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East Stroudsburg South coach Matt Walters, right, works at a Tampa Bay Buccaneers minicamp with the team\u2019s special teams assistant Keith Tandy. (Contributed photo \/ Tampa Bay Buccaneers)<\/p>\nIn winning 41 games and two District 11 football championships in his first six seasons as the head coach at East Stroudsburg South, Matt Walters has already established himself as one of the area\u2019s most successful leaders.<\/p>\n
But Walters is always trying to get better as a coach and learn new things.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why Walters applied to participate in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers National Coaching Academy, which was held during the team\u2019s minicamp in Tampa recently.<\/p>\n
East Stroudsburg South coach Matt Walters, right, works at a Tampa Bay Buccaneers minicamp with the team\u2019s special teams assistant Keith Tandy. (Contributed photo \/ Tampa Bay Buccaneers)<\/p>\n
Walters got to be around an NFL coaching staff and former Tampa Bay head coaches such as Tony Dungy and Jon Gruden.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had the opportunity to go down to Tampa Bay during their rookie minicamp, and the Bucs are the only team in the NFL that does what is called the National Coaching Academy,\u201d Walters said. \u201cYou apply and they take 25 coaches, either high school or college coaches, and they bring you down, and it\u2019s like you are a Tampa Bay coach for the week. They open up everything to you, and you are there from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. for a week. Everything was first class. It was a really cool opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
What was the No. 1 thing Walters learned?<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to love football to be at that stage,\u201d he said. \u201cThe coaches that I were with made it very clear that everybody on the staff was renting. They don\u2019t own because if you don\u2019t do your job, you\u2019re probably looking for another one very quickly. So you better love football for the amount of hours you put in. It was very eye-opening to see how it\u2019s business-first in the National Football League for the players, the coaches, the equipment staff, anybody associated with the team. They know they\u2019d better do their job because there are 1000s waiting for that opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walters said there were about 2,000 applicants for the academy. There was a unique interview process that followed, including videos where the coaching applicants had to watch a clip and were asked \u201cHow would you coach this?\u201d \u201cHow would you fix this?\u201d \u201cDid the play go well?\u201d \u201cWhat didn\u2019t go well?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, you\u2019re sitting there breaking down an NFL play,\u201d Walters said. \u201cThe pros were actually there during the minicamp on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and we had interaction with them. Todd Bowles, the Bucs head coach, told us that we\u2019re there for an opportunity, but he said you are coaches, so coach. To see that type of talent up close like that was amazing. I will never understand why people say this guy is not good. These are the best in the world. Even the backup quarterbacks are making throws that you couldn\u2019t imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walters said the rookies came in on Thursday for rookie minicamp for three days.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir No. 1 pick, Emeka Egbuka, was there and he was special,\u201d Walters said. \u201cShilo Sanders was also there, who they signed as a free agent, and he was one of the hardest workers on that rookie minicamp. So look out for him. They also picked up a defensive tackle from Florida, Desmond Watson, who I believe is the heaviest player [464 pounds] in the history of the NFL. But he was one of the hardest workers as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"East](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/TMC-L-Walters-01-1.jpg\")
East Stroudsburg coach Matt Walters works with Tampa Bay Buccaneers players and coaches as part of the NFL Coaching Academy program. (Contributed photo \/ Tampa Bay Buccaneers)<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Walters was back working with high school kids as an assistant coach during the first practice for the 54th annual McDonald\u2019s Lehigh Valley All-Star Football Classic, which is set for 7:30 p.m. June 12 at Nazareth\u2019s Andy Leh Stadium.<\/p>\n
Walters is working on the Red Team [Lehigh, Carbon, and Monroe County]. The staff is headed by East Stroudsburg North coach David Laughlin, and features Pleasant Valley head coach Blaec Saeger and defensive coordinator Bill Miller, and Colten and Paul Hagadus.<\/p>\n
Easton\u2019s Matt Senneca is the coach for the Gold [Northampton County] team.<\/p>\n
Walters, who was a head coach in the 2019 game, will run the Red squad\u2019s offense in the annual game that showcases graduating senior football players for an outstanding cause \u2014 the Ronald McDonald House in Philadelphia which provides a home away from home for the families who have their children receiving treatment for cancer at the Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
\u201cCoach Laughlin gave me the opportunity to coach the offense here, and just seeing the kids from the opposition schools in the same huddle is so great to see,\u201d Walters said. \u201cThese are such great kids. We had a lot of install on the first day, and they\u2019re picking up the system pretty easily. And you know my philosophy is to get the ball out as quickly as we can and let them be the athletes that they are. That\u2019s the plan for our team this year. It\u2019s so great to have kids from like Pleasant Valley and Stroudsburg on our side this time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laughlin is coaching in the game for the first time.<\/p>\n
He has made vast strides in just two years as the Timberwolves\u2019 coach. The North program won four games last season after winning three games in the previous seven seasons combined.<\/p>\n
Laughlin was asked to coach the Red team by his athletic director, Chuck Dailey, who is also on the McDonald\u2019s All-Star Classic board of directors.<\/p>\n
\u201cI coached in this game last year with Coach Saeger, and it\u2019s an honor to be a head coach this year,\u201d Laughlin said. \u201cBeing from Suburban One, I know what a great honor it was to play in the Montco all-star game, representing Abington. I got to see how great this game is last year and looked forward to the opportunity to lead this team this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laughlin said his team has amazing kids who have shone on EPC gridirons the last several years.<\/p>\n
Osmany Guzman, who quarterbacked Parkland to the District 11 6A championship last fall, will be a key member of the Red team\u2019s offense. Charles Capers from East Stroudsburg South and Zachary Martinez-Deresky, who played for Laughlin at North, will also be featured.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe kids are coming from programs with great coaches, and they have been trained well,\u201d Laughlin said. \u201cYou give them different plays and different formations, and they pick it up like that. They\u2019ve got it in two minutes, and they\u2019re ready to go on to the next thing. It\u2019s a lot of fun to coach kids like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Originally Published: June 2, 2025 at 5:00 PM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In winning 41 games and two District 11 football championships in his first six seasons as the head…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2077],"tags":[211,7,2682,3131,6,9,704,250,2597,2596,5367],"class_list":{"0":"post-100117","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-buccaneers","8":"tag-buccaneers","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-high-school-football","11":"tag-high-school-sports","12":"tag-nfl","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-tampa-bay","15":"tag-tampa-bay-buccaneers","16":"tag-tampabay","17":"tag-tampabaybuccaneers","18":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114618260913557620","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}