NFL players reaching critical mass
As they pile on the pounds, they’re forced to confront the risks to their health — and possibly their lives
By RANDY COVITZ
The Kansas City Star
<!-- begin body-content -->Chiefs guard Brian Waters trembled as he sat in a restaurant watching the news reports out of Denver.
Waters played the same position as San Francisco’s Thomas Herrion, who collapsed and died in the locker room after a preseason game in a stadium the Chiefs visit every season.
Making it even more eerie for Waters was that he and Herrion are from the same part of north Texas, and both took the same path to the NFL. They were undrafted out of college and toiled as practice-squad players and in NFL Europe.
And the most important common dominator Waters shared with Herrion was that both built themselves into huge men. Herrion was listed at 6 feet 3 inches and 315 pounds, but his actual weight was thought to be closer to 330. Waters is listed at 6-3, 318 pounds.
“It shook me,” Waters said. “You know that in this job we have, there are some health issues.”
The cause of Herrion’s death has not been determined. It’s possible that a previously undisclosed heart condition killed him. Herrion’s father suffered from diabetes and died last year of a stroke, and his mother suffers from high blood pressure.
Still, Herrion, 23, was the second 300-pound-plus offensive lineman in the NFL to die in the last four seasons. Minnesota offensive tackle Korey Stringer, who was 6-4, 346 pounds, died of complications from heatstroke during training camp in 2001.
Joe Waeckerle, an emergency physician retained by the Chiefs, is not convinced that Herrion’s size contributed to his death.
“You take all the deaths under 30 in athletes,” Waeckerle said, “and the most common cause of death is congenital abnormalities, especially of the heart. It’s a question of what God gave you when you’re born.”
Until the passing of Stringer, who was thought to be taking a diet supplement at the time of his death, the NFL has had only two noncontact fatalities since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970. Detroit’s Chuck Hughes, a 5-11, 175-pound wide receiver, died of a heart attack in a 1971 game against Chicago, and the St. Louis Cardinals’ J.V. Cain, a 6-4, 225-pound tight end, died of a heart attack at training camp in 1979.
So the deaths of Stringer and Herrion have some wondering whether too many players are risking their health — and their lives — by bulking up too much.
“We need to understand these guys are bigger than most people in society,” NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue told reporters after Herrion’s memorial service. “They are fitter than most people in society, and their jobs are more demanding. … We need to understand in a serious way what the risks are, to the extent there are risk factors. We’ve got to address them. We are working on it.”
There was a time when 300-pounders were rarities. As recently as 1990, only 39 players on NFL rosters exceeded 300 pounds. Last year, 370 players were listed at more than 300 pounds.
This summer, NFL teams listed 552 players at 300 pounds or more on training camp rosters, with Cleveland, Green Bay and Houston having the most at 23; the Jets the fewest with nine. The Chiefs have 18 players in camp who are at least 300 pounds, the heaviest being defensive lineman Junior Siavii at 336.
About 11 of those players should make the final roster, including offensive linemen Waters, Will Shields, Willie Roaf (both at 320), John Welbourn (310), Chris Bober (310), Kevin Sampson (312), Jordan Black (304) and Brett Williams (321), and defensive lineman Siavii, Lional Dalton (315) and Ryan Sims (315).
“Because of my height, because of the way my body is built, 310 is good for me,” Waters said. “But the 330, 340 guys, I would venture to say there’s not too many 350-pound guys who are stronger than me.
“That’s the thing that is bothersome about it. A lot of that weight is dead weight, and it’s useless. Any coach or any team that says, ‘We need you big and strong and bigger and bigger,’ that’s not being realistic. That does nothing for you.”
The Chiefs don’t seek players weighing in the 340s and 350s such as Arizona offensive tackle Leonard Davis (366) or Oakland defensive tackle Ted Washington (365 ) because their schemes require athleticism and agility, especially on the offensive line, where getting to the perimeter is essential.
“Willie Roaf is 320 pounds,” Chiefs president/general manager Carl Peterson said, “but he’s as light on his feet as anyone I know.”
But now it’s center Casey Wiegmann, at 285, who is considered a rarity. Of the 61 offensive linemen at the NFL scouting combine last February, 58 weighed at least 300 pounds; two were at 298, one at 299.
Chiefs rookie Will Svitek, a sixth-round draft pick, began his career at Stanford as a 235-pound tight end and is now trying to make it in the NFL as a 300-pound offensive tackle. Svitek, who played defensive line in college, acknowledges the pressure to get bigger, so he spends countless hours in the weight room.
“Without a doubt,” said Svitek, who stands a strapping 6 feet 6. “I gained 75 pounds in college. You definitely need to be a certain weight to play in this league, but I put that pressure on myself. I know for me to succeed in this league, I need to weigh over 300 pounds. But I feel like I’m in the best shape of my life.”
Waters, a former 215-pound college tight end before switching to defensive end and then offensive line as a professional, understands the dilemma facing young players like Svitek.
“The thing that bothers me the most,” Waters said, “is you realize when guys go through weight gains and then drop weight, you know it’s not good for your body. (Herrion) wasn’t an outrageously big guy. But there are a ton of those guys in this league.
“It’s something you wish the NFL would do a little more about.”
Since the death of Stringer, the NFL has made a concerted effort to monitor players’ fitness and address the dangers of excessive heat and hydration during training camp. Several teams, including the Chiefs, reduced the number of two-a-day practices at camp.
Beginning in 2004, teams were required to have an emergency physician at every practice, something the Chiefs have done for years. The trainers and medical staff conduct daily weigh-ins of players before and after practice and monitor their fluid intake and eating and sleeping habits.
Herrion had three physicals in the last eight months — an exit exam when he left San Francisco after last season, another when he reported to the NFL Europe training camp in Florida in February, and a third upon his return to the 49ers.
But a physical doesn’t guarantee detection of heart problems.
“The challenge for most any physicians who do sports physicals is you can’t pick up stuff like this because it’s so subtle,” Waeckerle said. “You need some very specific tests to be done, and we don’t do them on everybody. You do them only when they have symptoms or signs of a problem.
“The San Francisco player got stress by playing in a game, and afterward, if in fact he had a cardiac condition, his heart reacted, and he had sudden cardiac death. There’s always the chance that something unpredictable, unforeseen can happen to anybody.”
There were some questions about whether playing at Denver’s altitude could have affected Herrion, especially because he was on the field during a hurried, 14-play drive in the final 2 minutes of the game. But Gary Andersen, assistant head coach at the University of Utah, where Herrion played for two years, said he never remembered Herrion struggling with Salt Lake City’s thin air when he played for the Utes.
“We’ve all played up there in the Mile High,” said Rich Baldinger, a Chiefs offensive lineman from 1983 to 1992. “I’ve felt the pain, the lack of oxygen, the dizziness … you get it in the warmups.”
Baldinger was listed at 293 pounds in his final season with the Chiefs but said he played at 300.
“If there was that much problem with people weighing 300 pounds, we’d have a lot more of this happening, but we don’t,” Baldinger said. “When it does happen … you look at Korey Stringer. He was trying to lose a lot of weight in a couple of weeks.
“I always tried to make sure conditioning was a high point for me. During the offseason, I did whatever I could to make sure when the season came around, running was never a problem for me.”
Joyce Harp, a University of North Carolina endocrinologist, published a study in The Journal of the American Medical Association that said 97 percent of NFL players were overweight and 56 percent had a body mass that doctors would consider obese.
Many in the NFL believe the study was flawed because it fails to account for a player’s muscle mass and percentage of body fat.
“If you put 300 pounds on my body, you have an obese man,” said 49ers coach Mike Nolan. “If you put 300 pounds on some of our players’ bodies, you don’t.”
But there’s no denying the health risks NFL players take. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health surveyed 7,000 former players in 1994 and found that linemen had a 52 percent greater risk of dying from heart disease than the general population. Recent studies have shown the average life expectancy for NFL players is 55 years old — 52 for linemen.
That bothers Waters, who would like to see the league do more for players for their life after football.
“If you’re worrying about the state of the players, not just now, but in their lifetime, it’s something you’ve got to start teaching them now,” Waters said. “Guys learn all through college, they want to be big, big, big, big and get in the NFL, but once they get in the NFL, nobody says, ‘You’ve got to be healthy.’ What about when you’re 40; what about when you’re 50?
“We need better food programs, better teaching, almost making it a requirement.”
The Chiefs, like many teams, have a nutritionist on staff and provide sensible breakfasts and lunches for their players so they don’t pick up Egg McMuffins on the way to work or run out for bacon double cheeseburgers for lunch.
But sometimes, the players pass up the fruit and pasta and go for the pancakes and …
“Today we had fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy and beans and barbecued chicken,” Waters said last Tuesday. “A lot of carbs, a lot of fat, a lot of grease. I know guys love it, but the reality is it’s not good for you.”
No one is forcing the players to eat chicken wings, and nothing says Waters can’t pack a turkey sandwich. In the wake of Herrion’s death, he just might start brown-bagging it.
“You’re going to have to do something,” he said. “You have to be concerned about yourself. I have children, and you have families … this should be a wake-up call to a lot of guys.”
<!-- end body-content --><!-- begin body-end --><HR class=tagline color=#cccccc SIZE=1>
As they pile on the pounds, they’re forced to confront the risks to their health — and possibly their lives
By RANDY COVITZ
The Kansas City Star
<!-- begin body-content -->Chiefs guard Brian Waters trembled as he sat in a restaurant watching the news reports out of Denver.
Waters played the same position as San Francisco’s Thomas Herrion, who collapsed and died in the locker room after a preseason game in a stadium the Chiefs visit every season.
Making it even more eerie for Waters was that he and Herrion are from the same part of north Texas, and both took the same path to the NFL. They were undrafted out of college and toiled as practice-squad players and in NFL Europe.
And the most important common dominator Waters shared with Herrion was that both built themselves into huge men. Herrion was listed at 6 feet 3 inches and 315 pounds, but his actual weight was thought to be closer to 330. Waters is listed at 6-3, 318 pounds.
“It shook me,” Waters said. “You know that in this job we have, there are some health issues.”
The cause of Herrion’s death has not been determined. It’s possible that a previously undisclosed heart condition killed him. Herrion’s father suffered from diabetes and died last year of a stroke, and his mother suffers from high blood pressure.
Still, Herrion, 23, was the second 300-pound-plus offensive lineman in the NFL to die in the last four seasons. Minnesota offensive tackle Korey Stringer, who was 6-4, 346 pounds, died of complications from heatstroke during training camp in 2001.
Joe Waeckerle, an emergency physician retained by the Chiefs, is not convinced that Herrion’s size contributed to his death.
“You take all the deaths under 30 in athletes,” Waeckerle said, “and the most common cause of death is congenital abnormalities, especially of the heart. It’s a question of what God gave you when you’re born.”
Until the passing of Stringer, who was thought to be taking a diet supplement at the time of his death, the NFL has had only two noncontact fatalities since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970. Detroit’s Chuck Hughes, a 5-11, 175-pound wide receiver, died of a heart attack in a 1971 game against Chicago, and the St. Louis Cardinals’ J.V. Cain, a 6-4, 225-pound tight end, died of a heart attack at training camp in 1979.
So the deaths of Stringer and Herrion have some wondering whether too many players are risking their health — and their lives — by bulking up too much.
“We need to understand these guys are bigger than most people in society,” NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue told reporters after Herrion’s memorial service. “They are fitter than most people in society, and their jobs are more demanding. … We need to understand in a serious way what the risks are, to the extent there are risk factors. We’ve got to address them. We are working on it.”
There was a time when 300-pounders were rarities. As recently as 1990, only 39 players on NFL rosters exceeded 300 pounds. Last year, 370 players were listed at more than 300 pounds.
This summer, NFL teams listed 552 players at 300 pounds or more on training camp rosters, with Cleveland, Green Bay and Houston having the most at 23; the Jets the fewest with nine. The Chiefs have 18 players in camp who are at least 300 pounds, the heaviest being defensive lineman Junior Siavii at 336.
About 11 of those players should make the final roster, including offensive linemen Waters, Will Shields, Willie Roaf (both at 320), John Welbourn (310), Chris Bober (310), Kevin Sampson (312), Jordan Black (304) and Brett Williams (321), and defensive lineman Siavii, Lional Dalton (315) and Ryan Sims (315).
“Because of my height, because of the way my body is built, 310 is good for me,” Waters said. “But the 330, 340 guys, I would venture to say there’s not too many 350-pound guys who are stronger than me.
“That’s the thing that is bothersome about it. A lot of that weight is dead weight, and it’s useless. Any coach or any team that says, ‘We need you big and strong and bigger and bigger,’ that’s not being realistic. That does nothing for you.”
The Chiefs don’t seek players weighing in the 340s and 350s such as Arizona offensive tackle Leonard Davis (366) or Oakland defensive tackle Ted Washington (365 ) because their schemes require athleticism and agility, especially on the offensive line, where getting to the perimeter is essential.
“Willie Roaf is 320 pounds,” Chiefs president/general manager Carl Peterson said, “but he’s as light on his feet as anyone I know.”
But now it’s center Casey Wiegmann, at 285, who is considered a rarity. Of the 61 offensive linemen at the NFL scouting combine last February, 58 weighed at least 300 pounds; two were at 298, one at 299.
Chiefs rookie Will Svitek, a sixth-round draft pick, began his career at Stanford as a 235-pound tight end and is now trying to make it in the NFL as a 300-pound offensive tackle. Svitek, who played defensive line in college, acknowledges the pressure to get bigger, so he spends countless hours in the weight room.
“Without a doubt,” said Svitek, who stands a strapping 6 feet 6. “I gained 75 pounds in college. You definitely need to be a certain weight to play in this league, but I put that pressure on myself. I know for me to succeed in this league, I need to weigh over 300 pounds. But I feel like I’m in the best shape of my life.”
Waters, a former 215-pound college tight end before switching to defensive end and then offensive line as a professional, understands the dilemma facing young players like Svitek.
“The thing that bothers me the most,” Waters said, “is you realize when guys go through weight gains and then drop weight, you know it’s not good for your body. (Herrion) wasn’t an outrageously big guy. But there are a ton of those guys in this league.
“It’s something you wish the NFL would do a little more about.”
Since the death of Stringer, the NFL has made a concerted effort to monitor players’ fitness and address the dangers of excessive heat and hydration during training camp. Several teams, including the Chiefs, reduced the number of two-a-day practices at camp.
Beginning in 2004, teams were required to have an emergency physician at every practice, something the Chiefs have done for years. The trainers and medical staff conduct daily weigh-ins of players before and after practice and monitor their fluid intake and eating and sleeping habits.
Herrion had three physicals in the last eight months — an exit exam when he left San Francisco after last season, another when he reported to the NFL Europe training camp in Florida in February, and a third upon his return to the 49ers.
But a physical doesn’t guarantee detection of heart problems.
“The challenge for most any physicians who do sports physicals is you can’t pick up stuff like this because it’s so subtle,” Waeckerle said. “You need some very specific tests to be done, and we don’t do them on everybody. You do them only when they have symptoms or signs of a problem.
“The San Francisco player got stress by playing in a game, and afterward, if in fact he had a cardiac condition, his heart reacted, and he had sudden cardiac death. There’s always the chance that something unpredictable, unforeseen can happen to anybody.”
There were some questions about whether playing at Denver’s altitude could have affected Herrion, especially because he was on the field during a hurried, 14-play drive in the final 2 minutes of the game. But Gary Andersen, assistant head coach at the University of Utah, where Herrion played for two years, said he never remembered Herrion struggling with Salt Lake City’s thin air when he played for the Utes.
“We’ve all played up there in the Mile High,” said Rich Baldinger, a Chiefs offensive lineman from 1983 to 1992. “I’ve felt the pain, the lack of oxygen, the dizziness … you get it in the warmups.”
Baldinger was listed at 293 pounds in his final season with the Chiefs but said he played at 300.
“If there was that much problem with people weighing 300 pounds, we’d have a lot more of this happening, but we don’t,” Baldinger said. “When it does happen … you look at Korey Stringer. He was trying to lose a lot of weight in a couple of weeks.
“I always tried to make sure conditioning was a high point for me. During the offseason, I did whatever I could to make sure when the season came around, running was never a problem for me.”
Joyce Harp, a University of North Carolina endocrinologist, published a study in The Journal of the American Medical Association that said 97 percent of NFL players were overweight and 56 percent had a body mass that doctors would consider obese.
Many in the NFL believe the study was flawed because it fails to account for a player’s muscle mass and percentage of body fat.
“If you put 300 pounds on my body, you have an obese man,” said 49ers coach Mike Nolan. “If you put 300 pounds on some of our players’ bodies, you don’t.”
But there’s no denying the health risks NFL players take. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health surveyed 7,000 former players in 1994 and found that linemen had a 52 percent greater risk of dying from heart disease than the general population. Recent studies have shown the average life expectancy for NFL players is 55 years old — 52 for linemen.
That bothers Waters, who would like to see the league do more for players for their life after football.
“If you’re worrying about the state of the players, not just now, but in their lifetime, it’s something you’ve got to start teaching them now,” Waters said. “Guys learn all through college, they want to be big, big, big, big and get in the NFL, but once they get in the NFL, nobody says, ‘You’ve got to be healthy.’ What about when you’re 40; what about when you’re 50?
“We need better food programs, better teaching, almost making it a requirement.”
The Chiefs, like many teams, have a nutritionist on staff and provide sensible breakfasts and lunches for their players so they don’t pick up Egg McMuffins on the way to work or run out for bacon double cheeseburgers for lunch.
But sometimes, the players pass up the fruit and pasta and go for the pancakes and …
“Today we had fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy and beans and barbecued chicken,” Waters said last Tuesday. “A lot of carbs, a lot of fat, a lot of grease. I know guys love it, but the reality is it’s not good for you.”
No one is forcing the players to eat chicken wings, and nothing says Waters can’t pack a turkey sandwich. In the wake of Herrion’s death, he just might start brown-bagging it.
“You’re going to have to do something,” he said. “You have to be concerned about yourself. I have children, and you have families … this should be a wake-up call to a lot of guys.”
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