Broncos WR Decker detects red-cell advantage


Eddie Royal inhaled and exhaled, while his opponents huffed and puffed.

The fourth quarter had arrived, and Royal wondered what the fuss was because he was feeling spry.

Royal and his fellow Denver Broncos had come down from the Rocky mountains to play a road game, and it was as if they had an extra lung.

“You’re not as tired,” Royal said. “During the fourth quarter, I think you really notice it a lot. You don’t feel like you had played a whole game because you were still pretty fresh.”

The Broncos are the Sherpas of the NFL. Mountain people. Alpine athletes. They live a mile up. Everyone else in the NFL looks up at them.

Rarefied air is their friend. The fourth quarter is their domain.

It’s often thought the Broncos have an advantage at home, where they’ll face the Chargers on Sunday, because opponents must adjust to the thin air. Exertion at altitude can cause headaches and shortness of breath.

Cris Collinsworth, a former Cincinnati Bengals receiver, now a football analyst for NBC, said he had to lie on the sideline during a game in Denver, so exhausted was he by the piercing air.

Less considered is the advantage the Broncos may enjoy on the road as the NFL’s only altitude-conditioned team. (The Arizona Cardinals train for about four weeks at Flagstaff, elevation 7,000 feet, before returning to Phoenix).

Royal, now a Charger, isn’t the only receiver to report the bliss of having more stamina than the home team.

Broncos receiver Eric Decker says he has reaped a perceived red-blood-cell bonanza, both home and away.

“If you live here year-round like I do,” Decker said on Wednesday from Denver, “I do believe that it’s an advantage because scientifically, you produce more red blood cells than you do at sea level. When you go down to sea level, those red blood cells give you more oxygen and give you the endurance and stamina.”

Whatever conditioning edge the Broncos may enjoy, however, is in their mind, not their lungs.

That is the view of one expert on high-altitude training.

“The only advantage the Denver Broncos have is psychological,” said Sean Anthony, director of HYPO2 Sports, a Flagstaff-based company that matches endurance athletes and sports teams with high-altitude training sites.

Anthony said that training at altitude can stimulate red-cell production. He disagrees that football players run continuously long enough during games for it to be a factor.

If a football play lasted at least two minutes, the Broncos may have an edge, he said. But a typical play is over in a matter of seconds.

“If you think about it, you’re talking about a very, very short duration for plays," he said. "That’s why you can have a guy who is 350 pounds playing. Because he only has to do it for only a few seconds, he’s not depending on the oxygen-carrying capacity of red cells to do it for him.”

Decker said Broncos coach John Fox, in his second season on the job, has instilled a finish-the-game mentality in his team.


