Benjamin Rasmussen for The New York Times
DENVER — Tall and imposing, indomitable even, 6-foot-8 with shoulders and a back broad enough to push a pickup truck.
He was a star lineman on a state championship team in high school and for the University of Colorado Buffaloes, where he set a team record for starts and minutes played. He made second-team All-American and played three years in the N.F.L.
Yet the word that jumps most quickly to mind when talking to Ryan Miller is fragile.
Hits, concussive and sub-concussive, have laid him low. Head bursting, nausea rising, please shut off the lights, please.