IU Coach Kevin Wilson had only been talking with Euless Trinity High School head football coach Chris Jensen for a couple hours when he told Jensen he wanted the school’s starting quarterback.
Tyler Natee was a 6-foot, 260-pound physical freak of nature. First he was a fullback with tailback capabilities. Then he was a tailback who threw just as accurately as any quarterback on Trinity’s roster. Eventually, he found himself leading the offense as a junior and senior.
Wilson didn’t think IU had a player like him.
“Assistant coaches and recruiters just really didn’t know what to tell their head coach about him,” Jensen told Wilson. “He goes, ‘Well, I can solve that problem. I’m the head coach. Let’s talk.’”
Wilson was only in the area because he had traveled down to visit now-junior quarterback Richard Lagow, but he had some time to kill. So, he asked a couple coaches he knew well from his time at Oklahoma who the best player around was who nobody was really going after.
That question landed him Natee, and, in the past two games, some punishing runs and a touchdown, too.
Natee registered the first rushing touchdown by an IU running back in 2016 in the loss to Wake Forest and ran for 38 yards on 10 carries in the overtime win over Michigan State. Thirty-three of those yards came after contact.
Watching highlights of Natee’s performance, Jensen saw the player who torched high school defenses for 3,000 career yards on the ground and 1,403 through the air.
“He can play multiple positions without having several different personnel packages,” Jensen said. “You can leave him out there and do different things, and that gives you an advantage offensively.”
IU used Natee in a few high-pressure situations against Michigan State, a role that necessitated a level of trust IU running backs coach Deland McCullough said Natee earned over the summer.
“Coach Wilson has a lot of trust in me, because he’s the reason I’m here,” Natee said after the win over Michigan State. “He brung me here, so he expects a lot of me, and I just have to live up to that standard.”
McCullough said the team was excited to get Natee back from a knee injury when they did because they needed bigger guys to go up against a tough Spartan squad.
IU wanted to send some bigger bodies at Michigan State, and Natee fit the bill.
Natee said he was the biggest running back his teammates had ever seen when he started camp, leading senior running back Clyde Newton to dub him “Big Bacon.”
Natee’s role with the Hoosiers has yet to be finalized, but what sold him on IU was a package Wilson made for him that included zone reads and more which would enable him to do a little bit of everything.
In high school, Jensen said Natee’s little bit of everything translated to the demoralization of his opponents.
“You could have something perfectly defended and he’d just run right through you,” Jensen said. “One bad angle and he’d have the speed to score long distance. The next thing you know he’s throwing the ball over your head.”
However the ball ends up in his hands Saturday against Ohio State, Natee will have one thing in mind.
“Every time I get the ball my mindset is to punish anybody who’s in the way so, I’m sorry, but that’s just what I’ve got to do,” Natee said. “I’ve got to help my team win and got to keep the chains moving.”
Before Wilson walked in to Jensen’s office, both Jensen and Natee were concerned Natee wouldn’t have the opportunity to help a team win and keep the chains moving.
While he was excited about playing quarterback in high school at first, the more he watched his classmates with more defined roles receive more attention from universities than he, his confidence began to fade.
“The summer before his senior year, he kind of had his head down like he was worried he wasn’t going to get recruited,” Jensen said. “I just told him and told him and told him, ‘It’s going to work out. You’re too good of an athlete. You’re going to be getting something special, and you’re going to just have to trust me on that.’”
Thank goodness Kevin Wilson walked in the door that day, Jensen said.
Now Natee is getting a degree, just as his family, who Jensen said moved to the United States from Africa to send their sons to college, intended.
“I think some things are meant to be,” Jensen said. “He’s meant to be at Indiana.”
