Tyler Walker’s first college coaching job lasted just one season. He was fired from his $30,000 a year gig along with the rest of the staff at Division II Davenport University in Grand Rapids, Mich. It was time to find something else. He applied to warehouses, a job at Pepsi, and anything else he came across. Then he saw an elementary school near Davenport which needed a sixth-grade teacher. Walker had an education degree. That would work.
“It just so happened that they needed a long-term replacement and I had my special education license,” Walker said. “So it was easy to get the job.”
Walker arrived this year to Temple as a sought-after offensive coordinator after orchestrating a high-powered offense at Montana State. He fielded calls from programs across the country before coming to Temple, where new head coach K.C. Keeler granted him full autonomy over the offense. If Temple football is able to be revived, a former sixth-grade teacher will be a major reason why.
“No offense to anybody who is a teacher but I was like ‘This is awful. I want to coach ball,’” Walker said. “I don’t want to sit in this classroom all day and then when the bell rings at 4:30, I go home. It’s terrible.’”
Walker left Ken-O-Sha Park Elementary after seven months. He returned to college as a defensive coach at Division III Muskingum University in Ohio and climbed the ladder before landing in North Philadelphia. His classroom is now his office on Berks Street.
“I’m looking at my office wall and I have magnets that say housekeeping, script review, practice notes, and opponent,” Walker said. “Cut them out and put in today’s journal, tomorrow’s homework. It’s the same thing I would use when I was teaching. At heart, I’m still a teacher. I just teach a different subject.”
Moving the pieces
Walker was a quarterback at Bethel University, a Division III school in Minnesota. He studied special education and planned to become a high school teacher who doubled as a football coach.
“I was always more interested in moving the pieces than being the piece who was being moved,” Walker said. “Even as a little kid, I would walk around with notebooks and draw plays with like four guys on the field because I didn’t know anything.”
He played two seasons at Bethel before transferring to Miami University near his hometown in Hamilton, Ohio. No longer playing, Walker finished his degree at Miami and coached the offense at his old high school. It was his introduction to coaching, He loved it.
“I was able to learn my why,” Walker said. “You can mess up and no one really cares, to be honest. You’re playing in front of 30 people. You’re not getting paid a whole bunch.”
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He started showing up at Miami’s practices and volunteered to help. He wanted to coach in college. A year later, the Red Hawks made him a graduate assistant. He parlayed that position into his first college job as he moved to Grand Rapids to coach the wide receivers at Davenport.
A year later, he was teaching elementary school.
“I did have a scare, I guess you could say,” Walker said. “It was brutal. Every year, I’m saying ‘Listen you better get your stuff together or you’re going to get fired and eating lunch with [sixth] graders.’”
Walker got another chance to coach college players in 2018 at Muskingum, where he spent three seasons. The path from sixth grade teacher to Temple became a bit more clear when Taylor Housewright — who was a GA at Miami with Walker — became the offensive coordinator at Montana State and offered Walker a spot on the staff. The FCS program played in a 20,000 seat stadium and regularly reached the FCS postseason. This was a chance.
Walker spent four seasons at Montana State. He was the quarterbacks coach in 2021 when they lost in the national championship and the offensive coordinator last season when they lost again. His unit led the FCS last season in points per game, total yards, and rushing yards while quarterback Tommy Mellott was the FCS Player of the Year. The former school teacher proved to be a good play caller.
“I’ve never been a composer like Beethoven but when he orchestrated, that’s what I imagine it felt like,” Walker said. “Like ‘God, that is absolutely gorgeous.’ That’s how I feel. Then sometimes, it’s ‘That’s a piece of crap. You can’t run that.’ But when it does, it’s so fulfilling. I love golf but I’m not too good. When you hit a good six iron at the driving range, you just want to keep hitting another one and another one. You’re trying to find that high. I guess that’s what my drug is. I’m addicted to finding that high of putting our players in a great situation, putting conflict on the defense, and scoring points.”
Coming to Temple
It’s been a decade since nationallyranked Temple nearly knocked off Notre Dame at Lincoln Financial Field after College Gameday rolled into Philly. All of that goodwill washed away when the Owls become irrelevant over the last five years. They won once in 2020 and then finished four-straight seasons with three wins.
Keeler, who was hired in December, believed he could make the Owls relevant again. And one of his first hires was Walker.
“I knew we could win here but I also knew it had been in a bad place,” Walker said. “When someone says ‘You want to come to Temple?’ You’re like ‘Temple? They’re freaking horrendous.’ For good reasons. We won nine games in like four years. But it was the opportunity. I knew Keeler had won everywhere he had been. I knew he wasn’t going to come here and say ‘Hey, this is my last job and I’m not going to give everything I have for this and try to end on a high note.’”
The Owls went after the transfer portal, built a competitive roster, and then started the season by blowing out Massachusetts and Howard. They lost as expected to nationallyranked Oklahoma and Georgia Tech before rallying last week for what felt like a defining win against conference opponent UTSA. One more win and they’ll have their most wins in six years. Temple football finally has a pulse again.
In Temple’s three wins, the offense has averaged 445.3 yards and 41.3 points. Quarterback Evan Simon has thrown for 12 TDs — including six in the season opener — while Jay Ducker and Hunter Smith — two transfers — have paced the backfield with each rushing for more than 200 yards. The offensive scheme is fast and filled with motion, a refreshing modern look after years of stale play.
» READ MORE: Hunter Smith could play a larger role in Temple’s run game: ‘We have a lot of trust in him’
Walker learned from every stop he made, keeping detailed binders of what worked along the way and what did not. A lof of Temple’s system is inspired from Joe Moorhead, the head coach at Akron who had success calling plays at Penn State. Housewright learned from Moorhead and Walker learned it from Housewright. The teacher never stopped learning. He has Temple moving in the right direction. And he’s still teaching.
“I know that everyone learns differently,” Walker said. “I know everyone comprehends things differently. So I give a visual playbook, I’ll show you clips, we’ll walk through it as a group. Making complex things simple is what we do. It all goes back to teaching.”