New Bengals assistant wide receivers coach Davis Koetter has fallen in love with football twice now.
The first is when he wasn't old enough to be a ball boy, and yet followed his dad's Arizona State team into the mountains for a week at Camp Tontozona.
The second is when another college head coach came to him and told him he wasn't beating out Portland State quarterback Davis Alexander. But he saw enough athleticism in his 6-2, 195 pounds to suggest moving to wide receiver.
"I fell in love with football again. Just seeing it in a different way. I had played quarterback my whole life," Koetter says. "I had fun playing special teams, too. When I transferred to Boise, I just wanted to keep playing receiver and keep getting better."
What turned out to be a jump ball has become quite a catch. While Davis Alexander comes off a season he led Montreal to the CFL's Grey Cup, Koetter finds himself in a room with the NFL's best wide receiver tandem.
Like that move to receiver, it almost seems pre-ordained.
Koetter grew up watching the NFL's best receiving tandem when it was Chad Johnson and T.J. Houshmandzadeh roaming Paycor Stadium. After all, Koetter watched The Ocho and Houshmandzadeh because their head coach, Marvin Lewis, played ball with Davis' dad Dirk for the Idaho State Bengals.
Not only that, their head coach in Pocatello was Dave Kragthorpe. And when Dirk stayed home to begin his coaching career at Pocatello's Highland High School, Dave's son Steve played for him. Dirk figures Lewis spent nine straight Thanksgivings at his home as an Idaho State player, G.A., and assistant coach.
A long time ago.
Dirk Koetter, the former Buccaneers head coach and offensive coordinator for three clubs during a 14-year stint in the NFL, had to knock off the cobwebs when he found out his son was headed to the league on head coach Zac Taylor's staff. As he scanned the roster of coaches, he saw Brad Kragthorpe, grandson of Dave and son of Steve, listed as the quarterbacks coach.
"I didn't know Brad was there," Dirk Koetter is saying, a day after he and Lewis played golf together instead of coaching against each other. "I do know this. We've got plenty of stuff with Bengals' colors, so we're ready to go. We're Bengals fans again."
The thread that led Davis Koetter to Paycor is much more recent. After one year as South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer's assistant quarterbacks coach, Koetter popped up on the radar of Zac Taylor. Last year's scouting and drafting of South Carolina linebacker Demetrius Knight Jr., helped make the two programs familiar with each other.
In his perpetual search for good, young coaches, Taylor reached out to Beamer, and Beamer recommended Davis, a 27-year-old with experience also in the quarterback and tight end rooms of Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian.
Naturally, when Taylor called to talk about assisting Troy Walters, Koetter's first thought was Joe Burrow throwing to Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins.
"That went through my head quick, just thinking of the quarterback and the talent level," Koetter says, "and how lucky I am to be around great coaches. To be able to have a broad view of coaching different positions, I think that's going to benefit me and my career. As a person on the support staff, you're here to prepare (the receivers) by doing a lot of work on the front end to make the information digestible."
There's a certain unspoken anonymous daily grind standard among coaches' kids. Davis Koetter (whose sister is the head volleyball coach at the University of Wyoming) is in a room headed by a coach's son in Walters. The quarterback (Burrow) is a coach's son. So is the quarterbacks coach (Kragthorpe). So is the head coach Taylor.
Dirk Koetter is a coach's son, too. If his son's first memories are of Camp Tontozona, then his first memory is as a ball boy getting run over on the sidelines by the back and a linebacker while his father glared at him as if it were his fault.
"A willingness to do any job that needs to be done," Dirk Koetter says of what his son brings to the receiver room. "He's in more of a lower-level role, those guys that break down the film, make the cutups, do the scouting reports. The more thorough and accurate those are, the more that streamlines your weekly game plan, and helps your teaching aids with the players. Hopefully, that all comes out on the field on Sunday.
"This is a great opportunity. Just to be around those players, be around Troy Walters, obviously Zac Taylor. Coaching is learning. You're always learning until you get your chance to be in more of an upfront role. Davis is off to a good start doing that in his career. Grateful and excited at the same time."
On this day in his Paycor cubicle, Davis Koetter is in the boiler room of the Bengals' offseason. Up above, they're steaming into next week's NFL scouting combine and next month's free agency. Down here, he's among the crew helping keep the ship on course with the tedious nuts and bolts while using the lessons of a coach's son.
"Work ethic. Attention to detail," says Davis Koetter, third-generation coach. "You don't have to be the smartest guy in the room if you work at it with that attention to detail and have a process."
