AMES — One thing stands out about Taylor Mouser’s 2013 Adams State football biography. It makes Mouser’s bio different from every other Division II defensive end in the country.
Among Mouser’s favorite hobbies is “knitting coach Egger new sweaters.” The only problem is that 12 years later, Ted Egger is still waiting for a sweater.
“Never knew (he said that) until you showed me,” Egger said. “100% a Taylor Mouser thing to do. Never knew it. “
The truth is, Mouser never had a sweater-knitting hobby. He just likes clowning around.
“I’m a clown now; I was certainly a clown then,” Mouser said. “That was me just trying to embarrass people, I think back then, by just saying goofy (stuff). I always thought those sports bios were funny. So I was like, ‘How can I make a mockery of this?’”
Not taking himself too seriously is the quality that has made Mouser a fast riser in the college coaching ranks. Mouser can relate to anybody — he recruited offensive linemen Jalen Travis by eating meatballs together — and doesn’t think himself above the most menial work.
At 34 years old, Mouser is No. 12 Iowa State’s offensive coordinator. His rise is remarkable, considering he once wondered if he’d be stuck working at Little Caesars forever.
He’s a ‘Bite-your-ankle-off kind of guy’
Mouser is known as an offensive mind now, but he made a football career as a defensive lineman.
Mouser didn’t plan on playing college football — his combination of 5-foot-11 and a 5-foot-9 wingspan was a natural disadvantage — but when Adams State in Alamosa, Colorado offered a scholarship, he thought he’d better take it.
Kevin Ashak, an Adams State offensive lineman in Mouser’s class, recalled some of the one-on-one battles they had in practice.
“Oh, man, gritty, bite-your-ankle-off kind of guy, you know, that’s what Mouse was like,” Ashak said. “He was definitely undersized, but he wasn’t weak or anything like that.”
The grittiest thing Mouser did as a player might have been making a field goal on a torn ACL. ASU’s kicker injured himself and after a teammate kicked the ball into the back of the field goal unit, Mouser told his coach he kicked a little in high school and could make one. Mouser had torn his left ACL three weeks earlier and wasn’t even dressed for the game, but at halftime, his coach put a ball down, watched Mouser kick and told him to get dressed.
“I told my coach I could kick because my ACL that was torn wasn’t my plant leg; I didn’t think it messed around with it too much,” Mouser said.
Mouser went three-for-three on field goals in college. He’s still got his skills, too. After current ISU kicker Kyle Konrardy got hurt in a win at Arkansas State, the Cyclones were down to just one kicker, so Mouser kicked field goals this week with the second unit and made both attempts.
Special teams at Adams State is perhaps the origin of Mouser’s creative offensive playcalling. In 2013, Eggers said the Grizzlies went nine-for-11 on 2-point conversions. Mouser was the longsnapper/center and Adams State would run power counter options, reverses and ISO runs out of several formations.
“There’s certainly part of me that was very excited at the time to do it, because as a D-lineman, I never get to touch the football, and when I do that, you get to touch the ball, and you’re running offensive plays and you’re doing goofy stuff,” Mouser said. “I’ve always been the guy that would rather do it and apologize for it later than ask for permission.”
But as much as Mouser loved his special teams adventures, his main contribution was on defense — he earned second-team all-conference honors as a defensive end. He admitted it sounds corny, but outworking everyone else created his success.
Mouser looked for an edge wherever he could. In games, it took him one quarter to learn the opponent’s snap count. In practice, Mouser learned his own team’s cadence, so when the team got punished with extra running at the end of practice, he would be the first off the line. During the week, Mouser liked to sit in on Adams State’s offensive line meetings to learn how offensive linemen thought.
When his junior season started and Mouser started considering coaching, he started paying $150 to attend Nike and Glazier coaching clinics. The cost became a little more manageable because Mouser stayed with the parents of a teammate in Denver.
“I mean, how many students know they want to coach but they don’t take the time to go to all of that stuff?” Egger said. “That’s just a testament to him and what he wanted to do, and he had his sights set on a goal.”
Building a program
If Adams State was going to have any success, Mouser knew keeping players on campus throughout the summer would be critical. In Division II, players aren’t required to remain on campus for workouts or team activities, so many leave.
In Alamosa, a town big enough for a Walmart but too small for a Target, Mouser’s class of students got creative, encouraging people to stick around. They floated the Rio Grande, grilled out at houses and rented DVDs from Netflix to bring the team together.
“You could always tell that with Mouse like, even then, the whole first floor of Coronado Hall, those are all his people,” Ashak said. “He’s just like a magnet. People gravitated toward him; it’s pretty universal as far as wherever he went.”
The cheap hot dogs, hamburgers, and float trips worked. In Mouser’s junior year in 2012, Adams State won eight games and seven in 2013.
“The best way to kind of put it, I guess, is they resurrected something at Adams State,” said Levi Gallas, ASU’s current head coach, who played one season with Mouser.
From Little Caesars to Division I college football
When Mouser graduated from Adams State in 2013, his hope was that he could use a loose family connection to then-Arizona State offensive coordinator Mike Norvell and join ASU’s staff. His backup plan was Little Caesars.
The ASU connection didn’t come through, so Mouser returned to the Little Caesars on Riggs Rd. and McQueen in Chandler, Arizona, where he’d worked in high school. Mouser made dough and cleaned dishes while trading food with the neighboring Subway and Panda Express to get variety in his diet. He applied for any football job he could, regardless of qualification, thinking he would learn the required skill sets if he was hired.
“I wasn’t sure if I was just going to work at Little Caesars forever or how it was going to go,” Mouser said. “It was a pretty, pretty uneventful, pretty disappointing four months there.”
Toledo initially declined Mouser’s graduate assistant application, but called back asking if he wanted to work for free as an intern. Mouser said he’d be there the following Monday and drove 28 hours from Chandler, Arizona to Toledo, Ohio. Mouser stayed with his aunt and commuted an hour to work each way.
“My dad told me to go there and do all this stuff that nobody else wanted to do,” Mouser said. “And I was like, ‘How will I know what that is?’ And he’s like, ‘You’ll know,’ sure enough, I went there and did that.”
At Toledo, an up-and-coming head coach named Matt Campbell moved Mouser to the offensive side of the ball. Campbell wanted Mouser, a defensive player, to expand his knowledge of the game. Mouser watched tape of Atlanta Falcons receiver Julio Jones to learn how to coach receivers.
Mouser dedicated himself to his new job, which was noticed by his fellow coaches. ISU defensive coordinator Jon Heacock first met Mouser when he started at Toledo in 2015.
“I had come in from Purdue, and Mouse had come in from the streets, I think,” Heacock said. “He was never afraid of work. Never afraid of being assigned something. Nothing was ever too small for him to do. And I’ve been in this business long enough to know if that’s how you are, if you’re humble and hungry, you’ll make it.”
Mouser did all the odd jobs that fall to graduate assistants, like checking to make sure players are in class and breaking down film.
The hours away from home strained on Mouser’s then-girlfriend, who wanted to move back to Arizona. When Campbell accepted ISU’s head coaching job in 2016 and Mouser was moving to Ames, his girlfriend gave an ultimatum.
“She said, ‘It’s me or Campbell.’ And I think she said that thinking I’d choose her, and I said, ‘I got to choose Campbell,’” Mouser said.
Genuine relationships are what Mouser does best. He hasn’t forgotten any of them.
When Ashak, now offensive line coach for the Indoor Football League’s Arizona Rattlers, coached an away game at the Iowa Barnstormers, Mouser invited Ashak to ISU to sit in on the Cyclones’ offensive line meeting. Mouser wrote a letter of recommendation and called to help get Gallas the Adams State coaching job. Mouser even got to introduce Cecil Fell, a Vietnam War veteran from Alamosa who drove the Adams State team bus and fed players sloppy joes, to Matt Campbell.
“He is a bro to the fullest,” Gallas said. “He’s always keeping in contact, willing to pick up the phone. I know he’s busy as heck, as an FBS coordinator, power four coordinator, and that dude would pick up my phone call at any second…that’s what’s special about Mouser, is that he continues to do that all the time.”
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Ben Hutchens is an Iowa State University beat writer for the Lee Enterprises network. Follow him on X or send him an email at Ben.Hutchens@lee.net.
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