Pokes at LaChapelle Cut Him to the Quick

“My feet are absolutely killing me,” Sean LaChapelle says, and, no, that is not intended to be a straight line, so don’t even think about jumping in with:

“Yeah, that’s what the scouts say.”

Or:

“Don’t tell me, tell your accountant.”

Or:

“Yeah, that seems to be the case with every 6-foot, 4-inch All-American wide receiver who isn’t drafted until the middle of the fifth round.”

LaChapelle is tired of all the slow talk. You know: That LaChapelle, he’s no LaGazelle . . . I heard they timed him at the combine with a sundial . . . When he ran the 40 for the Ram coaches, the gun went off and everybody broke for lunch . . . He’s faster than Fred Biletnikoff. Of course, Fred Biletnikoff turned 50 in February .

LaChapelle is coming off a perfectly fine football career at UCLA. He holds every pass-receiving record worth holding there--most career receptions (142, 14 more than Mike Sherrard); most single-season receptions (68, two more than Mike Farr); most single-season touchdown catches (11, one more than Bob Wilkinson and Jo Jo Townsell); and most single-season receiving yards (987, 84 more than Flipper Anderson, his new down-and-out mate).

Yet, since turning pro, LaChapelle has had his 40-yard-dash time--4.64--kicked in his face as if it were beach sand, watching his stock slip all the way to the fifth round of the April draft while wincing through the he-can’t-outrun-a-glacier expert analysis.

“I have run in the 4.5s,” LaChapelle would like you to know. “To me, that’s not slow. Not for anyone 6-4 and 205 pounds. But, all of a sudden, I’m slower than molasses.”

Steve Largent never ran a 4.5, LaChapelle points out. Renaldo Nehemiah could, but wasn’t able to overcome the fickle-fingers hurdle.

“Some scouts see a guy,” LaChapelle says, “and they say, ‘God, he runs a 4.4, a 4.3,’ and they’re just going crazy. ‘We got to get this guy, we got to get this guy.’ And he probably can’t play a lick of football.

“He’s probably some track guy”--disgust creeps into LaChapelle’s voice--”who doesn’t have the desire or the toughness to catch a football in traffic . . . Speed can always help you, but if you concentrate just on speed and forget about the football, what good does it do?”

LaChapelle can take care of the football. Rick Neuheisel, the receivers coach at UCLA, once designated LaChapelle’s hands as the best in the country. His specialty is going and getting the tough pass over the middle--”The middle is just as safe as any other place, as long as you know what you’re getting into”--and who was the last Ram receiver who could make that claim? Billy Truax?

However, there can be no denying that LaChapelle was too slow at UCLA. Too slow to make himself eligible for the draft. LaChapelle was a more salable commodity in the spring of ‘92, coming off a 68-catch junior season, but he decided to stay an extra year, unlike his college battery mate, Tommy Maddox.

Maddox got the first-round fame and fortune, LaChapelle got hurt and saw his value slide from Top 40 in ’92 to Top 200 in ’93.

“I heard I would have gone anywhere in the late first round or second round,” LaChapelle says of his 1992 draft status. “It’s partly because of the stats you put up. Sean Dawkins had a great junior year and he came out and he went in the first round. I think I was in the same position last year, and I don’t think the receivers were as deep in that draft as they were this year.”

Instead, LaChapelle stayed, played with four different starting quarterbacks last fall, played with a couple broken ribs and finished with the worst numbers of his college career: 30 catches, 364 yards, one touchdown.

“You know, when I was sitting there, watching the draft and the third round went by, I was very frustrated and I questioned myself,” he says. “ ‘Dang, I should’ve come out, I should’ve come out.’

“But, hindsight is usually better. It’s easy to look back at the fact that I cracked ribs and injuries decimated our quarterbacks. Still, I couldn’t be happier with the way things worked out. I love being with the Rams. I’m just hoping I can make the team.”

And if not?

No big deal, he says, echoing the LaChapelle life credo. “If football doesn’t work out,” he says, “I would have no problem going back home to Sacramento, hanging out, playing golf and pumping gas or digging ditches or trying to get into the police academy. It wouldn’t faze me.

“Life’s too short to get down on things.”

In the interim, LaChapelle keeps happy by not asking too much from life. He grew up in the Napa Valley, riding his bike through some of the most famous vineyards in the world, yet never toured any of them. “The closest we got to the wineries,” he says, “was sneaking in and doing some bass fishing in the reservoirs. You can catch some great bass out of those vineyard reservoirs, I kid you not.”

LaChapelle would catch them, but never keep them.

“I can’t stand fish,” he explains.

And the nectar of the valley, surrounding him by the acre?

“I’m not a real wine drinker, either. I’m not real elaborate, I’m not into fancy restaurants. Give me a breast of chicken or maybe a pizza. I’ll take a burrito over caviar any day of the week.”

The best of times, for LaChapelle, are spent back home, “hanging out and kicking it with the fellas, playing a lot of golf, maybe going to a club. I spend a lot of time at my cousin’s house, watching the tube, playing a little Sega golf.”

If it sounds a bit slow, well, you know what they say about LaChapelle. He’s nothing if not consistent.