The Kansas City Chiefs are getting a changed version of DE Frank Clark for the 2022 NFL season.
Clark has gone through an offseason transformation, both mentally and physically in hopes of finding more success on the football field. Since his arrival via trade with the Seattle Seahawks in 2019, Clark has been on a bit of a downward trend in terms of his health and performance.
What helped prompt a new and improved Clark for the upcoming season was a heart-to-heart with Chiefs head coach Andy Reid after the conclusion of the 2021 NFL season.
“Yeah, it was flat-out like, ‘I know what type of player you are and you know what type of player you are. You didn’t show that this season.’ Flat-out,” Clark said of the conversation. “I understand that. Me and Coach Reid, we’re very real. Coach Reid’s from East Los Angeles, I’m from South-Central. It’s the same thing. At the end of the day, we’re going to keep it real with each other. We’re West Coast boys, we’re LA boys. At the end of the day, I understand. We relate perfectly fine with each other. We both had to work hard to get here. There wasn’t nothing easy in life.
“So I come in last year and I’m going through what I’m going through, but at the end of the day, I still have a job to do. And I didn’t do my job like I should have — in my opinion — to the best of my capability. You watch the average player get five sacks a year, but to my standard that’s not good enough and obviously to my coaches. And I appreciate (them) for holding me to that standard.”
Knowing that he had to make changes in his life, both for himself and for his family, Clark began cutting out the things that he found to be most destructive to his health. He dumped red meat and liquor in an attempt to get the stomach issues that he’s been battling since 2019 under control.
“One of the main things, I cut a lot of red meat out,” Clark said. “I stopped drinking liquor. Alcohol is a big factor in a lot of things as far as the weight with the gut. At the end of the day, I stopped drinking liquor about right after the season honestly. It was like February. I got sick, you know, I’ve been having stomach problems and stuff — gastrointestinal problems. So, I haven’t had any (stomach problems) since I stopped drinking liquor and it kind of made sense. As I’m going on and training, I feel my body is responding to me. I’m able to get up and work out at all times of the day and night. That’s really it, it was a commitment I made.”
Clark’s physical transformation has been quite apparent as he reported to camp at a lighter weight than he had in each of the three years prior. He was pictured in the offseason looking quite slim, but he expects that the trimmed weight will lead to more explosive plays during the upcoming season.
“Last year, I came into came camp, I believe I was 262,” Clark said. “That was heavy— the heaviest I had been since really my third year in the league with Seattle. I was playing at 255-250 in the latter half of my career. You know, I just wanted to get back to that. I wanted to get back to feeling my feet. I feel like I wasn’t feeling my feet last year. I wasn’t quick off the ball, I wasn’t explosive. It was obvious. You can watch the film and see it. I was way heavier, I had a gut. I was looking sloppy out there.”
In order to ensure that he no longer looked “sloppy” on the football field and looked his best, Clark said that he “needed to get back in the lab” and needed to “refocus on his craft” in order to get both his physical and mental health where it needed to be.
“The type of guy I am, I’m a professional,” Clark explained to reporters. “I understand how this goes. So at the end of the day, you’ve got to come in in a presentable fashion in everything you do. Me, as a professional, I felt like I needed to change my body, I needed to change my mental and that’s exactly what I did.”
Reformed and changed, Clark hopes that he can help the Chiefs achieve their goals during the upcoming season. He didn’t like how things ended in the AFC title game last year and he knows that he wasn’t at his best. Whether 2022 is his last season in Kansas City or not, Clark restructured his contract and worked to make the necessary changes this offseason to ensure that he came back to finish things the right way.
“You know how we are here, we want to set the bar high and keep it there,” Clark said. “Like I said, we left on a sour note, I wanted to come back and finish on a good note.”
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