Chris D’Appolonia’s skills convinced Fran Brown of the LB’s ‘freak’ label
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Fran Brown wasn’t impressed.
Not that he was unimpressed with Chris D’Appolonia. He didn’t say that exactly.
Brown likes his new linebacker enough to select him as the sole player defensive coordinator Vince Kehres communicates with via headset midgame.
Nine months into D’Appolonia’s SU career, Brown already considers him a “champion-level” player — a distinction he awards players he views as Syracuse’s leaders.
But when asked about D’Appolonia being a “freak?”
Brown wasn’t buying it. Or, at least, he wasn’t interested.
“I don’t even know all that kind of stuff,” Brown said. “I have no idea.”
“Is LeBron James on there?” he asked later.
No, Bruce Feldman’s annual Freaks List is limited to college football’s most extraordinary physical specimens. In August, D’Appolonia was featured for the second straight year at 46th.
Brown’s response was essentially: OK?
“I see people run and jump every day,” he said. “I didn’t see him do a backflip.”
“He on that list, I guess that means you like athletically-gifted or something,” Brown quipped.
Yes, D’Appolonia is.
He’s always been unusually large. He’s always been unusually strong. And somehow, despite his traditional linebacker frame, he moves like someone considerably smaller.
Zoey Grimes | Design Editor
D’Appolonia is 6-foot-3 and weighs 235 pounds. He can sprint 21.67 miles per hour. He can squat 565 pounds, bench-press 375 and barbell clean 325. His vertical jump is 37 inches, and he can broad jump 10 feet and nine inches.
Last year with Toledo, Pro Football Focus graded D’Appolonia as the Mid-American Conference’s fourth-best linebacker in pass coverage. Three games into Syracuse’s 2026 season, he leads the Orange with 10 solo tackles, and his 17 total tackles are tied for the team high.
“Any time a young man who’s 6-foot-3 and 220-some pounds at 16 years old can broad jump 10 feet; yeah, that’s pretty freakish in my boat,” said Kehres, who coached D’Appolonia for three seasons at Toledo.
D’Appolonia first stood out to Kehres at a Toledo summer football camp in 2022. He wasn’t on the pre-registered camp roster, but his size caught Kehres’ eye. A few weeks later, Kehres brought more of Toledo’s staff to a Pitt camp to watch him again.
“By the time we got done with camp, (I thought), ‘Man, this kid’s really good,’ and from there it was a pretty quick process of him deciding to commit to Toledo,” Kehres said.
Little did Kehres know Toledo was D’Appolonia’s dream school. D’Appolonia’s family used to live in Perrysburg, Ohio, about 10 miles southwest of Toledo. The first college football game D’Appolonia attended in fourth grade was the Rockets’ home stadium, The Glass Bowl.
“I remember him coming home from that game and telling me, ‘Mom, I’m gonna play there someday,’” said Teresa Novacic D’Appolonia, D’Appolonia’s mother.
A year later, the family moved to Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania, north of Pittsburgh, where they now reside. Growing up, Teresa remembers D’Appolonia’s pediatrician visits. He’d fall in the 99th percentile for height, weight and even head circumference for his age. He hasn’t eaten off the kids’ menu since he was 4.
D’Appolonia was 8 when he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, Teresa said.
Any time a young man who's 6-foot-3 and 220-some pounds at 16 years old can broad jump 10 feet; yeah, that's pretty freakish in my boat.Vince Kehres, Syracuse defensive coordinator
At the doctor’s office, he was asked what he liked to do. D’Appolonia said he liked playing sports. The doctors brought out a list of athletes with type 1 diabetes, which included Kendall Simmons, who played for the nearby Steelers.
“He’s never let something like that define him,” Teresa said. “It’s something that he needs to take care of to be what he wants to be. To be a football player, to be a good athlete, to be a good student. Not to be a diabetic. It’s not something that he considers himself.”
When D’Appolonia started high school, he weighed 165 pounds. When he graduated, he was 230. He said the greatest transformation came after his junior year. He spent more time in the gym. At home with five younger siblings, D’Appolonia was trying to gain weight, while his brother Jacob D’Appolonia, a wrestler, was trying to lose it.
So, at dinner, D’Appolonia always sat next to Jacob, who took a few bites, then slid the plate to D’Appolonia.
“He was always at the top of all the lists in terms of lifting and squatting and deadlifting and power cleaning,” said Ron Butschle, D’Appolonia’s coach at Seneca Valley High School. “For somebody that big (who) was just so capable of doing things that normally people that size don’t do unless you’re a big-time Division I athlete, it was easy to see that was going to happen.”
On the field, the gained weight led to a position change. After playing safety to begin high school, D’Appolonia moved to defensive back as a senior. The athleticism remained.
Start asking people the most freakish thing D’Appolonia has done, and you get the same answer: His broad jump.
At college football camps, D’Appolonia performed the exercise, jumping as far forward as possible from a stationary, standing position. Most players moved to the next exercise after one attempt. Coaches asked D’Appolonia to do it again.
“They wanted to push him again to see just how far (he could jump),” Teresa said. “I remember it being eye-opening, watching him go to some of those camps the summer after his junior year and putting him in comparison with other like-minded athletes. I was like, ‘OK, he’s got something here.’”
When D’Appolonia’s final high school season began, something on his senior profile caught Teresa’s eye: He doesn’t like lifting weights.
“I was like, ‘That’s not right. That doesn’t make any sense,’” Teresa said, “because he literally lives there. He lives in the weight room.”
But D’Appolonia isn’t there because he wants to; he said he has to. He loves football, and lifting weights helps him succeed in that passion.
What D’Appolonia enjoys most is learning and sharing defensive intricacies. He relished picking Kehres’ brain on his Toledo visit. When D’Appolonia broke his hip one game into his sophomore season, ruling him out for the rest of the regular season, he joined Kehres in the stadium box, where Kehres sits to get an elevated view during games.
Chris D’Appolonia jogs onto the field during Syracuse’s 27-13 loss to Pitt on Sept. 17. Through three games, D’Appolonia leads the Orange with 10 total tackles. Zoe Xixis | Asst. Photo Editor
“I take a lot of pride in being the guy that guys look to in times of chaos and times where everyone needs to just slow down,” D’Appolonia said. “I take a lot of pride in being able to be the communicator and the calm in the storm.”
Toledo saw a whirlwind in the coaching ranks after last season. Head coach Jason Candle left for UConn. Kehres headed to Syracuse. Co-defensive coordinator Ross Watson went to Iowa State. D’Appolonia originally never considered leaving Toledo, Teresa said. But the coaches dispersing changed that.
On the heels of Third Team All-MAC honors, he visited UConn and SU in early January. He had a few other spots lined up after Syracuse, but Teresa remembers D’Appolonia calling her on a Tuesday. Syracuse was the place.
“His feeling was, I don’t know that I can picture myself playing for someone other than V.K.,” Teresa said.
D’Appolonia’s strength came in handy when his mother helped him move into his Syracuse apartment shortly after, Teresa added. He could lift the table, sofa and boxes with ease.
On the Orange’s first defensive play of the season, D’Appolonia shot a gap and recorded a tackle for loss on New Hampshire running back Myles Thomason. That moment stuck with Kehres and D’Appolonia days later when asked to recall a notable moment in D’Appolonia’s collegiate career.
Brown was effusive in his praise, too. After fielding another question about D’Appolonia, the head coach eventually admitted it. D’Appolonia did fit the label Feldman bestowed upon him.
“He’s a great kid,” Brown said. “He came in and bought into our culture. He’s a legit kid, a legit athlete and, as you say, a freak of nature.”
