FOXBORO, Mass. — LeGarrette Blount had no desire to talk about conditioning Saturday in his return to New England Patriots practice.
Blount landed on the non-football injury list earlier this week after reportedly failing his conditioning test. He practiced Saturday in the Patriots’ first full-pads session of training camp.
“I don’t know,” Blount said when asked why he missed the first two Patriots training camp practices.
And what does the conditioning test entail?
“Conditioning,” Blount said. “It’s a test. It’s a conditioning test.”
Blount shined in practice, conditioned or not. He showed off the same quickness, burst and power that helped him run for 281 yards on 60 carries with three touchdowns last season for the Patriots.
“It felt good,” Blount said about his return to practice. “You want to be there. You want to be there for sure. It’s just a process of wanting to get better. You gotta do everything you gotta do to get there, to get on the field and be there and go through the grind with your teammates.”
This is an important offseason for Blount, since he begins the year with a one-game suspension. That could allow Jonas Gray, Tyler Gaffney or Brandon Bolden to leapfrog Blount as the team’s starting running back. Blount appeared to be the front runner for the job, however, in his first practice. He was leaps and bounds better than his competition as he went against the Patriots’ first-team defense.
Blount has started eight of 21 games with the Patriots over the last two seasons. He has 213 carries for 1,053 yards with 10 touchdowns and has averaged 4.9 yards per carry. He also was valuable for the Patriots in the playoffs the last two seasons, running for 361 yards on 76 carries with seven touchdowns in five games.
Thumbnail photo via Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports Images
