“Doubling down on all our fundamentals,” Fairchild says. “Pass and run. I know that Coach Peters has done a great job this year teaching us those fundamentals. Breaking down for every single guy, breaking down what he wants and what our specific set of fundamentals are.
“Hands are a big thing I need to continue to develop. Just like my strikes, my combinations. Playing long. These are tools and things that we use that are essential. True mastery of it all is to develop all the tools that you have and use them when they need to be used. That’s why O-linemen have our tool belt. There are different situations and different times you use your tools. True mastery of anything is sharpening those tools where you can use any one of them at any time, and that’s kind of where I want to be.”
Where Fairchild was a year ago is a very different place. Uncertain what the draft would hold, he abstained from the all-star games to get his battered body ready for the NFL scouting combine.
After fighting through a knee injury that cost him two games early in this season and dealing with a variety of pulls the rest of the way (“just bothersome, nothing that kills you,”), he’s devoting much of the offseason to getting ready for the sophomore grind.
“Taking care of my body was kind of the biggest thing this year that kind of slowed me,” Fairchild says. “That’s the No. 1 thing I’m trying to work on is being disciplined in my stretching, what I eat, and hydrating.”
Unlike last year at this time, Fairchild was a bit more focused on last Sunday’s conference championship games. Super Bowl-bound Patriots left guard, Jared Wilson is another Georgia buddy, his old center, and fellow third-rounder who went 14 slots after Fairchild.
“You want to be there. I want to be there, obviously,” Fairchild says. “That’s where we want to be. That’s all I’m thinking about. This next year … Guys are still playing football right now, and that’s where we want to be this next year. We’re going to show up next year and go kick some ass. That’s our attitude and that’s what we plan to do.”
Fairchild isn’t worried about “the thief of joy,” a wonderful line that has been attributed to everyone from Theodore Roosevelt to William Shakespeare but has its roots in “The Bible.” He says it’s the sharpest tool he has.
“That’s the biggest thing for me that I try to live my life by,” says Fairchild, back in the shed. “It’s like the tool belt thing. There are different tools, different sayings, different phrases.”