Shotwell to roam sidelines again

Kyle Shotwell’s days of fighting for an NFL roster spot are over. The 2006 Buck Buchanan Award winner and former Cal Poly linebacker reunited with his alma mater’s gridiron squad earlier this month when new head football coach Tim Walsh welcomed him back to the Mustang family as an assistant coach.

A family reunion indeed; Shotwell has two brothers on the team: junior defensive lineman Ryan, and freshman offensive lineman Troy who both said their brother’s decision to give up his pursuit to play Sunday nights was the right one.

“No offense to Kyle, but everybody thinks that the NFL lifestyle is really fancy, fun and cool; but it really wasn’t. It was a lot of hard work,” Ryan said after watching the grueling routine his brother had to go through for a minimal return.

“You’re living in a city where you don’t really have any friends, any family and your teammates don’t give a hoot about you. I can see why he made the decision to start coaching… no amount of money can replace your happiness,” he added.

Since signing with the Oakland Raiders as an undrafted free agent in 2007, the former Cal Poly linebacker has signed deals with four other teams. As recently as two months ago, he was on the Kansas City Chiefs practice squad, but was unable to crack an NFL team’s active roster during his time in the league.

Once the toast of Cal Poly football, Shotwell said he never felt more overlooked and felt it was time to move on.

“Basically I got worn out of being the first guy cut and the last guy signed,” he said. “When you live like that for two years, it starts to wear on you.”

Now that he finds himself guiding from the sideline, he admits as a coach he will be more sympathetic to a walk-on, because he too wasn’t a highly recruited player.

“I’m going to keep my eyes open to the characteristics that I saw in myself, and characteristics that I believe don’t necessarily show up on a stat sheet,” he added. “Something that’s within a guy that can make him an astounding football player.”

Troy, the youngest of the Shotwell brothers, doesn’t see himself getting any special treatment from his big brother.

“It’s not as big of a deal as people think it is,” Troy said. “Everybody thinks, at least for me, that he’s going to give me a hard time or be harder on me because he’s my brother, but he’s doing a good job of treating me the same as he treats anybody else.”

Troy is not alone when he said that his brother is doing a good job transitioning from player to coach.

“He knows Cal Poly, he knows what it takes, he knows the tradition of the football program and he’s been a tremendous help for us in our first 14 days here,” Walsh said.

Although Shotwell might not have caught the eye of many NFL scouts, he stood out to Walsh.

“I met him at my press conference, and I just love the way he presented himself,” Walsh said. “That’s the way you want your coaches to present themselves and those are the people you want to be around.”

Shotwell said that his experience practicing at the upmost level will give him credibility with the players he coaches, “even with the guys we talk of at USC or Cal, or other big Pac-10 schools because I’ve played at a level even they haven’t played at.”

Shotwell has plenty of experience at the college level as well. He made 122 tackles including 21 for losses and seven sacks as a senior en route to winning the Buck Buchanan Award, an honor given to the best defender in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA). Shotwell also had a career-high 11 solo tackles, five for losses in Cal Poly’s upset of Football Bowl Subdivision’s (formerly Division I-A) San Diego State.

He was named a first-team All-American in 2006, and after his senior season played in the East-West Shrine Game in Houston where he was the game’s leading tackler.

Although he just started his coaching career, Shotwell said growing up in Goleta, Calif. following the rich tradition of the USC program and having a father who played for Cal set those schools at the top, along with eventually head coaching at Cal Poly as his future coaching aspirations.

“That would be my Army for coach Ellerson,” he said.

Former football head coach Rich Ellerson left Cal Poly to become head coach of the United States Military Academy at West Point in December. It was an expected move because of his family ties to the school.

But for now Shotwell is embarking on a new stage in his life with a new head coach and a young team that he said is confident can continue the winning tradition, or even surpass that of Ellerson’s.