Art Briles Says Baylor's 6'8" TE LaQuan McGowan Has 'Slimmed Down' to 403 Pounds

I've got good and bad news for Big 12 secondaries.

The good news is LaQuan McGowan has slimmed down significantly this offseason. The bad news is he's still the size of a logging truck.

Baylor head coach Art Briles dropped a terrifying progress nugget on the assembled press at Big 12 media days Tuesday. According to Fox Sports' Bruce Feldman, Briles said his 6'8" tight end has worked himself down to 403 pounds since season's end.

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The scary thing is, Briles wasn't being entirely facetious. As Fox Sports' Stewart Mandel noted, McGowan said he was 440 with pads on at the Cotton Bowl in January.

Even once you've subtracted pad weight (which maxes out at around 15 pounds), you're still looking at a weight loss of around 25 pounds—a measurable drop for McGowan and a huge figure for standard-issue humans who aren't frost giants.

This means McGowan could be faster this year—a scary prospect for anyone who watched him waltz in untouched for a touchdown against Michigan State in the Cotton Bowl.

Briles said he'll be keeping McGowan to a limited play count, presumably as an act of mercy for opposing safeties.

Now, clearly, McGowan at tight end is an absurd luxury only college football could provide. No coach should be able to have a 6'8", 400-pound specialty player tucked away just for red-zone passing patterns.

But here we are, in the Year of Our Lord 2015, watching Andre the Giant stand-ins carve through secondaries like sashimi. What a time to be alive.

Dan is on Twitter. The key to tackling McGowan is getting low to the ground and just staying there until he's gone.