn't about to go out and run a skinny post or do a hitch anytime soon, and the 16 pounds lost didn't hurt too much. At 333, he had a lot of pounds to give back.

"I know they had to run, like, 200 yards in 20-some seconds," Wright said. "They had to do, like, eight or nine or 10 (reps)."

When this off-season work was going on, Wright discovered what he had done.

"I was working out pretty hard," he said. "It was just like, 'oh, I thought it was different.'"

Well, the Bears did say they wanted mobile offensive linemen for that wide-zone blocking scheme.

Next week comes the real proof of Wright's efforts as the pads come on for the first time Tuesday. It's what linemen live for, rather than doing a wide receiver's workout in the off-season

"Just see how good I can do, if I can play up to par with some of the other guys, see what my role is, see how I can play," is what Wright is thinking about. "Yeah, just see how I can compete and stuff."

Technically, he will have things to check as he's finally being more physical.

"I'd say one big thing is just being disciplined with your hand placement and being disciplined like, for example, when you punch, you don't always want to wrap your hand outside because these guys are smarter players," Wright said. "They (defensive linemen) understand what you're doing, what you're giving them."

The thing Wright looks forward to showing most is his mean streak. It's not a wide receiver's mean streak, that's for sure.

"I think that's pretty much how all offensive linemen kind of play," Wright said. "That's kind of what you hang your hat on as an offensive lineman. Where it comes from, I don't know. It's something I think we all have."

What Wright has different now is a wide receiver's conditioning. So that will be an interesting mix to see applied to the right tackle position for the Bears.

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