Jacksonville Jaguars OG Ben Bartch no longer drinks smoothies

With left guard Andrew Norwell out with an elbow injury, the Jacksonville Jaguars have turned to second-year offensive lineman Ben Bartch to take his place in the lineup. If Norwell isn’t good to go in the Jags’ Week 3 preseason game, Bartch will get the starting nod.

Bartch recently met with the local media and talked about the things he’s done to prepare for the upcoming season. Heading into the draft, he went viral because of the smoothies he used to drink to gain weight during his college days. He said he’s ditched them since he no longer needs the calories and now drinks plenty of water and eats a lot of good healthy whole foods.

Regarding his regime training, Bartch says he spent two months in California and later started training with Jaguars strenght and conditioning coach Anthony Schlegel. However, the 2020 fourth-round pick doesn’t think he’s doing anything out of the ordinary, “just the basics, meat and potatoes stuff, just go into work early, doing everything you need to do in the weight room for the amount of time you need.”

Bartch appeared in 11 games in his rookie year with one start and played 21 percent of the team’s offensive snaps. He missed the last two games of the 2020 season after he was placed on the COVID-19/Reserve list at the end of the year. The former St. John’s Johnny has started the Jaguars’ last two preseason games and is a good bet to make it three in a row against the Dallas Cowboys on August 29.

The Jacksonville Jaguars’ offensive line is full of hard workers.

When asked about the calling card of the offensive line, Bartch talked about how the work he and his teammates have put in and what they want to achieve.

"I think, in our room, there’s a lot of hard workers, and everybody has really big goals, and everybody in our room wants to win, really bad. And the way that we’re going to do that is run the ball. So for us going forward, it’s controlling what we can control every single day, our film study our communication work ethic in the weight room, and we just control that."

Bartch has played 60 offensive snaps in the preseason and posted Pro Football Focus grades of 74.6 against the Cleveland Browns and 61.8 versus the New Orleans Saints. Once Norwell is healthy, Bartch will return to the bench but all the work he’s getting will be valuable in his long-termn development. Keep in mind that the Jaguars have struggled to run the ball in the preseason and head coach Urban Meyer pointed to perimeter blocking issues and many missed assignments as two reasons for the inability to get their running game going.

Their Week 3 matchup versus the Cowboys will give the Jacksonville Jaguars a chance to fix those issues. Also, it will give Bartch the opportunity to gain more experience ahead of the 2021 NFL regular season.