Pros vs. Joes No. 18: Tim Euhus: ‘It’s one in a million for a kid out of Eugene to be able to do what I did’

Dennis Erickson and Tim Euhus after the Churchill High senior had signed a national letter of intent to attend Oregon State (courtesy Tim Euhus)

If Tim Euhus isn’t a living miracle, there might not be one.

The former Churchill High, Oregon State and NFL tight end has had 12 knee surgeries — eight to his right knee, four to his left.

“Not a lot left in there,” Euhus tells me.

So is Euhus, now 41, living in Corvallis and long retired from football, using a walker to get around?

Far from it. He played city league basketball up until COVID hit in 2020. He takes part in a spin class daily. He is active working outside on his family’s eight-acre homestead. The 6-5 Euhus, who was pushing 260 pounds during his NFL days, now weighs in at a trim 225.

“I think I’m doing pretty well,” he says.

I’ll say. For a guy who had one surgery in high school, one in college and the rest since then, Euhus is tripping the light fantastic.

I met Euhus when I covered Oregon State for the Portland Tribune. He was always a great kid to talk to, bright and engaging, and things haven’t changed in the two decades since then. He and wife Michelle have chosen to make Corvallis home for them and their four children, and it’s clear he has been a great success both in life and in business, of late as a financial consultant for Edward Jones.

The Euhus family, from left, Tim, Joya, Timmy, David, Michell and Gracie, during their annual camping trip to Indian Mary on the Rogue River (courtesy Tim Euhus)

Euhus played for the Beavers from 2000-03, a freshman scrub on the vaunted Fiesta Bowl team, a standout who was first-team All-Pac-10 as a senior. Euhus played in three bowl games alongside an all-star cast of offensive players, among them quarterbacks Jonathan Smith and Derek Anderson, running backs Ken Simonton and Steven Jackson and receivers Mike Hass and James Newson.

Tim started for three seasons under Dennis Erickson and Mike Riley, and as a senior (under Riley) matched his receptions output for the first two seasons (under Erickson) with 49 for 645 yards and seven touchdowns. He is modest when I ask him if the statistical jump was more a result of Riley’s offense or his maturation.

“Part of it was Mike’s offense, which was very tight end-oriented,” Euhus says. “But a huge part was Steven in the backfield. You had to account for him. You also had to account for Mike and James. Those were three really good players. That left the tight end open a lot.

“My senior year, Derek and I had very good rapport because we spent so much time together in meetings. We used a lot of hot reads (audibling a quick throw on a blitz) when (opponents) were blitzing to stop Steven.”

Euhus might have been a Duck. He grew up in Eugene an Oregon fan. His father played football for the father of Oregon defensive back Eric Castle, so he got to visit the Ducks’ locker room after games.

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say that, even today, several times a year, the Duck fight song pops into my head,” he says with a laugh. “And I kind of throw up a little bit.

“I’ve had an amazing, wonderful life. The best thing I ever did was choose to go to Oregon State.”

Oregon didn’t offer a scholarship.

“I had several meetings with Coach (Mike) Bellotti,” Euhus says. “I liked him. He was a good coach. But in those days, you had to be 6-5 and 235 at a minimum to get recruited as a tight end at Oregon.”

Oregon linebacker Kevin Mitchell and Oregon State tight end Tim Euhus during the 2003 Civil War game. Mitchell and Euhus have daughters who play volleyball together at Santiam Christian; they’ve become good friends. (courtesy Tim Euhus)

But you were 6-5, I tell Euhus. Perfect for developing and filling out to be 235 or more.

“At one point, I went to meet with Bellotti and (basketball coach) Ernie Kent, because I wanted to play both sports in college,” Euhus says. “Bellotti told me, ‘Let’s pop you up on the scale.’ I weighed 199. I didn’t fit the matrix of what it took to come to Oregon to play tight end.”

Euhus narrowed his college choices to Colorado State, Boise State and Oregon State. He eliminated the Rams after his recruiting visit.

“My roommate on the trip got maybe the drunkest of any person I’ve been around in my life,” he says. “I was worried he was going to die. I didn’t find one guy there I felt I could be a roommate with. And it was a long way from home.”

Euhus was originally recruited by Riley’s staff.

“I was going to commit to Mike,” he says. “He left when I was about to go in for official visit. I have a faith. I had to trust God that something good was coming down the pipeline. But you just didn’t know what was going to happen.”

When Riley left, Erickson picked up the recruiting trail.

“My visit came on Coach Erickson’s first recruiting weekend after he’d been named the head coach,” Euhus says. “I think I was his first commit.”

Euhus arrived in Corvallis in the summer of 1999 at 208 pounds. By the time he left as a senior in 2003, he weighed 247. After sitting out his first season, he played mostly special teams as a redshirt freshman in 2000, drawing some backup tight end duty late in Oregon State’s 41-9 pummeling of Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl.

“I didn’t understand how big that was at the time,” Euhus says. “I was just a 20-year-old kid and I expected to win. I knew Oregon State hadn’t been good, but you don’t realize how big it was, not just for the program but for the school and all of its alumni and fans.”

Euhus also played basketball as a freshman under Eddie Payne, seeing action in 18 games as a reserve forward. From that point on, it was football only.

“College basketball is so different than the high school game,” he says. “I did enjoy my time playing for Coach Payne. I got more minutes than I should have because of injuries (to teammates). I could play defense. They put me in to guard (USC’s) Brian Scalabrine and (Stanford’s) Mark Madsen. I knew my time was short the night we were playing Stanford at Maples Pavilion. I had a reverse layin and one of the Collins twins sent it to halfcourt. I’m like, ‘OK, I’m a 6-5 white guy, and that shot just got rocketed back behind me. Maybe this wasn’t meant to be.’ ”

In football, Euhus started in 2001 and ’02 and was initially crestfallen when — irony of ironies — Erickson left and Riley replaced him.

“It was frightening having Coach Erickson leave,” Euhus says. “I’d had a pretty decent junior year. (Dan) Cozzetto was a hard coach to play for, but a very good position coach. What’s next? Coach Riley came in, and it worked out really well. Coach (Paul) Chryst ended up as (de facto) tight ends coach. That couldn’t have been better.”

Euhus enjoyed playing for both Erickson and Riley but noticed a major difference.

“Under Coach Erickson, the offense was a very tight group; the defense was a very tight group,” Euhus says. “But between the two, we were somewhat dysfunctional. I fought somebody every day of practice, whether it was Richard Seigler and Nick Barnett or whoever. … tight ends and linebackers were fighting every day. You couldn’t go through a nine-on-seven without a fight breaking out. It was very chippy. It was offense vs. defense. You’re a Blackshirt or a Whiteshirt.

“In a way, that was good. I learned to have confidence that if I’m going to scrap, I’m going to scrap. You have to stand up for yourself on the football field.”

Riley’s arrival meant a change of standards on the practice field.

“I remember one of the first spring practices, Rich and I were fighting,” Euhus says. “Coach Riley was like, ‘Hey! That’s not football.’ He was kicking guys out of practice for fighting. One day before practice, Rich and I were tired. He said, ‘Let’s get’s into a fight early and we’ll get kicked out of practice.’ The first play of nine-on-seven, we get into it. Coach says, ‘Stop it,’ but he didn’t kick us out. Rich says, ‘Aren’t you going to kick us out?’ Coach says, ‘I know what’s going on here. You two are staying out there.’ He was too smart for us.

“Coach Riley wanted it to be much more a team. It wasn’t Whiteshirts vs. Blackshirts. There had to be intensity, but (defensive end) Bill Swancutt and I didn’t need to be total enemies. We needed to be teammates on game day.”

Euhus knows he was fortunate to be surrounded by good coaches and players at Oregon State.

“What a great experience,” he says. “This makes me sound really old, but I’ve started viewing life in the lens of it’s the experiences we have that make up life. We can look back and say we won a lot of big games; we have some trophies to show for that. But I take pride more in the friends I made, the education I got and the impact our teams had on the community of Corvallis and the university as a whole in a positive way.”

Buffalo chose Euhus in the fourth round of the 2003 draft, and he was a regular as a rookie, catching 11 passes for 98 yards and two touchdowns while seeing duty on special teams.

Euhus played two seasons with the Buffalo Bills

“I had a great rookie year,” he says. “I worked myself into essentially a starting role. I was playing 60 plays a game. Drew Bledsoe was the quarterback. We used a lot of double-tight end, no-huddle stuff with me and Mark Campbell. Sometimes both of us started.”

In Game 14 against Cincinnati, Campbell blew out his knee. Four plays later, Euhus went down with a torn ACL.

“Second time I’d done it,” he says. “I’d torn the same knee my sophomore year at Oregon State.”

Euhus recovered quickly and returned for training camp prior to the 2005 campaign. But he tore a pectoral muscle in a preseason game, then had a knee scoped. He returned for the Bills’ Week 6 game against the New York Jets.

“I remember being in a stance, getting ready to block down on (Pro Bowl D-end) Shaun Ellis,” Euhus says. “And I was thinking, ‘What am I doing? This can’t be healthy for me.’ That was the beginning of the end of my career.”

Euhus had another knee surgery at season’s end, got traded to New Orleans and was cut in training camp. Pittsburgh picked him up, and he played one game before his release. He played 10 games with Arizona in 2007 and called it a career.

Euhus, then with the Steelers, with John Madden before a Monday night game in San Diego (courtesy Tim Euhus)

Though he wishes he’d have stayed healthy enough for a longer run in the NFL, he looks at his career in football as “a huge blessing.”

“I worked incredibly hard, and I played with such talent around me and got excellent coaching,” he says. “I had an amazing opportunity most people don’t get. It feels like it was a different lifetime ago. It’s surreal to think about now. It’s one in a million for a kid out of Eugene to be able to do what I did.”

Euhus returned to Corvallis for a year as a graduate assistant under Riley. He “loved it,” but learned college coaching wasn’t the right fit.

“I learned so much from Mike about being a coach, leading people, communicating, treating people the right way,” he says. “I was able to see the less cutthroat side of the business. I still count Coach Riley as a good friend. I learned a ton from him.

“But I also learned that college coaching is not for me. It was 100 hours a week in-season. Not to say that’s right or wrong; that’s the reality.”

Following his grad coaching season, Riley lined up Euhus with a job at Sacramento State coaching cornerbacks.

“I didn’t know anything about cornerbacks,” Euhus says. “He said, ‘You’ll learn. You’ll do a great job and then it will be on to your next job.’ That didn’t sound like something I wanted to do. I didn’t want to move every two years. If I could just have coached tight ends at Oregon State forever, I’d gladly work 100 hours a week. But to live the normal coaches’ lifestyle, that’s not what I want to do.”

Euhus has stayed with coaching, but at the high school level. He volunteered at Crescent Valley from 2009-13, took three years off and then worked five years as a volunteer assistant at Corvallis High.

“Never made a penny,” he says, “but I enjoyed it immensely.”

In 2009, Euhus took a job working as a sales rep for Johnson & Johnson, allowing him to stay in Corvallis with wife Michelle and their growing family. In 2015, Johnson & Johnson offered a promotion, but it meant a move to the Boston area. Coincidentally, Edward Jones offered an opportunity to stay in Corvallis as a financial consultant.

“I actually accepted the J&J job,” he says. “We started house-hunting. We were going to live in (nearby) Plymouth. But one day, we were in the car in Corvallis and (son) Timmy goes, ‘Dad, I don’t want to move. This sucks.’ He was a kindergartner. And I said, ‘Timmy, I don’t want to, either. But sometimes adults do things they don’t want to do.’

“I talked to Michelle. The pay was a lot less to start at Edward Jones, but there was a great upside to it. I felt convicted that we needed to stay in Corvallis. There was so much happening at church and with our family. I said, ‘Let’s take the biggest risk we’ve taken in our lives. Let’s stay here.’ It worked out amazingly. I’m blessed with my business and the people I work with and how I get to help them. It’s incredibly fulfilling.”

Tim and Michelle began dating as juniors at Churchill and were married in 2003. They have four children: Joya, 14, a 6-1 freshman at Santiam Christian and a budding volleyball star; Timmy Jr., 12; David, 10, and Gracie, 8. 

Euhus, one of the celebrities who will participate in the “Pros vs. Joes” Bracket Challenge on kerryeggers.com, is an old hand at such things.

“We do it every year,” he says. “My boys and I fill one out. My dad, my brothers. We set up a pool. It started when I was in college living at the ‘Blue Mansion,’ a house I lived at on 30th and Grant. We’d put a bracket on the wall and binge-watch basketball for like a three-week period.

“But I’m terrible at these things. Upsets can change everything. Last year, David picked Oregon State to win it all, and he piled up a ton of points off that. It’s funny how things work out.”

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