Catching On

By Sam Adams

Eric Decker steps out of his Camry at the Ridge at Castle Pines North, and right away you figure the guy must be an athlete. Then again, maybe he's an actor or a model. Decker has that look—6-feet-3 and 220 pounds, thick black hair, tanned with a 5 o'clock shadow.

It becomes crystal clear under a late afternoon overcast sky that Decker definitely is an athlete. The Denver Broncos' second-year wide receiver unleashes a powerful, yet seemingly effortless left-handed drive 354 yards into the heart of the fairway of the 541-yard second hole.
His second shot, played with a 7-iron, sails over the green. After chipping on, frustration takes ahold of his putter. “Holy hard,” Decker announces as his birdie attempt whistles past the cup. “Putting is my enemy.”

Decker doesn’t figure to have too many enemies when it comes to his day job. Soft-spoken and humble, the 24-year-old Minnesotan possesses the tools to become a star player in the National Football League. He just might fit the mold of a Rod Smith, Lionel Taylor or Ed McCaffrey– star Broncos receivers from years past who crafted outstanding pro careers, but never received the national attention they deserved. Smith, the Broncos' all-time leading receiver, was an undrafted free agent. So was Lionel Taylor—a Broncos Ring of Famer and the first receiver in pro football history to catch 100 passes in a season. And McCaffrey played four seasons in a reserve role with the New York Giants and San Francisco 49ers before becoming a full-time starter with the Broncos in 1996.

Both McCaffrey and Decker were third-round picks in the NFL draft. Like McCaffrey, Decker wears jersey No. 87. He’s just come from speaking at McCaffrey’s Summer Camp And, like McCaffrey, Decker could be the next receiver to become a favorite with Denver fans—and Broncos quarterbacks.

Decker and quarterback Tim Tebow were roommates on the road last season. If Tebow wins the Broncos' starting quarterback job this year, Decker is hopeful their bond benefits Denver's offense.
“Practice, we're always together. Meetings, we're always together,” Decker says. “Being from the same draft class, it's a lot of interaction between us. In college I had the same quarterback for three years, and we were roommates. So you build a trust off the field and it carries onto the field. We knew what one another were thinking.

“You make a couple of big catches and he starts looking your way a lot more. He'll trust you because he knows you'll make that catch.”
Good hands and solid work ethic will go a long ways in helping Decker become an outstanding NFL receiver. Those same two traits very well could make him an excellent golfer. Decker's good friend, Josh Taylor, was impressed with how well Decker adjusted his game during a round of golf earlier this year at the Raven Golf Club at Verrado course in Phoenix.

It's a course Taylor helped design with PGA Tour veteran Tom Lehman, with whom he worked for six years before becoming president of HopeKids, an organization that supports youth with cancer. Lehman is the organization's honorary national chairman. Decker volunteered his time for HopeKids events and befriended Taylor.

“I'm a scratch golfer myself, so I tried to give Eric a few pointers to straighten him out,” Taylor says. “He's got good hand-eye coordination, which comes with being a receiver. But his problem was alignment. He was aiming way left—literally at houses. I had to get him pointed down the fairway. 

If he spent some time working on his game he definitely could be a good player. He definitely has it in him. He's big and strong and smashes it a mile.
“Eric's not the only guy who's an elite athlete that's good at multiple things. That's not uncommon. There's obviously some common denominator and it's not sports related, but it's more the brain behind it. They can think in a way to excel at a sport, where there are other people who just have no chance at any sport, because their brains aren't wired in a way to work their muscles and their body to have the coordination to do it. You just look at Eric and know he's not sitting at a desk behind a computer.”

Decker did a lot of sitting during his rookie season, finishing with only six catches and one touchdown. He saw his first action on special teams, averaging 25.3 yards per kick return. Covering kicks, however, wasn't much fun. Decker found that out while covering a kickoff in the team's season-opener at Jacksonville.
“I was third guy in, running down and ended up taking on the wedge,” Decker says. “I didn't know how to take it on. Two linemen were running at me, so I tried to hit one. All of a sudden I'm in the air, pancaked. I'm only 215 pounds and these guys are 315 apiece. I couldn't run around them, because if you run around them, you wind up on the bench.”

The NFL lockout afforded Decker plenty of opportunities to make up for lost time on the golf course.
And there was plenty of lost time to make up for, as the two-sport athlete (baseball and football) stayed away from golf during his junior and senior seasons at the University of Minnesota at the urging of his baseball coach, John Anderson, who believed golf would ruin his baseball swing.

Decker played outfield for the Gophers and batted .329 as a junior – his first full season. He chose not to pursue a career in pro baseball—even though he selected by the Milwaukee Brewers (39th round of the 2008 Major League Baseball draft) and Minnesota Twins (28th round in 2009). “I was pretty raw,” he says. “I played two years (at U of M). I think I had all the tools, but I just needed more experience. If I saw fastballs, or knew that certain pitches like the change-up were coming, I'd be all right. But to keep my balance to really get contact with off-speed pitches, that's where I struggled. That's what separated me from the next level. I just didn't have the experience. Other than that, the fielding was easy, the throwing was easy and the catching . . . all that came natural to me.”

During his senior season on the Gophers' football team, Decker tore ligaments in his left foot in a game against Ohio State. The injury forced him to miss Minnesota's final five games of the season, while bringing a sudden halt to his stellar collegiate career, during which he set Minnesota receiving records with 227 catches for 3,119 yards—numbers that rank fifth and sixth, respectively, in Big Ten conference history.

While other college football players participated at the scouting combine to gain notice for the NFL draft, Decker spent much of his time rehabilitating the foot injury. He had genuine concerns he might be passed over in the draft altogether.
“Teams says the injury wouldn't be a factor, but you know it's in the back of their mind that I might be a question mark,” Decker says.
Decker's home in tiny Cold Spring, Minnesota was a hot spot last year for family and friends who gathered during the evening to watch the draft. Earlier in the day, Decker and his older sister, Sarah, sought to put some normalcy into an otherwise nervous time. They played nine holes at the town's River Oaks Golf Course.

Sarah Decker was an outstanding all-around athlete at Rocori High School, and went on to star in track at Columbia University. She put down footprints that her younger brother seemed eager to follow.
“We definitely had some sibling rivalries—unspoken sibling rivalry for sure,” Sarah Decker. “I'm the oldest, and I guess anything I did my parents thought was great. I think Eric wanted to out-do me to make my parents just as proud and happy.

“Anything from basketball to video games became a competition. I think it made Eric a better sport because he had to lose a few times. Once we got into high school I think I stopped challenging him because I didn't want to lose. But growing up I might've rubbed it in a little bit because I was so much taller and had the edge.”
Big sis held an edge in height, but Decker managed to win at least one battle when it counted.

“I was a junior on the basketball team, and the freshman boys team practiced against us,” Sarah Decker says. “Eric was a freshman, and my dad was just super excited. He came to the practice because he just knew we were going to go at it.

“I'm pretty sure our coach did it on purpose because we're both so competitive. I started yelling at Eric in the middle of a play. And he just loved it. When you're siblings you know how to get under each other's skin. He was talking and slapping at my wrists . . . He got under my skin bad.”

When his sister left for college, Decker began to grab the athletic spotlight at Rocori High. In September, 2003 – the start of Decker's junior year – Rocori High was thrust into the national spotlight for tragic reasons when 15-year-old Jason McLaughlin shot two students—Seth Bartell and Aaron Rollins—with a .22 caliber pistol inside the school gymnasium.

Decker was seated next to Bartell's older brother, Jesse, in the school cafeteria when the shots were fired. Repeated calls of “Code Red” were shouted over the school's intercom. Panic took over. Bartell saw his younger brother laying on the gym floor bleeding. Decker wound up locked inside a library closet with more than a dozen other students.

Later, in a sobering scene not unlike the one witnessed during the Columbine High School shootings, Rocori High students were ushered out of the building with hands above their heads. Seth Bartell died 16 days after the shooting.

“I looked at it as a lesson about how to treat people,” Decker says. “You can't take life for granted.” The school considered canceling the first athletic event scheduled after the shootings – a football game. Coaches, however, felt the game would help bring the student body and community together to provide a sense of healing during the grieving process.

In the game, Decker took a reverse handoff and threw a touchdown pass. “The guy who scored was best friends with one of the students who was killed,” Decker says. “The celebration between us was emotional—we broke down and started crying.

“I had some feelings of uncertainty and nervousness before the game. Once we got into the game, for myself it was just another football game. You could sense it in the stands. People were cheering and acting as if it were just another game.

“Afterward there was a sense of relief, that we can, at some point, move on together.”

Decker moves onto talking about golf, joking that he'll one day play on the PGA's Champions Tour. After all, he’s got a quarter-century to practice his putting before becoming eligible for the 50-and-over circuit. 

“It depends on where my game is at,” Decker says. “If I could get to the point where I can play at that level, I might try it. But I think I'll try to establish myself in football first. Right now golf is a good getaway. I love golf because it's such a challenge. It's one of those games that a lot of athletes like because you can't perfect it. You have a good day, but you know you can get better. You have a bad day and you want to try again. That's what brings me back.”

Contributing Editor Sam Adams is an award-winning columnist and standup comedian.