Denver Magazine / Denver Magazine September 2009 / The Game Changer

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The Game Changer

The Broncos' little guy is the next big thing.

Broncos wide receiver Eddie Royal loves sports movies.

But he is living out his favorite: Any Given Sunday, Oliver Stone’s 1999 ode to football. “It portrays the real life of an NFL player and the real-life pressures on the field and off the field, dealing with expectations, dealing with family — the business side,” Royal says, taking a break from our shoot at Invesco Field at Mile High.

Broncos news this summer was dominated by Royal’s counterpart, superstar wide receiver Brandon Marshall, and whether he would continue with the team. Turns out, Marshall is staying, which is what Royal wanted. “You know what you’re going to get out of him week in, week out. We work well together,” he says, calling him an “exciting player. Makes big plays … He’s the big guy. I’m the smaller, speed guy. It’s a good combo.” Royal says the team doesn’t see them as No. 1 and No. 2. “We don’t label guys. We don’t pay attention to that. When your number’s called, you go out and make a play.”

But Royal says there is pressure. On the field, he doesn’t want to let his coaches or teammates down. Off the field, he doesn’t want to let the five-year-olds down. “Knowing you’re a role model now — you’ve got little kids looking up to you,” he says. “You’ve really got to be careful what you do.”

There is another off-field event to underscore that if football is tough, real life is tougher. April 16, 2007, Royal was a junior at Virginia Tech when a student there killed 32 people before turning the gun on himself. Royal’s Facebook page carries a photo of a candlelight vigil held for the victims, and he carried a flag onto the field to commemorate them at the first Tech football game after the shootings. There were a lot of tears in the stadium he recalls and adds, “It meant a lot to me. It was a great honor. Talk about nervous. I was very nervous to carry the flag, but very happy.”

Now that he has landed in Denver, he has a sense of what the community went through after the Columbine shootings. “It’s good for people to come together,” he says, and when that happened at Virginia Tech, “it really showed the true colors of the school.”

Royal thinks Denver is “laid-back, good people,” and praises Broncos fans — “They’re there for you through good and bad” — but classifies himself as a homebody. He’s also a huge basketball fan. Early on, that was his chosen sport, and he still enjoys playing the game. Would he consider a basketball career? “If I was five inches taller,” says the 5-foot-10-incher.

But for now, football pays the bills — and for the clothes, including Royal’s self-admitted shoe addiction. Late one recent Monday afternoon, magazine editors and photographers focused on Royal as he posed on the field and in the bleachers (next to seat 19, of course). Instead of running patterns, he was told to sit up straight, put on a belt, tuck in his shirt. He was mellow, good-natured, and well-spoken but had a look on his face that said, “What the heck am I doing here?”

He’s much more in his element in uniform on a Sunday. Royal’s pre-game ritual includes breakfast, prayer, and being taped up by the same person with the “same exact tape job.” But he stresses it’s the mental over the physical that makes for a good wide receiver, and it boils down to one word: concentration. “You see drops, and it’s not because the guy can’t make the catch,” he says. “[It’s] things like keeping your eye on the ball. Do the little things, and they’ll turn into big things.”