One video helped turn Tyler Durbin from college dropout to OSU kicker, NFL hopeful

Tyler Durbin wants to accomplish three things in a matter of weeks. Most people would be lucky to knock out just one of the things on his to-do list over the course of a lifetime.

Like any college kid, school eats up most of Durbin’s time. He’s currently taking 20 credit hours so that he can graduate from Ohio State with a civil engineering degree in May. Durbin’s rigorous major didn’t prevent him from earning Academic All-District honors and a 3.3 grade point average.

“I’m pretty proud of that,” he said.

All but one of Durbin’s classes are on Tuesday and Thursday. That means Monday, Wednesday and Friday are his training days. He spends roughly 1-1 1/2 hours per training day kicking and another half hour stretching. Durbin does what other college kickers are doing. That is, he tries not to over-kick (kickers usually have a pitch count), while making sure he perfects his craft.

And in case that wasn’t enough to keep him busy, Durbin is also training for a half marathon with his wife, Kristin.

When’s the half marathon? It’s Saturday, April 29. As Durbin and the rest of the football world knows, that’s Day 3 of the NFL draft.

That’s also when hundreds of other NFL hopefuls will sign contracts as undrafted free agents and officially begin their professional careers. Considering only a select few kickers are usually drafted in a given year, odds are that Durbin will fall into that group. He could stick with a team right away, or he could have to market himself to a variety of teams. Maybe he’ll have to make another highlight video.

Whatever happens, he’ll be in familiar territory.

“It’s what I experienced when I was trying to find a place to kick in college,” Durbin told Saturday Tradition. “I didn’t know where I was gonna end up or if I was even gonna end up somewhere. I just kept kicking and working at it. That’s the same approach I’m gonna take here. Control what I can control, work as hard as I can at perfecting my craft.

“And if I’m good enough, I’ll end up somewhere.”

A couple things are common when it comes to college kickers. Often times, they’re former soccer players. The skill-set obviously translates well to the football field. In addition to being former soccer players, many end up being walk-ons. Kickers don’t necessarily have to attend showcases across the country to get noticed the same way position often players do.

That can make for some atypical paths to big-time college football. Durbin’s path — even by kicker standards — was definitely atypical.

As a junior on the James Madison University soccer team in 2014, Durbin was ready to make the next step. Like most upperclassmen, his goal was to become a starter and establish himself as one of the team’s key veterans.

But to his frustration, that never happened. Durbin wasn’t in the starting lineup for JMU’s 2014 season opener. That forced him to reevaluate his priorities. He didn’t like his role on the team. On top of that, he wasn’t thrilled with JMU’s upstart engineering program.

A week into his junior year, Durbin quit the soccer team and dropped out of school. He returned home to Virginia, where he pondered his next step. He wanted to enroll at his next school that spring, and if he could continue his athletic career, even better.

Could he try kicking in a different sport?

“I was like, ‘Hell, I can kick a ball pretty far. Maybe I should give this a shot,’” Durbin said. “I just want out to my high school and started kicking footballs.”

The raw ability was there. In soccer, Durbin played a lot of center back and right back. His speciality was booming that 50-60-yard diagonal ball.

He found out that he could kick a football just as far, but he still had to make some adjustments. Unlike in soccer, his approach to striking the ball had to be the same every time. Both physically and mentally, Durbin had to become consistent.

To do that, he worked with renowned kicking coach Paul Woodside, who was an All-American kicker at West Virginia in the 1980s. They spent roughly a month developing Durbin’s accuracy.

With a bit more experience, Durbin brought a camera with him to Lake Braddock High School one night. He kicked from all three spots (left hashmark, straight on, right hashmark) at 30, 40 and 50 yards. The camera only cut when he switched distances because he wanted to show that he could make three kicks in a row from different angles.

The next step was sending that video out to some schools. If Durbin could get their attention early enough, he would enroll at a school in January.

Originally, Durbin had his sights set on Virginia Tech. It had everything he wanted — a solid Power Five football team, a quick drive home and a top-notch engineering program. The Hokies’ coaching staff actually responded to Durbin’s video within a couple hours and told him they liked his talent.

But they also had something else. They already had two freshmen kickers, which meant there was no spot for Durbin.

There were still some possibilities. The University of Virginia coaching staff also liked Durbin’s video. In fact, they hosted him on a visit that fall. But Virginia told Durbin that he could only join the team if he got into the school, which he didn’t. Staying in Virginia wasn’t an option, neither was Georgia Tech, which was the only school that didn’t respond to Durbin’s video.

There was, however, another school that appealed to Durbin. Well, that school appealed most to his future in-laws. The parents of Durbin’s future wife, Kristin, both went to Ohio State and were big Buckeye football fans. Half-heartedly, the idea was thrown around. After all, OSU did have a respected engineering program.

“I jokingly said to (Kristin), ‘Oh, should I send my video into Ohio State?’” Durbin said. “She was like, ‘Yeah! Do it! Go for it!’ So I was like, ‘Alright, I’ll send it in. But it’s Ohio State.’”

As luck would have it, Ohio State had a kicker transfer and one graduate. The Buckeyes were indeed interested. Durbin drove out to Columbus in the fall and met with the OSU walk-on coordinator to talk about potentially joining the team the following semester.

Two weeks later, Durbin found out that the Buckeyes wanted him to enroll at the university in January. In even better news, the Buckeyes told him that he wouldn’t have to kick in a walk-on competition. The roster spot was his.

A few months was all it took for him to learn a new skill and become a preferred walk-on for the defending College Football Playoff National Champion Buckeyes.

As Durbin learned, JMU soccer and Ohio State football were just a little different.

Durbin might’ve been wearing the same uniform, but that was about the only thing he had in common with his Ohio State teammates.

Technically, he wasn’t part of one of OSU’s highly-touted recruiting classes. He wasn’t exactly surrounded by teammates in his civil engineering classes, either. Shoot, Urban Meyer couldn’t even pick him out of a crowd in his first year in Columbus.

“He didn’t know who I was until camp of my second season with the team,” Durbin said of Meyer, who admittedly isn’t a fan of kicking. “And I’m not sure he even knew my name after that. He just knew I could kick a ball.”

Meyer had to learn Durbin’s name when starter Sean Nuernberger suffered a groin injury right before the start of the 2016 season. Two sports and five years of college was all it took for Durbin to earn a starting spot.

And like he did with his video, Durbin capitalized on the opportunity.

In his first and only season of college football, Durbin converted 17 of 22 field goal attempts, not to mention 63 of 65 extra points. By seasons end, he racked up no shortage of accomplishments.

Durbin made an Ohio State record 11 extra points in his football debut against Bowling Green. His career-high three field goals, including one to force overtime, helped the Buckeyes close out a win at No. 8 Wisconsin to remain undefeated. The Lou Groza award semifinalist also led the conference in scoring and was named third-team All-B1G.

Perhaps the best indicator of Durbin’s success was how Meyer addressed him in the final weeks of the season.

“I wish that son-of-a-gun had more years,” Meyer said in November.

Now, Durbin hopes to turn his one year of full-time kicking into an NFL career. With even more time devoted to kicking the last few months, he said he became more consistent. Watching film brought out some of the flaws of his first full season.

He didn’t end 2016 the way he wanted to — four of his five missed field goals came in OSU’s final two games — but that’s partially why Durbin believes he only scratched the surface of his potential.

“I’d like to show NFL teams that I kicked in a lot of big games this year and it was only my first season playing,” he said. “Imagine what I could do if I had some more experience.”

Durbin is still just two years removed from enrolling at Ohio State. Two and a half years ago, he had no idea if he could kick anything but a soccer ball.

The love for soccer is still with Durbin. He usually wakes up on Saturday mornings and watches the Premier League. This Saturday, however, Durbin will be a bit preoccupied.

He’s got a half marathon to run and an NFL career to begin.