Kyler Fisher ‘totally invested’ in Iowa football, now seeing dividends as senior

IOWA CITY — The first time Cooper DeJean and Kyler Fisher were on the field “didn’t go too well,” as DeJean remembers it. Well, not for his team.

DeJean and Fisher, now teammates at Iowa, were on opposing sidelines for a high school playoff game. Ironically for a game between two future defensive standouts, it was a 58-42 shootout.

Fisher, the eventual Iowa linebacker, rushed for more than 300 yards and had seven touchdowns for Southeast Valley.

“(Fisher) was a tremendous athlete,” his high school coach Mike Swieter said in a phone call with The Gazette.

Fisher has not stuffed the stat sheet in his five years at Iowa like he did in the win over DeJean’s OABCIG high school team, but his athleticism has quietly helped the Hawkeyes in many other facets.

“Everything about him has been quality,” Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said. “A great special teams guy. Totally invested. He's matured physically and mentally, which is what college football is all about. It's the fun part about it.”

As Ferentz referenced, special teams was where Fisher first became a factor for Iowa. This season is Fisher’s third-straight with 200-plus snaps on special teams, according to Pro Football Focus.

His return of Henry Marchese’s blocked punt for a touchdown against Nebraska in 2021 was vital for the Hawkeyes’ comeback and subsequent Big Ten championship berth.

This year, his 206 special teams snaps easily outnumber the rest of the Hawkeyes. No other player has more than 180, according to PFF.

"He’s been very good for us as a core special teams player,“ Iowa special teams coordinator LeVar Woods said this week. ”Typically, if there’s a play made, he’s in the middle of it somewhere.“

But Fisher’s contributions are no longer exclusive to special teams.

Fisher is the first-team linebacker this year at the Leo spot — the third linebacker on the field when Iowa is in its 4-3 defense instead of the 4-2-5 hybrid Cash defense.

Because of Fisher’s versatility, Iowa can get away with using him in situations where it might not otherwise deploy a deploy a third linebacker. Fisher has been in coverage on 84 plays, according to PFF.

“We ask him to do a lot,” fellow linebacker Jay Higgins said. “We ask him to jam receivers, and then we also ask him to take on blocks of tight ends, so he’s really helpful.”

It helps that he was a defensive back for his first three seasons at Iowa before moving to linebacker. The position change was “pretty abrupt.”

“Before practice it was like, ‘All right, you’re getting switched,’” Fisher said. “So I was like, ‘OK, cool.’”

It is a move Fisher has embraced.

“I feel more comfortable being a linebacker,” Fisher said. “Plus, I play the money position, so I kind of get to be a DB in that aspect or in that scenario.”

Fisher’s versatility at the college level is certainly not a surprise to his high school coach.

“Besides the line, he could have been a good receiver,” Swieter said. “He was a good running back. You could put him at fullback, defensively inside backer, outside backer, free safety, corner — he could handle them all.”

Fisher is a “quiet kid,” Swieter noted, but that did not stop him from taking a leadership role in high school when necessary. Southeast Valley started 2-2 when Fisher was a senior.

"I basically called out the team and asked who is going to step up,“ Swieter said. ”He took us on his back. … I’ve never seen a kid, in a span of about five weeks, have over 1,000 yards and do everything that he accomplished.“

Those accomplishments included helping the Jaguars beat two top-ranked teams and go on to win a district title.

Fisher’s feats at Southeast Valley did not garner much Division I attention, although he had scholarship offers from some Division II schools. He was “really thinking about going” to Minnesota State-Mankato.

“I wasn’t a huge recruit,” Fisher said. “People underestimated me.”

He caught Iowa’s attention at a prospect camp in the St. Louis area. Linebackers coach Seth Wallace took note of the kid with the “blue cleats.”

“You might want to take a look at this kid,” Wallace remembers telling defensive coordinator Phil Parker. “We might be able to get him as a walk-on.”

Fisher pounced at the opportunity to be a preferred walk-on at Iowa.

“For a D1 school to reach out to you, it kind of is like, ‘All right, they believe in me,’” Fisher said. “I have to put in that extra, extra effort to really show them that they made the right choice.”

Eventually that extra effort led to a scholarship offer before his junior season. Ferentz pulled Fisher aside during linebacker drills to deliver the happy news.

“Hey, you’re on scholarship,” Fisher remembers Ferentz telling him. “Very mundane, not like it was a big deal or anything.”

Ferentz, looking back at that moment, said he is not one to be “popping out of a cake, ‘you got a scholarship,’ that stuff, social media.”

“I remember going back to the linebacker drills,” Fisher said, “and everybody’s like, ‘What did he want, what did he want?’”

After telling the other linebackers, Jack Campbell and Seth Benson were “freaking out” and “hyping me up a lot.”

Fisher used to live with Campbell, who went on to win the Butkus Award and go in the first round of the NFL Draft to the Detroit Lions. It gave Fisher a chance to see and learn from “how he operated on a daily basis.”

“He was always watching tape,” Fisher said. “Just the way he goes about his business — kind of shaping that after him was big for me.”

Woods has seen some of the things Fisher has done away from the spotlight “paying off for him” now.

“He spends a lot of time outside of practice, outside of the standard meeting time,” Woods said. “We’ve talked to guys about investing extra time, and he’s one of the guys that does that.”

The 2022 spring practices were a “huge point” for Fisher along with fellow linebacker Jay Higgins, Fisher said.

With starters Campbell and Benson sidelined, Fisher and Higgins had an opportunity to step up.

Those spring practices were a “bonus” for Fisher and Higgins, Ferentz said, but “the credit goes really to Jay and Kyler.”

“Some guys take advantage of opportunity better than others,” Ferentz said. “These stories don't just happen. It happens because the right individuals make it happen.”

Looking back four years before those spring practices, Fisher’s dominance over DeJean’s OABCIG Falcons is “definitely the highlight of my career there in high school,” Fisher said.

He has shown some mercy to DeJean, though, bringing up the game “not that often.”

“I’m glad he doesn’t,” the quietly-competitive DeJean said.

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Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com