LAKE FOREST — When the Bears traded up for long and lean Leonard Floyd last month, they bet on Floyd and their veteran coaches, but also the strength and conditioning staff to mold his body into NFL form.
Perhaps the work Jason George and his assistants did with Hroniss Grasu over the past year helped persuade Ryan Pace to make such a gamble.
Grasu arrived in Chicago as a third-rounder last spring with sterling intangibles to become a long-term center fixture; he just needed to add bulk after playing in the Ducks' hyper-speed spread attack at around 290 pounds.
Fast-forward a year and Grasu tips the scales at 310 — "all good weight," he said.
"That’s the heaviest I’ve ever been, but I don’t feel like it," Grasu said Wednesday following the Bears' OTA. "I feel like I’m in the 290s. My body-fat percentage is the same as it was before when I was in the high-290s, 300. So it’s all good."
He credits entrusting the Bears, his own trainer Ryan Flaherty, and his family's culinary background in helping the transformation. Grasu said he could've put on the weight quickly, but he's benefited more from a more gradual and natural process.
"Just put it on slowly... But my weight’s up there and I feel good out there. I’m stronger and it should be good," he said.
Grasu's strength limitations were noticeable in his first preseason and on his first NFL series, which ended in Pro Bowl nose guard Dontari Poe overowering Grasu en route to a strip-sack of Jay Cutler resulting in a safety. But to his credit, Grasu made impressive strides throughout his eight rookie starts despite admitting, like all rookies, learning the systems was another lengthy process.
"... I thought I knew a lot about the playbook, but once I got through this offseason I realized, wow, it's crazy what Year One to Year Two, how much you can get better at," Grasu said.
His expectations as a sophomore, then, are to play with a lot more confidence, which will help unlock Grasu's added strength but also the speed and agility Chicago is prioritizing more in its O-line this season.
And any confidence issues he endured as a rookie, Grasu said, will become a teaching point for second-round guard Cody Whitehair. Grasu plans to mentor Whitehair, just as Matt Slauson and Will Montgomery did for him, while continuing to reap the beneits from the experience of new teammates, Manny Ramirez and Ted Larsen.
"[Whitehair] got drafted here and I just told him, your rookie year will be the hardest year and everyone expects great things out of you, but just trust yourself, trust that you're a very good player," he said.
Indeed, Grasu's growth — both figuratively and literally — has made him more confident as he attempts to win his starting job again. It's a new year, and a second opportunity for Grasu to establish himself as a fixture in the middle of the Bears' revamped line.
"No longer a rookie," summarized Grasu of his in-house evaluation after last season. "Got to take the next step of being one of the leaders on the offensive line. By playing center, you're naturally in a position to lead the offensive line, and luckily I have guys around me that are great leaders.
"The whole offensive line unit, we're gonna lead this offense and lead this team together and we're very confident in our room, confident in our team to take the next step forward."
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