'A teacher's heart' ... How Kayden Lyles went from potential starting OL to aspiring coach

Kayden Lyles had experienced season-ending injuries before. He had dealt with a number of serious ailments, in fact, during his five years of college football at Wisconsin.

So when he tweaked his knee during preseason camp this August, the Florida State grad transfer was convinced it was something minor.

He wasn’t in intolerable pain. He didn’t even fall to the ground.

So when Lyles agreed to leave practice to get an MRI exam just to be sure, he was convinced it would come back with good results. He even participated in the Seminoles’ afternoon weightlifting session as if everything was fine.

But before Lyles headed back out to the Florida State practice fields that evening for a team walk-through, he got pulled aside by one of the Seminoles’ team doctors.

As it turned out, his minor knee injury was actually a torn ACL and MCL. His final season of college football — his one season at Florida State — was finished before it started.

“My heart just dropped,” Lyles said. “It never would have crossed my mind based on what I was feeling. I was walking without a brace. I went and lifted that day after practice, after I got the MRI. I never would have thought what happened actually happened.

“When it did, it just crushed me. This was supposed to be my last shot, last chance to be able to prove myself. And then I get injured before the season. Before I could do anything.”

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It took Lyles a few days to fully come to grips with the news.

Before the injury, he was locked in a heated battle with teammate Maurice Smith for the starting center position. Now, the 6-foot-3, 315-pound lineman was faced with a difficult, perhaps life-changing decision.

Should he dive full-force into rehab with the hopes of getting a seventh year of eligibility from the NCAA? Or should he put his dreams of a big final season of college football on the shelf, and start thinking about his future?

There was a time when that would have meant leaving the game for good.

Lyles earned his bachelor’s degree at Wisconsin in industrial engineering. He was pursuing a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Florida State, and he also was working to obtain a certificate in aerospace aerodynamics.

But after eight months in Tallahassee, after eight months of learning from Florida State offensive line coach Alex Atkins, Lyles had begun thinking of a different future. Of a career in coaching.

And with his life at a crossroads, what better way to see if that might be his true calling than studying under Atkins for the rest of the year?

“If I like it, then I roll with it,” Lyles told himself. “If I don’t, then I can always come back and play and see how it goes.”

He never had to consider Plan B.

“I just fell in love with coaching,” Lyles said. “I treated this year as a volunteer student coach, almost as if I was acting as a GA (graduate assistant). I wanted to see what it would be like, and I fell in love with it.”

It took a couple of weeks after the injury to reach that initial decision, but once he did, Lyles said Atkins supported him completely.

Each day before practice, the staff would print an extra copy of the day’s script and give it to him. Then after practice, he would help graduate assistant coach Cooper Williams in the film room and work on putting together video “cut-ups” for the players.

During team meetings, Lyles stopped listening like a lineman and started seeing the game through a different lens.

“Rather than take notes on what I would normally take notes on as a player, I would take notes on how the coaches coach,” Lyles said. “Just putting stuff in my toolbox.”

That would be his approach throughout the fall.

Lyles already considered himself a cerebral player. He loved the mental side of football, learning new techniques, preparing for challenging opponents, delving into different schemes and play calls.

Now, he was learning how to teach those elements to the players. And he felt like he was getting a master’s course for free by getting to watch Atkins every day.

“He gave me the biggest compliment I’ve ever gotten from a player,” Florida State’s offensive line coach/offensive coordinator said. “Because he was at a great program [at Wisconsin]. He knows ball. He’s smart, he’s tough. And when he told me he wanted to be a coach, he said, ‘Hey I want to be around you more, because I want to learn from you. I want my coaching style to mimic how you coach us.’

“That was awesome to hear.”

And those weren’t empty words.

While Lyles had been around plenty of great coaches before, he felt there was something special about Atkins. Not just his knowledge of the game and his ability to get the best out of his players, but the way he relates to them. The way he pushes them to their limits but simultaneously lets them know they are loved and supported.

“I got to see how much a coach like Coach Atkins could affect somebody,” Lyles said. “I just love the way that he is — his personality and everything. He would do anything for us. He’s hard on us on the field, but he genuinely cares about us.

“One thing I can say about him is he keeps his word on everything. He always says that he’s going to coach you hard on the field but he’ll love you and be your best friend off the field, and he really is that way. He just wants the best for everybody.”

Truth be told, Atkins isn’t the only coach Lyles has watched closely during his informal apprenticeship.

He observes head coach Mike Norvell and contemplates how Norvell has gotten a team coming off of four straight losing seasons to believe in themselves and turn in a 9-3 season heading into Thursday’s Cheez-It Bowl against Oklahoma.

He watches and listens to every assistant coach on the staff to see how they teach, how they correct, and how they motivate. Like a sponge, he soaks up every detail he believes will help him during his coaching journey.

“We have a very diverse set of coaches,” Lyles said. “They all have their different styles, their different ages, everything. Coach [Randy] Shannon has his style, Coach Odell [Haggins] has his style. Coach YAC (David Johnson) has his own style with the way that he connects with the players and coaches them.

“Every room is different too. The way that Coach Atkins talks to the offensive linemen is going to be different than how you talk to a DB or a linebacker or a running back. It’s just a little different.”

And during practices, when a player leaves the field after a rep and a coach rushes over to offer some input, Lyles pays even closer attention.

“I like to listen in and eavesdrop,” he said. “Just to hear how he’s connecting with the player. What he’s trying to say, what he’s trying to express.”

Lyles, who started games at Wisconsin at multiple positions on the offensive line and also at defensive end, has even gotten some practical coaching experience this fall.

After several Florida State practices, Lyle was seen offering individual tips to the Seminoles’ offensive linemen. Sometimes, it was a concept he noticed they were struggling with in a meeting or practice. Other times, they would come to him and ask for advice.

Then in the afternoons, he started helping out as an assistant offensive line coach at Gadsden High School in nearby Quincy. And that might have been what truly convinced Lyles he was making the right career choice.

On his very first day at Gadsden, the head coach told Lyles to take a group of offensive linemen to one end of the field and teach them something he felt was important.

Just like that.

Go coach.

“It was amazing,” Lyles said. “Each one of them looked me dead in my eye every single time I spoke. And they tried their best to correct everything.

“That was a really good feeling. I was like, ‘All right. This is definitely what I want to do.'”

With Florida State’s 2022 season coming to an end this week in Orlando, Lyles isn’t completely certain what his coaching future holds.

He wants to keep learning from Atkins for as long as he can, but he will be on the lookout for GA positions at other schools as well if something formal doesn’t come open at Florida State.

“If they call me tomorrow about a school out in California, I’ll have a U-Haul ready to go,” he said.

And Atkins has absolutely no doubt Lyles will shine wherever the profession takes him.

Not only is he extremely intelligent — Lyles earned Academic All-Big Ten honors while obtaining that engineering degree at Wisconsin — but he knows how to relate to players. He understands the game inside and out. And he has a special quality not unlike his position coach.

“It’s because he has a teacher’s heart,” Atkins said. “And he truly wants to see others do a great job. If you have that in your heart like he does, I think he’s going to be a wonderful football coach.”

Talk about this story with other die-hard FSU football fans on the Tribal Council.