How Taylor Mouser rose through the ranks to become Penn State’s offensive coordinator
Taylor Mouser leaned on the railing outside the team room in the Lasch Football Building as he tried to recall some of the odd jobs he had on his way through the coaching ranks.
The Penn State offensive coordinator went from working at a Little Caesar’s after college to driving to Toledo to work for head coach Matt Campbell. But it wasn’t like he went from a pizza shop to calling plays. That’s not how the job path usually works — although it doesn’t always go how Mouser’s did either, starting at Toledo, where he was a graduate assistant.
“Coach [Tyson] Veidt was our recruiting coordinator when I was at Toledo,” Mouser told the Centre Daily Times, “and he made me go pick up all the cigarette butts outside the team hotel for official visits. That was bad. We had to shovel off — there’s this big rocket on the field at Toledo — we’d have to go shovel off the rocket so that the players could see the rocket on the field. But the cigarette butts, picking them off the ground outside the hotel was a low moment for me. “
It wasn’t just cigarette butts or shoveling, either. Sometimes it was running through the hotel and making sure everyone was up for team meals — and showing up to that meal exhausted and drenched in sweat. Other times it was stuffing mailers to send to recruits.
No matter what it was, Mouser was all-in on the task at hand and the people who surrounded him. Which is part of why he’s now calling plays at one of the biggest programs in the country.
Mouser’s effort was noticed by plenty of people around him, and particularly by those he would eventually become close with, like current Indianapolis Colts tight ends coach Tom Manning, who worked with him at Iowa State and Toledo. Manning saw how he handled all of his odds job and knew it meant he was destined for more.
“One of my first memories of him is — any of the jobs that he was doing, he was in a great mood doing them,” Manning told the CDT. “I remember we were actually up in the press box, we were renovating our building at Toledo at the time, and he was in there stuffing — you can only imagine how many mailers this guy is stuffing.
“You go in there, it’s a mess, and him and the guy running recruiting are moving around. And he’s having a great time. And I think right away you get a little sense of the personality. Like, hey, this guy has volunteered. He’s doing nothing but crappy stuff, and he’s having a blast. And I think that was what originally probably drew me to him.”
Manning saw it, Campbell saw it and so did newcomers to the staff. People like Los Angeles Rams offensive coordinator Nate Scheelhaase, who joined Campbell’s Iowa State staff in 2018 when Mouser was still working on the back end of the football operation rather than coaching.
Scheelhaase, who still spends plenty of time keeping in touch with Mouser about life and football, gravitated to Mouser because of his work ethic and his personality.
“I think the biggest thing that I probably saw was just his willingness to invest in people, specifically players, on a genuine, authentic level,” Scheelhaase told the CDT. “Much bigger than football, much bigger than their skill set. That was unique and rare to have — a level of care that was authentic.
“And I think the other part was he really wanted to invest in their craft. And if the players wanted to see cut-ups, they want to see every catch that the best receiver in the league had in 2018, then Mouse was the go-getter to be willing to do that. He was the type that was always willing to do those things no matter what it would be for players and coaches alike.”
Relationships mean a lot to Mouser — and to his success — and that stems from his childhood, when his dad was the president of the then-Utah Grizzlies, a minor league hockey team.
That opened the door for a young Mouser to spend countless hours with and around professional athletes. He was able to observe what it took to win and what it meant to be a part of a team. He saw how people treated each other and how they were able to enjoy themselves despite being at work. And he still hangs on to those lessons.
Because there’s something about spending so much time with people he cares about that makes coaching so appealing to him.
“I love competing. I love sports.” Mouser said. “But my favorite thing about it has always been being in the locker room, being around the guys. Same with the offensive staff, we can sit in there and go to work and hold each other accountable with the passion that we have.”
It should be no surprise, then, that those closest to Mouser trust him so much from a personal standpoint. And that doesn’t just include the coaches and staff members.
It became apparent to Manning early on that there was something special about Mouser and the way he does things — and the way he treats people. Even when he wasn’t one of the key members on the coaching staff, he was still one of the people the players trusted most.
“I think having some of the experiences that we had going from a school like Toledo, where some of the athletes are different than what maybe we had at Iowa State, and the teaching is different. Maybe the modes of our operation were slightly different, as it went,” Manning said. “And I think, uniquely, you could see him having the ability to relate to all of those guys. From the wide receivers at Toledo to the offensive line at Iowa State, very different young men. And he was just a guy who was always was there.
“He always seemed to me to be the guy that he was the first call, ‘hey, this guy’s late for whatever,’ Mouser is the one telling you that he’s going to be late. I think what he does such a great job with is building the relationships, and it doesn’t matter what walk of life they are, he’s still himself, but he does have the ability to relate to those guys, and they trust him.”
And that helps explain why Mouser has spent his entire coaching career with Campbell. He trusts him and he’s loyal to him — much like those around him trust him and are loyal to him. He’s said before that he would have followed the head coach wherever he went this offseason. This time, that just happened to be at Penn State.
But with Mouser’s trajectory, soon enough he will have to branch out. Because he’s an up-and-coming young coach who’s as good at building relationships as any other coach in the country. That means offers will come. Head coach kind of offers.
He’ll have the opportunity to take everything he’s learned — whether it’s from his dad, Manning, Scheelhaase, Campbell or any of the other people he’s fostered relationships with over the years — to go off on his own.
And use it to build his own program from the ground up.
