49ers’ Herrion dies

DENVER – As he walked off the field on a relatively cool Colorado evening, Thomas Herrion was huffing and puffing. Still, he didn’t look much different from his 49ers teammates who had been playing alongside him during the game’s fast-moving final seconds.

A few minutes later, the San Francisco offensive lineman collapsed near his locker. He was rushed to the hospital, pronounced dead at age 23.

The coroner’s office in Denver performed an autopsy Sunday, but said no cause of death could be determined until toxicology tests were performed. The tests usually take about three to six weeks.

It was in the mid-60s with 50 percent humidity in Denver on Saturday night, and while heatstroke is still possible under such mild conditions, the notion that Herrion, or any football player, is in good enough shape to handle game conditions simply because he’s a professional athlete is being questioned again.

The first-year guard, a long shot to make the final roster, was listed at 6-foot-3, 310 pounds, about average for an NFL lineman. But when measured on the body-mass index scale, which is an accepted standard of fitness in the medical community, Herrion would be considered “severely obese.”

And though obesity can’t necessarily be blamed for the death — at least not at this point — one expert says it surely could have been a contributor.

“Obesity is associated with sudden death,” said Dr. Joyce Harp, a University of North Carolina endocrinologist who recently did a study calculating the BMIs of all NFL players and found that almost all players qualified as overweight or obese.