Local lineman Ellingson emerging at right tackle

Caden Ellingson has the gifts to be an excellent offensive lineman. He’s 6-7 and weighs 310 pounds to start with and has also shown an appetite for loving the game of football. Not everyone who is large and wears a helmet and pads can say that.

The ones who can are capable of making all the difference, however.

“He’s a very competitive football player,” said offensive line coach Jeff Nady, who is in his first season at USD. “He enjoys practice. He’s that guy who is actively trying to get better in every single drill. It could be an indie (independent) setting or a team setting or whatever else – he’s always trying to get better.”

Ellingson, a South Dakotan who also played basketball and participated in track and field at Tea High School, started three games a year ago as a freshman after spending his first year at USD as a redshirt. Now a sophomore, he is the starting right tackle for the Coyotes, who will be facing the University of St. Thomas on Saturday at the DakotaDome in their home opener. 

Through most of his life as a football player, Ellingson played left tackle. The switch to right tackle, which might not seem like that big a deal, has nevertheless demanded adjustments.

The fundamentals of blocking don’t change, but what you used to do with the left foot is now being done with the right foot, and vice versa. Imagine doing the hokey pokey exactly the opposite of the way you were taught. 

“I hadn’t played the right side since my sophomore year of high school,” Ellingson said. “Going through spring ball, it seemed like a big adjustment but in fall camp everything started to click a little bit. In our first game, things went all right – but there’s a lot of room for improvement.”

Ellingson is one of seven linemen on the roster from the Sioux Falls area with Josh and Jordan Larson (Harrisburg), Ben and Sam Kohls (Roosevelt), Joe Cotton (Roosevelt) and Brady Koupal (Brandon) joining him on a unit that starts only one senior.

“We’re all pretty close,” Ellingson said. “Especially with so many of us being from the state. A lot of us knew each other before we got here. Sam (Kohls) and I committed the same day and he’s been my roommate for three years. We helped get (starting left tackle) Joe Cotton here, too.”

A week ago, the Coyotes lost 35-10 to Missouri, a team from the football-crazy Southeastern Conference. This week they face St. Thomas, a recent Division I convert that has quickly established itself as the best of the Pioneer League, a non-scholarship football-only conference with members who occasionally appear on Missouri Valley schedules in September. 

Ellingson has watched film of the Tommies, a team that last faced USD in 1979 in the first game ever played at the DakotaDome. St. Thomas, 1-0 after a win over Black Hills State last week, is coached by Glenn Caruso, a former Coyote offensive coordinator under Ed Meierkort, who has been the head coach at UST since 2008.

There is an undeniable contrast from one week to the next when last week you were playing in front of 50,000, but the overall project both weeks is the same for Ellingson and his teammates.

“We have to continue to get better at our communication,” Ellingson said. “Communication is everything for the offensive line because you have to have everyone on the same page. We need relentless effort when it comes to finishing plays and we need to apply the techniques that our coaches are teaching us. The main thing is that we have to trust in one another with the five of us up front as well as trusting our coaches.”

As one of the top high school offensive linemen in the area, Ellingson had options for college. His visits to USD went well and now, in his third year at the school, he has never regretted his decision to come to Vermillion. 

“I fell in love with the facilities and the campus right away and I really liked the coaching staff,” he said. “Coach Bob Nielson was a big part of that. He was the biggest reason that I’m here. Seeing the passion he has for his players and the passion he has for football really made an impression.”

Ellingson is making his own impression with that same kind of passion. He has the potential to be a vital part of an offensive line that the coaching staff is hoping will emerge as a team strength.

“He has really looked like a player who has taken the next step from a maturity standpoint in his approach to football, the weight room and his diet,” Nady said. “He has lost some bad habits and created some great ones. He strikes me as someone who is really interested in being a good football player. The sky is the limit for him.”