Home with Alvin Kamara: Hard workouts, bold predictions and a hate for ‘squishy’ food

As the New Orleans Saints prep for a season with high expectations, much of that will be heaped upon their enigmatic star, Alvin Kamara.

Well known for his work on the field and lifestyle off it, the running back was recently shadowed around his native Atlanta from multiple workouts, where his routine and lifestyle was documented, all the way to his aversion to bananas.

Kamara and the Saints open up their preseason slate Thursday on the road against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Bleacher report feature begins a celebrity football game:

“Everything is a test with Kamara. ... He seeks to find an authentic person, and these tests determine how many layers he will peel back.

“If Kamara doesn’t sense something genuine, his walls don’t come down. Even close friends can become distant memories if they act out of character.

“ ‘He will cut you all the way off like you don’t exist,’ says friend and WNBA player Diamond DeShields.

“It’s why Kamara has been described as ‘weird’ or an ‘a------e’ by some within the NFL, but he won’t waste headspace offering a rebuttal beyond a shrug.

The scene shifts to a night club called Josephine:

“Kamara briefly stepped out of the section to dap up Falcons running back Devonta Freeman at his section, the only person he cared to genuinely acknowledge. Everyone else received half-hearted handshakes and head nods when they tried to spark up a conversation. He took a shot with Freeman before returning, one of two drinks Kamara had all night. ...

“ ‘I don’t want to be a celebrity,’ Kamara says. ‘That’s not my goal. I’m not interested in being the shit, or lit.’ The loudest aspect about Kamara the entire night was his outfit, a bright orange shirt designed by Tvenchy and volt yellow Adidas track pants.

“The club lights turn on just after 3 a.m. Kamara flashes the flight itinerary on his phone that he procrastinated to book until after dinner. He has to jetset to Miami at 5:50 a.m, where he trains during the offseason to make it to his 11 a.m. workout at Florida International University. He’s confident he’ll make his workout as he leaves for the airport.”

After his workout in Ft. Lauderdale:

“We leave to head to Smoothie King, where Kamara stops after every workout to order the same drink: a strawberry Hulk with no bananas, which he says he hates though he’s never had one, and extra peanut butter.

“ ‘I don’t eat mushy foods,’ says Kamara, who didn’t eat a peach cobbler his chef made during the offseason because it was gooey. ‘I just vividly remember not f-----g with foods, like, ‘Nope, I’m not eating that.’ Some of the s--t I’ve never even tasted. Like that s--t nasty.’ “

Later on

As he eats his sandwich, Kamara pulls out his phone, bypassing the 260 unread texts to open up Twitter. He doesn’t like searching his name on social media, knowing the habit of reading about himself can make people turn into “a whole f-----g a-----e,” but he’s determined to find his favorite highlight from his rookie season.

He has a buffet of Madden-like highlights to choose from, but he digs up the Saints’ Week 12 loss to the Los Angeles Rams. Right before halftime, Drew Brees dumps the ball off to Kamara in the flat. He outruns two linebackers and a safety, eludes the cornerback and then runs over another safety, moments before avoiding an attempt to shove him out of bounds. Kamara finally went down, but not before he dragged three defenders.

Thoughts after devastating, last-second loss in Minnesota:

“ ‘It’s a certain point where you f-----g just do everything could do, and s--t still don’t go your way,’ Kamara says about the game dubbed the Minneapolis Miracle. ‘That’s how I felt about that game. I felt like we did everything. We came all the way back, and then s--t just happened like that. That’s like some one-in-a-million-type shit.

“ ‘I couldn’t even be mad. I was mad, of course, but it was like how does that even f-----g happen? That’s not even real. It’s almost not realistic, like what the f--k?”

Kamara says he got over the game fairly quickly but was frustrated to see the Vikings allow 38 unanswered points in a blowout loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, who defeated the New England Patriots two weeks later in Super Bowl 52.

“We’d beat the s--t out of [the Eagles] cause we was rolling,” Kamara says. “If we won [versus Minnesota], I knew nobody was gonna stop us cause we came all the way back.”

The conversation gets Kamara excited for the upcoming season. He described 2017 as an “experiment” year for the Saints, and he believes everyone in the locker room knows what they are capable of accomplishing in 2018.