Nov. 12, 2008

By Jim Sumner
theACC.com

Ricky Proehl says he was a late bloomer. “I was more of a baseball player than football player growing up. It took some time for me to grow into my football body.”

But when it happened, Proehl made the best of it, maximizing his abilities into a two-decade career in the big-time, first as one of the best wide receivers in Wake Forest history, and then in a 17-year pro career that took him to six-NFL stops and four Super Bowls.

Proehl started out at Hillsborough High School in Hillsborough, New Jersey. He was a football and baseball star on the local level but attracted only modest recruiting attention at the national level. “I loved baseball but from my junior year on, I realized that football would be my college sport.” Wake Forest and West Virginia were the only two major schools to offer him a scholarship.

Why Wake Forest? The small campus appealed to Proehl, as did the emphasis on academics. Then there was head coach Al Groh, who ran “a pro-style offense, three or four wide-receiver sets. They threw it all over the place. It was a perfect fit for me.”

Proehl showed up in the autumn of 1986. He got on the field more than most true freshmen, catching 18 passes. Wake went 5-6 that year and, after six years, Al Groh left Wake Forest.

Bill Dooley, previously the head coach at North Carolina and Virginia Tech, replaced Groh as head coach. Proehl was concerned. Well, panicked might be more accurate. “All I knew about Bill Dooley was that he was a running coach, three yards and a cloud of dust. Not the ideal situation for a wide receiver. I called my father and told him I had to get out of there.”

Proehl contacted a number of other schools to gauge their interest. There wasn’t any. “I found out there was no market for Ricky Proehl. I came back to Wake Forest with my tail between my legs, totally humbled.”

He also discovered that he had misjudged Bill Dooley. Dooley looked around and discovered that “you gotta go with what you got.” He didn’t see any Don McCauleys or Mike Voights running around the Wake Forest campus but he had an NFL-caliber quarterback in Mike Elkins and top receivers like Proehl and Steve Brown.

Dooley says it didn’t take him long to figure out that Proehl was something special. “That first spring practice,” he recalls. “We couldn’t cover him and he caught everything we threw to him. He had exceptional hand-eye coordination and a little burst of speed that got him away from defensive backs. His work ethic was something else. He practiced as hard as he played. I used to see him running sprints with a smile on his face and I’d tell him football was supposed to be hard.”

Proehl adds, “I wasn’t exceptionally fast but I had quickness. I could be in and out of a cut before the defensive backs could react.”

Wake started throwing the ball, early and often, and with great success. Dooley used Proehl to return kicks and made sure end-arounds and reverses were in the playbook. Only months after contemplating a transfer, Ricky Proehl had become one of the ACC’s best. He caught a 26-yard touchdown pass from Elkins with 2:46 left to give Wake a 17-13 win over Army and scored three times in a 35-21 loss to Virginia.

But Proehl says his break-out game came on Halloween in Death Valley. The Clemson secondary featured Donnell Woolford, one of the nation’s top cover men. Proehl caught a pair of touchdown passes from Elkins to give Wake a 17-10 halftime lead over the 14th-ranked Tigers. Clemson came back to win the game 31-17 but Proehl left Clemson with the belief “that I could play against anybody. When you play against the best and succeed, it gives you confidence you can build on. It was like a light bulb went on.”

Wake ended the 1987 season at 4-3 in the ACC and 7-4 overall but waited in vain for a bowl invitation that never came. Proehl says he is “still bitter about that. A bowl game is like a playoff game for college players. So many of my teammates never got to play in a big game. They worked hard, won games, and weren’t rewarded.”

Proehl ended the season with 54 catches for 788 yards.

His junior year was more of the same. The Deacons beat North Carolina, Maryland, Duke, and Georgia Tech to repeat at 4-3 in the conference. Elkins to Proehl again was one of the league’s top pass-catch combos. They combined for a 69-yarder against Illinois State and two touchdowns in a 38-21 loss to NC State.

Proehl caught 51 passes for 845 yards and scored 11 touchdowns. Wake went 6-4-1 overall, the first back-to-back-winning programs at the school since the early 1970s.

Despite Proehl’s best efforts, Dooley’s rebuilding efforts faltered in 1989.

Proehl had a spectacular senior season with a new quarterback, Phil Barnhill. Proehl led the ACC with 65 receptions, went over 1,000 yards, and scored 11 touchdowns. But all too often his best efforts were in losing causes, such as 185 receiving yards in a 52-35 loss to Duke.

He ended his college career with 188 receptions for 2,949 yards and entered the 2008 season still in the ACC’s top 10 in both categories. Proehl says “consistency was important to me” and he demonstrated that with 33 consecutive games with at least one catch and a dozen games with 100 or more receiving yards. Wake went 2-8-1, winning only once in the conference.

Proehl says, “We lost a lot of great players. It was frustrating. I wasn’t a vocal leader. I tried to be but it just wasn’t me. You learn that all the individual accolades don’t mean anything.”

Dooley scoffs at the idea that Proehl’s leadership left anything to desire. “His teammates looked up to Ricky and followed his leadership. He could not have given more to the program.”

Proehl was named first-team All-ACC and was invited to the Blue-Gray and East-West Shrine all-star games. These games gave him a chance to practice and play in front of NFL scouts and measure himself against top-level competition from across the nation.

Proehl played well in the all-star games and tested well at the NFL combines The Phoenix (later Arizona) Cardinals selected him in the third round of the 1990 draft.

Third-round picks are supposed to stick in the NFL, but they aren’t supposed to last 17 seasons, especially when they barely hit six-feet. Proehl set a Phoenix rookie record with 56 receptions and never looked back. He spent five seasons with the Cardinals before moving to Seattle in a trade. He had later stops in Chicago, St. Louis, Carolina, and Indianapolis.

Proehl is best remembered for his five-year stint with the St. Louis Rams, where he was a featured receiver in a pass-happy “greatest show on turf” offense that set records and won titles.

In St. Louis, he found a quarterback who shared his passion for studying film and working on routes until they were perfected. “Kurt [Warner] and I had perfect communication,” Proehl remembers. “We always knew what the other was thinking. I watched defenders, studied defenses. I felt like no one could cover me on intermediate routes.”

That led to some memorable plays. Proehl had six catches in the 1999 NFC title game, the last a 30-yarder with 4:44 left that provided the game’s only touchdown in an 11-6 St. Louis win over Tampa Bay. The Rams went on to win Super Bowl XXXIV over Tennessee.

Two years later, Proehl caught a 26-yard pass from Warner to tie Super Bowl XXXVI at 17-17 with 1:30 left. But New England won on a last-second field goal.

Proehl got back to the Super Bowl three years later, this time with Carolina. He caught four passes for 71 yards and a touchdown but again watched helplessly as New England kicked a game-winning field goal in the final seconds. He was a member of the Indianapolis Colts team that won Super Bowl XLI but played sparingly.

Proehl realizes that catching a touchdown pass in a Super Bowl is every player’s dream but recognizes that “you prepare a lifetime for that moment. I was lucky that I had the chances but I was ready for them. I wanted the ball to be thrown to me at big moments. ”

Proehl retired after the 2006 season, with 669 NFL catches, for 8,878 yards and 54 touchdowns.

Proehl’s wife Kelly is from Raleigh, which helped pull him back to North Carolina. He has season tickets to Panthers and Wake Forest games and tries to watch his two sons play football and his daughter play soccer as often as possible. Proehl admits that he still wants to get out and play and thinks he could get open in today’s NFL.

But he has other things on his mind. His day job is administering his Proehlific Park in Greensboro, an after-school program that blends athletics and academics for athletes aged 7-18. Meanwhile, the Ricky Proehl Foundation enters its second decade, supporting children in North Carolina who have medical and/or social needs. Proehl says “I’ve been so blessed, I want to give back.”

Wake Forest is one of those blessings. Proehl says that “Bill Dooley was a great mentor. I learned so much from him. How to be a professional, how to prepare for academics. He respected his players and was loyal to the bone. In return, you didn’t want to let him down. I loved playing for him. There wasn’t a better place for me than Wake Forest. It has made a big difference in my life.”

This article can not be copied or reproduced without the express written consent of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

E-mail Jim Sumner