By Jamie Nye

Rodrique Wright slimming down to make a bigger impact with the Saskatchewan Roughriders

Jun 4, 2011 | 1:10 PM

When Rodrique Wright came to the Saskatchewan Roughriders in October of last year, it was hard to miss the man known as 'Rodzilla'. He towered over everyone along the defensive line at 6'5 and 315 lbs.

Wright found out early in his CFL career that being tall and heavy means nothing in the CFL if you can't run sideline to sideline, describing his first and only game last season as a 'circus'. Wright's largest offseason goal to get him ready for his first training camp with the Roughriders was to shed those extra pounds. Wright has lost 20 pounds and feels like he's much better prepared for the Canadian Football League.

“I'm moving better and feeling a lot better with my wind,” explained the Texas Longhorn alum, “The other thing I worked on was getting the timing down on getting the yard off the ball and it's getting a lot better as these three days have gone on.”

Wright was thrown into the fire right away in his CFL career, playing a game after just two weeks of practice under his belt. This year he'll be put through the paces of camp with the rest of his teammates and thinks he got a head start on the veterans by taking part in three days at rookie camp.

“Training camp is all about the good, the bad and the ugly so just being able to get out here and just get corrected and have a coach, coach me up … I just feel really good after these three days.”

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Defensive coordinator Richie Hall also sees that Rodrique Wright is a different player than he was last year when he played his only game against Hall's Eskimos.

“You don't need to be that big to play up here. You don't see too many defensive linemen at 300 pounds as if you get them around 285-290 that's perfect because the game is a lot different than it is state side.”

Wright will try to make a spot along the defensive line with his main competition to replace the released Marcus Adams will be CFL veteran Dario Romero.

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