A long time ago.
Dirk Koetter, the former Buccaneers head coach and offensive coordinator for three clubs during a 14-year stint in the NFL, had to knock off the cobwebs when he found out his son was headed to the league on head coach Zac Taylor's staff. As he scanned the roster of coaches, he saw Brad Kragthorpe, grandson of Dave and son of Steve, listed as the quarterbacks coach.
"I didn't know Brad was there," Dirk Koetter is saying, a day after he and Lewis played golf together instead of coaching against each other. "I do know this. We've got plenty of stuff with Bengals' colors, so we're ready to go. We're Bengals fans again."
The thread that led Davis Koetter to Paycor is much more recent. After one year as South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer's assistant quarterbacks coach, Koetter popped up on the radar of Zac Taylor. Last year's scouting and drafting of South Carolina linebacker Demetrius Knight Jr., helped make the two programs familiar with each other.
In his perpetual search for good, young coaches, Taylor reached out to Beamer, and Beamer recommended Davis, a 27-year-old with experience also in the quarterback and tight end rooms of Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian.
Naturally, when Taylor called to talk about assisting Troy Walters, Koetter's first thought was Joe Burrow throwing to Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins.
"That went through my head quick, just thinking of the quarterback and the talent level," Koetter says, "and how lucky I am to be around great coaches. To be able to have a broad view of coaching different positions, I think that's going to benefit me and my career. As a person on the support staff, you're here to prepare (the receivers) by doing a lot of work on the front end to make the information digestible."
There's a certain unspoken anonymous daily grind standard among coaches' kids. Davis Koetter (whose sister is the head volleyball coach at the University of Wyoming) is in a room headed by a coach's son in Walters. The quarterback (Burrow) is a coach's son. So is the quarterbacks coach (Kragthorpe). So is the head coach Taylor.
Dirk Koetter is a coach's son, too. If his son's first memories are of Camp Tontozona, then his first memory is as a ball boy getting run over on the sidelines by the back and a linebacker while his father glared at him as if it were his fault.