Former Kansas State Wildcats receiver Dalton Schoen isn’t giving up on his NFL dream
.JPG "Kansas State wide receiver Dalton Schoen (83) lines up during the first half of an NCAA football game on Saturday, Sept. 14, 2019 at Mississippi St. in Starkville, Miss. (AP Photo/Vasha Hunt)")
Skylar Thompson knew who to call when he needed an extra receiver by his side at Kansas State’s pro day last week.
If anyone could make Thompson look like a future NFL quarterback with scouts from 18 different teams looking on, it was Dalton Schoen. The 6-foot-1 and 209-pound product of Blue Valley Northwest caught so many key third-down passes from Thompson while they were playing together at Kansas State that it almost seemed like his hands were magnetized.
Sure enough, they turned back the clock together at K-State’s indoor practice. Thompson completed 50 of 53 passes and found Schoen for several impressive toe-tapping catches near the sidelines.
Schoen has bounced around the NFL since he left K-State in 2019, going through preseason camp with the Los Angeles Chargers in 2020 and then joining the practice squad for both the Kansas City Chiefs and the Washington Commanders in 2021. Now he’s a free agent. So participating in another pro day made him feel out of place next to a dozen recent college graduates.
But he’s glad he showed up. It was more than just a trip down memory lane.
“I was hoping to have a deal signed by now,” Schoen said, “but it’s kind of a blessing in disguise that I didn’t. Skylar hit me up to come participate in this and I feel like it was a nice, fitting last thing for us. Our careers matched up so perfectly together. Here’s a year behind me. We played scout team together, we started playing at the same time together, had a lot of cool stuff happen in our careers together. So it was fitting for me that I got to go do that with him today.
“Hopefully some teams liked what they saw, realized that I have the tools to play and someone gives me a shot.”
Who knows?
Maybe Schoen and Thompson will end up on the same NFL team next fall.
“The connection was definitely there,” Schoen said. “We’ve been working with Skylar’s quarterback coach to get that script down and I told him that it felt like 90% of the throws were ones that we completed in a game here at K-State. I was confident we were going to do great out there.”
Added Thompson: “It was awesome. It felt like our good, old scout-team days.”
Schoen was never known as a speedster when he was in Manhattan, but he has repeatedly shown NFL scouts that he is faster than many give him credit for. He was one of the fastest players at K-State’s pro day, running the 40-yard dash in around 4.6 seconds.
That, combined with his reliable hands, makes him a potential NFL receiver. Schoen caught 92 passes for 1,569 yards and nine touchdowns with the Wildcats after joining the team as a walk-on. He is still waiting to make his first NFL catch in a regular-season game.
But he does have experience going against pro defenders. Some may knock playing for a team’s practice squad. Not Schoen.
“It’s fun,” Schoen said. “You get to go out there and you practice and you run all the scout-team reps. It’s fun to go out there and try to make the starting defense look bad. The way I look at it is, I’m going against the starting Chiefs defense or the starting Washington Football Team defense. I’m going to try and beat them and really show what I can do.”
Practicing with the Chiefs was particularly enjoyable for him last season, because he got to reunite with former K-State receiver Byron Pringle and learn from a childhood idol like Andy Reid.
He would welcome a return to Kansas City for training camp next summer, but, if he’s being honest, he’s not picky about location.
All he really wants is another opportunity to prove himself.
“It would be a dream come true,” Schoen said. “I feel confident that I can do that, though. I’ve been in three NFL locker rooms now. I’ve seen what it takes and I’ve been around the top-level, elite players. After that (group), I feel like I’m just as good as those guys, if not better. I just need to fall into the right opportunity, kind of similar to my career here.”
This story was originally published March 15, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Former Kansas State Wildcats receiver Dalton Schoen isn’t giving up on his NFL dream."