published on June 30, 2024 in today

Out of the cold and into the fight for Miamis starting QB job is where Tyler Van Dyke wants to be

SUFFIELD, Conn. — It’s the first Tuesday in December and the only evidence of a football field at Suffield Academy is the yellow goalposts protruding from the ground.

Tyler Van Dyke, the 6-foot, 4-inch, 212-pound star quarterback is posing for photos outside Tisch Field House, and all around him, there is nothing but mounds upon mounds of snow.

It doesn’t matter that it’s 28 degrees and the temperature is dropping as the sun begins to set.

Van Dyke, wearing just a thin, black Suffield baseball T-shirt, black shorts and a white University of Miami wristband, is comfortable as he stands stoically, shuffling a football between his hands.

After all, this is home. This is where he has led the Tigers to undefeated, championship-winning seasons in both baseball and football in the prestigious 16-team New England Prep School Academies league over the last seven months.

This is where he’s king.

“Growing up I always liked the snow, liked the winter,” the future University of Miami quarterback says before sharing how he threw for 265 yards and two touchdowns in a 41-14 win over rival Loomis Chaffee on a November night when the wind chill made it feel like 10 degrees.

“Whenever it would snow, I’d go outside, build snowmen with my friends, sled down the hills. I used to ski. Snow really doesn’t affect me. I love the cold, actually.”

Come January, Van Dyke will leave this winter wonderland behind for the heat and humidity of Coral Gables where Hurricanes fans hope he can help solve the program’s issue at quarterback.

Before Miami ended its regular season with back-to-back losses to FIU and Duke, it looked like redshirt freshman Jarren Williams was on his way to cementing his place as the starter.

But Williams, who matched an ACC record with six touchdown passes against Louisville on Nov. 9, flopped over Miami’s final two games, and the job appears open for Van Dyke to come in and steal this spring if he can show offensive coordinator Dan Enos he is worthy.

“I’ve watched the last couple games. I like his offense, like the style,” Van Dyke said before he took an official visit to Miami with 12 other commitments last weekend. “I feel like I can fit in very well and make an impact in it.

“I would say I’m a pocket passer, but when I need to, I can use my feet and make some plays. I can run the ball too. A lot of people don’t know that.”

Great to see @Coach_MannyDiaz and @CoachDanEnos today. Looking forward to getting to work next month! 🙌 pic.twitter.com/OUwAy3Bikx

— Tyler Van Dyke (@Tyler_Van_Dyke) December 11, 2019

As a senior, Van Dyke led the Tigers to a 9-0 record and completed 123 of his 200 passes for 2,260 yards, 21 touchdowns and six interceptions. He also ran 17 times for 134 yards and four scores.

As a junior, he led Suffield to a 7-3 record and was 128 of 224 passing for 1,899 yards, 14 touchdowns and five interceptions. He ran 19 times for 105 yards and a score.

He has had two standout receivers to throw the ball to over the last two seasons: Jaden Dottin (6-2, 170, 3-star, committed to Penn State) and Justin Barron (6-4, 205, 3-star, committed to Syracuse).

Still, Van Dyke is one of only four quarterbacks to come out of the state rated a four-star recruit by Rivals.com. The others: Florida’s Jordan Reed in 2009, Clemson’s Taisun Phommachanh in 2019 and Notre Dame-bound Drew Pyne, the only recruit rated higher than Van Dyke in the state this season.

“Coach Enos wants me to come in and learn the offense, but he also wants me to compete like I’m competing for a starting job,” Van Dyke said. “He says if I do everything right — study, watch film, go to class, stuff like that — then I’ll be all set. I could be competing for the starting job.”

At Suffield, Van Dyke ran a spread offense both under center and in the shotgun. He has one of the strongest arms in the country. His fastball registered at 91 miles per hour last spring, and at The Opening in Frisco, Texas, over the summer he threw a football 60-plus yards in the air.

Ultimately, he picked the Hurricanes after his second unofficial visit to campus in April, choosing to play for Miami — a program he really didn’t know much about before visiting Coral Gables last March while with his baseball team in Florida — over Syracuse, Boston College, Purdue and California.

Orange and Eagles coaches both continued to pursue Van Dyke through December, reaching out to him through direct messages on Twitter, but he never replied to recruiters from either school.

“I feel like if I had responded, I would have to be nice,” Van Dyke said.

Van Dyke said he chose Miami because of Enos. The two met when Enos was an assistant briefly at Michigan two years ago before they were reacquainted this spring.

What sold him?

“The success he had at Alabama the year before and then what he did when he was at Arkansas with Brandon Allen, who is now in the NFL, as well as what he did with Cooper Rush at Central Michigan,” Van Dyke said. “So that really struck me with Coach Enos, that he’s had two former players of his make it to the NFL, plus the Alabama guys. I want to develop my game in college and then get into the next level.”

247Sports national recruiting analyst Brian Dohn said in September of 2018 that he thought Van Dyke could be a multiyear starter at a top-20 college program and projected him to be a “mid-to-late (round) NFL draft pick.”

Drew Gamere, who has been the head coach at Suffield Academy for the last 12 years and coached Brian Belichick, the son of New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, said Van Dyke could be the most talented player he has coached at Suffield aside from Miami Dolphins 2019 first-round pick Christian Wilkins.

“It’s interesting because when Christian graduated, I thought it’s highly unlikely I’ll get to coach up somebody like him again,” Gamere said.

“Maybe to some degree I won’t because he was kind of the first four-year guy we had. But then you have Tyler, who’s been with us for four years and is just different in a lot of respects in terms of his upside and what he’s accomplished here and his outstanding character, which is very similar to Christian. It’s a pretty high standard to think he can do what Christian did, but Tyler’s certainly got the ability to really excel and the intangibles to excel.”

Tyler Van Dyke visited Pro Player Stadium with his parents when he was 8 years old for a Dolphins-Patriots game on Dec. 6, 2009. It’s the same stadium he will call home for the next four years. (Courtesy of Amy Leete Van Dyke)

A football family

Those intangibles could come from all the athletes in his family.

His 16-year-old sister, Hannah, is a standout basketball and volleyball player at nearby Glastonbury High. His parents were athletes when they met at Muhlenberg College, a Division III school in Allentown, Pa. His father, Bill, played tight end on the football team and also played baseball. His mother, Amy, played volleyball.

Amy’s father, Bill Leete, was a quarterback at the University of Vermont in the 1960s before becoming the football coach and baseball coach at Hofstra University on Long Island in the mid-to-late 1970s and then the athletic director at the University of New Haven (Conn.).

That’s where he hired former Hurricanes and current University of Pittsburgh offensive coordinator Mark Whipple, former and now deceased Miami Dolphins coach Tony Sparano, former Cleveland Browns head coach and longtime NFL and college assistant Chris Palmer among others.

In December of 2009, Sparano invited the Van Dykes — including 8-year-old Tyler — to come watch the Dolphins play the Patriots. That’s the first time Amy said her son threw a pass inside the football stadium he’ll soon call home.

“Tyler’s a huge Eagles fan, but no doubt admires Tom Brady’s skill and character,” said Amy, now an attorney for Eversource Energy, which provides gas and electricity to homes in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut.

“Tyler’s got Brady’s book ‘The TB12 Method.’”

Amy said she was three hours into taking the Connecticut Bar Exam when she went into labor with Tyler.

“I stayed and finished the last three hours of the exam, as the Bar Examining Committee determined that they would have had to discard the first three hours of the exam if I left,” Amy said. “I was rushed to the hospital right after the Bar ended, and Tyler was born that night. We knew from the moment he endured the Bar Exam and allowed me to complete it, before being born, what type of person he would become. He is selfless, considerate, respectful and caring.”

Miami recruit Tyler Van Dyke visited his future home at Hard Rock Stadium when he was only 8 years old as a special guest of former Dolphins coach Tony Sparano. (Courtesy of the Van Dyke family)

Bill Van Dyke works as an actuary for Deloitte and spends a lot of time in Europe from December through February. When his father is out of town, Tyler makes the 30-plus-minute drive home to Glastonbury most nights to help clear the driveway of snow and handle any other chores his father usually does.

Suffield Academy, a private preparatory school built in 1833 originally to train young men for the ministry in the Baptist Church, has 13 dorms on campus and 415 students from roughly 28 countries and 20 states. Annual tuition fees are $58,000 for boarders and $38,700 for day students. Former NBA player and current NBA TV analyst Vinny Del Negro is among the most notable alumni the school has produced.

Tyler, who boasts a 3.5 GPA and is a member of the school’s famed Torch Society, doesn’t live on campus. But he spends all day there. When he decides to skip the drive home at night, he usually crashes with a teammate and gets up for school the next day just fine. Those experiences are why he thinks adjusting to a new life and community in South Florida will not be hard for him or his parents.

“Miami’s not that far for us because it’s still on the East Coast,” Amy said. “Losing your firstborn, first time going away to college, that’s sad. But I’m excited for him at the same time because I know he’s pursuing his goal and his dreams. My husband is a sports nut — as we all are. We’re a football family. So, I think we’ll probably be at a lot of the games.”

Part of the reason Tyler said he chose Miami was its engineering program. Although it will be challenging playing football and taking on engineering projects, he plans to major in it and has already received his acceptance papers, Amy said.

“We’ll see what happens,” Amy said. “Hopefully he can sustain that. … He’s got a very math-oriented mind. He’s taking AP statistics and a calculus class right now, and he has done phenomenally in those classes. He took an engineering class last year. So, he’s just got that mind. He’s a numbers guy.”

A cool and collected leader

The numbers that matter most to Van Dyke, though, are the number of wins he collects.

Few at Suffield know Miami’s future quarterback better than Barron, the Syracuse commit and the Tigers’ leader in catches each of the last two seasons.

Barron has known Van Dyke since he played youth football against him in elementary school. While he’s come to appreciate “the goofball” and “jokester” Van Dyke is with his inner circle of friends, Barron said his quarterback is always serious about winning.

“He hates losing more than he likes winning, and you can see that every day,” Barron said. “We play ping-pong up here, have a ping-pong tournament, a bunch of our friends, and he refuses to lose in that. If you end up beating him, he’ll play you until he wins.”

Barron said he’s never seen Van Dyke lose more than twice in ping-pong. He also says he’s never seen him show frustration by slamming a paddle, tossing a baseball bat or a football helmet. He’s always cool and collected.

“In the huddle, you can just tell that he’s going to get the job done,” Barron said. “He’s very precise and to the point, and he knows what his job is to do every play. There are times where he makes mistakes as every quarterback does at every level. But he has a very short memory. He’s good at looking back at what he did, what he should have done instead and getting it out of his memory and learning from it.

“There will be times when he gets frustrated, but he doesn’t yell or anything. It’s usually just communicating. That’s big for him. Talking about when we’re breaking our routes and consistency is what’s really good for him. Tyler and I were practicing our routes all summer after we lost our last game last season so he could learn where my breaks are and where to put the ball.”

Film study, Barron said, is very important to Van Dyke, who began playing football in the second grade as a tight end and quickly moved to quarterback by the third grade.

As a senior, Hurricanes recruit Tyler Van Dyke led Suffield to a 9-0 record and completed 123 of his 200 passes for 2,260 yards, 21 touchdowns and six interceptions. (Courtesy of Suffield Academy)

Barron says Van Dyke takes scrupulous notes on opposing defenses and shares them with his teammates.

As for his arm strength, Barron said Van Dyke throws the “hardest” ball he’s ever caught.

“Sometimes I’ll catch slants and it’s awful because the wind gets knocked out of me immediately, especially when it’s cold out,” Barron said. “He has no mercy. He throws it the same speed every time.

“The best throw I’ve ever seen, he made it in our championship game last year that we lost. It was a post to me. I ran a post over the top. They were in Cover 2 and I split the safeties, and he just put the ball like 60 yards in the air over the top and hit me in stride, right on the money. I got down to like the 5.”

Barron said he spoke to Miami coaches briefly but never received an offer from the Hurricanes. He tried to recruit Van Dyke to Syracuse but said he couldn’t get him to budge.

He’s hoping he and Van Dyke will still be in college the next time the Hurricanes play Syracuse in 2024. Both would be redshirt seniors that season.

“Honestly, I think he’s gonna be able to turn that program around,” Barron said. “Just seeing their quarterback situation, they just don’t have consistency, and I don’t think they can really depend on the quarterbacks they have right now. Tyler brings that to the table for them. He’s someone who is going to be there consistently every time.”

Ready for Coral Gables

Van Dyke said he spent time with Enos this summer at Paradise Camp breaking down Miami’s offense. He did so again this past weekend on his official visit.

Once he signs Wednesday, Van Dyke said he expects to receive more information on UM’s offense so he can prepare for the start of spring football.

Last weekend’s official visit allowed him to get to know his future teammates a little better.

Redshirt sophomore center Corey Gaynor was his host, and he got to spend a lot of time with four-star running back Don Chaney Jr., four-star offensive lineman Jalen Rivers and many of Miami’s offensive recruits including three-star receiver Xavier Restrepo, whom he has grown close with over time.

“We met at the dinner before Paradise Camp started,” Restrepo said. “(Official visit) weekend was awesome. Me and him hung out a lot. We were bonding, talking and having a blast. We went to the bowl practice out there on Saturday. It was just a great time.”

The two could end up as roommates at Miami.

“We actually talked about it,” Restrepo said. “If it’s up to us, we’ll be roommates.”

Thanks for making the trip to CT @CoachDanEnos 🙌 pic.twitter.com/E71FnM0HkT

— Tyler Van Dyke (@Tyler_Van_Dyke) December 4, 2019

Van Dyke said he’s hoping that with Wilkins nearby, he’ll also get a chance to see that friendship grow as well. Wilkins went back to Suffield during the Dolphins’ bye week earlier this season, and the two spent half an hour chatting in the training room while Wilkins was in an ice bath and Van Dyke was icing his shoulder.

“He’s a great guy,” Van Dyke said of Wilkins, who starred at ACC rival Clemson. “He’ll go out of his way to meet anybody here. One of the teachers (at Suffield) was telling me a story about how when he was a senior he went around meeting every freshman, shaking their hands. He’s very talkative, outgoing, a very kind guy that just wants to give back to the community. He’s actually giving us some gear, too, to celebrate our perfect season.

“As far as the whole Clemson-Miami thing, he didn’t really talk smack. He was supportive. He said it was pretty cool that we’re both in Miami now.”

Eventually, Van Dyke said, he hopes to develop similar mentor-like relationships with some of Miami’s great quarterbacks of the past.

Van Dyke said he knows expectations are high for the incoming 2020 class — ranked 15th by 247Sports industry-composite ranking. But he believes this class can meet them.

Is there pressure to succeed?

“Yeah. I would say so,” he said. “Coaches are always texting me saying that you guys are the solution, that this 2020 class could be really special. I wouldn’t say it’s pressure, but they’re definitely relying on us to do what we can do, play football the right way and bring Miami back to the top.”

Getting adjusted to life near South Beach won’t be a problem for her son, Amy said. He has visited Miami a handful of times. He says he enjoys people-watching but not much more than that.

“I think the biggest thing for me is going to be the weather change,” Van Dyke said. “People from the South don’t really realize that it gets hot up here. It gets to like 100 degrees in the summer. I know it’s different in Miami — just walking around you get sweaty. But I’ll have to get used to that.”

What he doesn’t want to get used to, though, is losing. That has to melt away over time.

So does the current negativity surrounding the program.

“I think we’re definitely the solution,” Van Dyke said of Miami’s incoming class. “There’s definitely guys there that are the solution as well. It’s just about combining our talents, coming with the right mentality. But we think that with all the recruits we’ve got, that we can go in and make an impact right away and take that step to the next level, get to the ACC Championship Game and then hopefully the college football playoffs.”

(Top photo: Manny Navarro / The Athletic)

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