Ravens TE Nick Boyle transformed his food plan and worked out with a former Steelers star. Now he’s ‘a totally new dude.’

The greatest compliment Nick Boyle might’ve gotten this offseason is that he doesn’t search like Nick Boyle any more. Or at the very least not like the Nick Boyle of recent memory.

Said offensive coordinator Greg Roman: “He appears like a absolutely new person this calendar year. It’s unbelievable what he’s accomplished, the challenging do the job he’s place in.”

And very first-calendar year tight finishes mentor George Godsey: “You can obviously notify, wanting at him, he’s physically unique.”

And mentor John Harbaugh: “He does appear like a new person.”

The more the Ravens restricted end gets from the misery of the earlier two seasons, the greater. Injuries have confined Boyle, 29, to just five video games since he underwent what he termed “the worst surgical treatment of my lifetime,” a 2020 knee procedure that fixed his meniscus, PCL, MCL and fracture injury. A clear-up procedure previous summertime delayed Boyle’s comeback, and he remained hobbled immediately after returning to action final season.

At the Ravens’ organized group functions, however, his limp is barely obvious. Any fears about the November 2020 personal injury that derailed his job are mostly long gone, far too. Boyle claimed Wednesday that he feels “really, actually fantastic correct now,” and he’s performed like it in Owings Mills.

“There’s times where I really do not sense as very good, and there is times exactly where I come to feel like a million bucks,” he mentioned soon after Wednesday’s voluntary follow. “And which is nonetheless form of functioning by it at this place. But it is not like any place close to previous 12 months. … I really feel so considerably much better and I’m just ready to go. Seriously fired up to be out there and collaborating.

“That’s the worst thing — you are in there [the facility], just watching out the window like a tiny kid. Sitting down out there, I’m like, ‘Man, I just want to go out there.’ And to be capable to go again out there and sense excellent even though staying out there is a blessing.”

The Ravens’ hope is that a lighter Boyle could be a far better Boyle, a much more out there Boyle. When he emerged as the flexible hammer in the Ravens’ history-breaking rushing assault four many years back, he weighed about 280 lbs .. Boyle had to be potent adequate to scrap with edge rushers on perform-motion drop-backs and nimble plenty of to consider on linebackers and safeties in space.

With obligatory minicamp significantly less than a 7 days absent, Boyle estimated that he weighs about 262 pounds — “but I sense good, and I’m way more robust than I was.” He wanted significantly less strain on his left knee, so he altered his diet program. He fully commited to consuming four prepared meals a working day, with no area for snacking.

“My spouse would prepare dinner stuff and I would not eat it,” he reported. “She would dislike that. She’d be like, ‘I’m just cooking for our young ones now,’ and they are like 2 [years old and] 1 [year old]. So it was actually, I want to say, fulfilling to see that work variety of pay off and to go on it to get again on the field the way I want to.”

Small about Boyle’s offseason was traditional. Eager for a “change of landscapes,” he attained out to his agent and ended up relocating with his family to Arizona, not significantly from buddy and fellow tight stop Mark Andrews’ house. For two months, Boyle worked to rehabilitate “every working day,” fueled by the uncertainty of whether or not he’d at any time glance like the participant who, in 2019, had commanded a three-year, $18 million deal extension.

He even finished up operating out with previous Pittsburgh Steelers outside linebacker James Harrison, who was also performing out in Arizona. Boyle didn’t tactic Harrison at initially — “It was variety of like, ‘He was a Pittsburgh Steeler. No a single genuinely likes him’” — but right after a few of times alongside one another, they started out chatting and coaching with each other.

“That dude’s super robust,” Boyle said of Harrison, a single of the NFL’s elite defenders for the duration of his enjoying career. “I experience like an eighth-grader future to him fifty percent the time when I’m out there.”

Boyle returned to Baltimore improved prepared for the rigors of the year in advance. He recalled how “demoralizing” very last time was his wife as opposed his psychological journey to a roller coaster’s, the highs of just one day undercut by the lows of an additional. Boyle needed to play, even as his banged-up overall body (and then the coronavirus) told him he was not pretty ready. Soon after participating in 32 offensive snaps in his 2022 debut, a Week 10 win over the Chicago Bears, Boyle was constrained to 63 snaps around the up coming 4 game titles.

“Last year, he just was not the same dude,” Harbaugh mentioned. “I imply, that injuries was a lousy personal injury. Unquestionably, we all hoped he’d come back again previous year and be completely ready to go, but he just could not do it. And then he did have a setback or two in there along the way. Now it is just all clicked. And he appears to be like Nick, but I would say he seems to be a very little a lot quicker and a very little more quickly than he did right before.”

Even with the Ravens’ expenditure in tight ends and fullbacks this offseason — standard supervisor Eric DeCosta re-signed Professional Bowl assortment Patrick Ricard and drafted Isaiah Probably and Charlie Kolar in the fourth spherical — there should really be a spot for a healthful Boyle on the team’s 53-guy roster this summer time. He’s the ideal in-line blocker among the the Ravens’ restricted finishes, a talent that allows Andrews to line up in the slot, exactly where the All-Pro is most perilous.

Boyle explained Wednesday that he’s “on a good path.” He also is aware he nevertheless has to get to the finish of it.

“He feels very good,” Godsey reported. “And we’re checking that as we go. Mentally, he’s there for the young men, but bodily, he feels excellent. It is early, like I explained. [When] we put the pads on, we’ll see how that problem goes when we get there.”

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