Joe Football: there are better players than Panthers wide receiver Ricky Proehl, but none who more keenly exemplify what the game is supposed to be about

Football Digest, Dec, 2003 by Scott Fowler

HE HAS NEVER BEEN A NO. 1 receiver on a team. He has never gained 1,000 receiving yards in a season. He has never been named to the Pro Bowl. If you timed him in the 40-yard dash these days, he figures he would run about a 4.65, mediocre at best for an NFL wide receiver.

Yet Picky Proehl has stuck around for 14 years in the NFL. And not only has the 35-year-old Carolina Panthers receiver survived, but he also often has prospered. There is no better symbol in the NFL of a player with seemingly average skills turning himself into an overachiever with a combination of smarts, want-to, and precision.

Proehl has made so many big catches that his former teammate on the St. Louis Rams, Marshall Faulk, nicknamed him "Clutch." The one everyone remembers is the catch that sent St. Louis to the Super Bowl. In the 1999 NFC Championship Game, Proehl made a one-handed, 30-yard, fourth-quarter touchdown grab on a pass from Kurt Warner to beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 11-6.

But that was only one of Proehl's roughly 600 receptions in the NFL In Week 1 of this season, his first game with the Panthers after signing with them in the offseason, Proehl caught a 12-yard touchdown pass on fourth-and-11 with 16 seconds left to push Carolina to a 24-23 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars.

That play isn't as well known as some of his others, but it exemplifies his career perfectly. The play Proehl scored on was called "Reno," and the Panthers ran it a couple of hundred times in training camp. Not once during practice did the ball ever go Proehl's way on "Reno. Instead, it went to one of the Panthers' other two wide receivers or the tight end over the middle.

But Proehl never takes a pass route for granted. "You have to run a winning route on every single play, because you never know when the ball is coming to you," he says.

So Proehl went into motion to the left, froze a linebacker with one move, and faked out a corner-back with another. As Carolina quarterback Jake Delhomme scanned the field and didn't see anything he liked, Proehl was coming open in the front corner of the endzone.

Delhomme threw it. "Ricky was just where he was supposed to be, just like he always is," Delhomme says. "He had man-to-man coverage, so I just put some are on it and hoped." Proehl leaped, caught it, and kept both feet in bounds. The crowd went nuts.

Then Proehl ran to the stands above the 25-yard line, where the four season tickets he has held in Ericsson Stadium since the Panthers moved there in 1996 are located. He found his eight-year-old son Austin and handed the ball to him. "This one is for you," Proehl said.

Proehl finally felt like he was home after that play. He has lived in North Carolina part- or full-time for 17 years, starting when he left Hillsborough High in New Jersey to go to Wake Forest in 1986. Most of his family lives in North Carolina, and Proehl had many times attempted to land with the Panthers. "I've been trying to get here since 1995, when Carolina first got a team," he says.

On one occasion, in 1996, the Panthers decided to sign another receiver instead. On another, in 1998, they had a free-agent visit set up for him but then unceremoniously canceled it.

So Proehl stuck it out wherever he could find a job. A third-round draft pick in 1990, he started out on the Arizona Cardinals, then migrated to the Seattle Seahawks, Chicago Bears, and Rams. The list of head coaches Proehl has played for provides an idea of the extent of his journey through the NFL: Joe Bugel, Buddy Ryan, Dennis Erickson, Dave Wannstedt, Dick Vermeil, Mike Martz, and John Fox.

It was in St. Louis, finally, where Proehl really made his mark. The 6'0", 190-pound veteran was the fourth receiver for much of the time during the heyday of the "Greatest Show on Turf," and he specialized in the occasional big play. St. Louis fans still like to recount that magnificent grab Proehl made against Tampa Bay in the fourth quarter of the NFC Championship Game.

Never a flashy player, Proehl had been more silent than usual during that 1999 season. A parade of 17 Rams players had scored touchdowns that season, but Proehl was not among them. But Proehl and Warner made a quick adjustment just before the play, and Proehl ran a fade pattern deep to the corner. That catch will run on highlight films in perpetuity.

When the Rams made it back to the Super Bowl in 2001, Proehl almost was a hero again. He scored on a 26-yard pass to tie the game at 17 against the New England Patriots. But Tom Brady and Adam Vinatieri trumped him with a drive to a final-play field goal, leaving Proehl's catch buried in the game's footnotes.

Still, it was another fine example of what Proehl calls the "craft" of wide receiving. "When you watch film, I may look slow," Proehl says. "I know defenders come in and say, 'Hey, we can stop this guy.' But when they play against me, they understand more why I've played as long as I have."

Adds Richard Williamson, Carolina's wide receivers coach: "Ricky is sort of a finesse guy, and he knows all the tricks."