There were days at practice during his freshman year at Winona State in which Kaleb Blaha wouldn’t touch the ball once.
Everyone has their role, but the experience was a stark contrast from how Blaha grew up playing football. It wasn’t how he envisioned himself finishing out his playing days.
Kaleb Blaha smiles as he’s surrounded by his teammates during the Falcons’ 58-7 win over Chapman in an NCAA Division-III second-round playoff game in River Falls, Wis. on Nov. 29, 2025. (Pat Deninger / Wisconsin-River Falls)
“I just wanted to be a big part of the team,” Blaha said. “And I wanted to impact a team as much as I could.”
He wanted to play quarterback.
That’s the position at which Blaha starred for Fridley High School. In the fall of 2019, the senior signal caller threw for 1,503 yards and 21 touchdowns while rushing for an additional 821 yards and 21 scores, while leading the Tigers to a 10-1 record and a state tournament appearance.
Blaha was one of the best quarterbacks in the state, yet college programs couldn’t envision a future for him at the position.
“Most of my offers, and coaches that were talking to me, wanted me to play receiver or (defensive back),” he said.
With one glaring exception: Matt Walker.
The Wisconsin-River Falls football coach has watched thousands of hours of recruiting tapes featuring the best high school plays from prospective collegiate players, and Blaha’s clips hit him like a freight train.
“Oh my God,” Walker thought. “This kid, he’s the real deal.”
Walker didn’t just see a quarterback, he saw a superstar.
“I really thought he was a generational talent. Even when he was a little rawer and not this polished, I thought he could do things that other people couldn’t do,” Walker said. “I thought it was really special how athletic he was and he threw it good enough at the time to be dangerous at quarterback.”
Walker was the only person to go into Blaha’s Coon Rapids home for what the coach called a “hardcore” recruiting effort.
“I thought we had him,” he said.
But Winona State entered the fold late, and the Warriors’ Division II offer came with scholarship money. In the end, Blaha couldn’t turn down the opportunity to play the highest level of college football at which he was offered to compete, even if it was as a receiver.
Still, Walker’s efforts didn’t go unnoticed.
“I just saw how bad he wanted me,” Blaha said.
And a year later, when Blaha decided to leave Winona State, he immediately knew his next destination.
“I was going to come here,” Blaha said of River Falls. “I’m going to play for him.”
The unification of Blaha and Walker has led to one of the best marriages of quarterback and coach. In his fourth year as the Falcons’ starting quarterback, Blaha is a finalist and frontrunner for the Gagliardi Trophy awarded to the best player in Division-III football, and Wisconsin-River Falls is in the Stagg Bowl for the first time in program history.
The Falcons will meet North Central in the NCAA Division III title game at 7 p.m. Sunday in Canton, Ohio, largely thanks to Blaha’s prolific production.
“He’s the best player I’ve ever coached,” Walker said. “I’ve never been around one like him, and I’ve been around some good ones. … He’s got something about him. People don’t have the skillset he has, and then to be as smart as he is and to get the ball out and process as fast as he does, pretty special stuff.”
Of course, Blaha had plenty of help along the way, much of it coming from the coach who believed in him most.
“He’s made me who I am today,” Blaha said.
‘He believed’
Blaha transferred to River Falls in 2021 and served in a reserve role that fall. By 2022, he was the Falcons’ starter.
That season, he threw for 2,488 yards and 21 scores, with 1,000 yards and 14 more touchdowns on the ground. “Video game numbers,” Walker noted. The Falcons went 7-4, with all four losses coming by seven or fewer points to St. John’s, Wisconsin-Platteville, Wisconsin-Whitewater and Wisconsin-La Crosse. River Falls missed the playoffs, but went to, and won, the Isthmus Bowl.
Walker said the moment Blaha took the field, he was immediately one of the “freakiest players in the nation.”
Yet when the quarterback returned home over winter break following the season, he couldn’t shake the feeling that his performance wasn’t good enough. “We won a decent amount of games, but I wasn’t playing as good as I thought I could have,” Blaha said. “I was having moments (thinking), ‘This isn’t for me.’”
He messaged Walker to inform the coach that he didn’t want to play anymore.
“Kaleb has ridiculous expectations for himself,” Walker said. “He didn’t think it was good enough and that maybe he wasn’t good enough to be what we wanted him to be.”
Walker called Blaha and told him to come to his office. He told Blaha the quarterback was “completely off” on his self evaluation. He told Blaha that as the Falcons continued to tailor their offense more and more to the quarterback’s skill set, “it could become something very unique.” He told Blaha the quarterback could be the Player of the Year in the conference and the best player in the country.
He convinced Blaha to stay.
“Looking back on that, it’s crazy to think about,” Blaha said. “I didn’t believe in myself and I wanted to be done. I kind of was ready to be done with football and school and whatever, and Walk saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. And he convinced me to keep going and he kind of made this all come true, in a way. He said that we could go play in the biggest game, in the national championship. He said that we could make it all the way.
“And I believed him, because of how much he believed.”
Lottery ticket
“What are you doing?”
It’s a frequent thought in the mind of Falcons linebacker Noah Nusbaum as he watches Blaha from the sidelines. The quarterback frequently extends plays with his legs while looking for an open receiver in what quickly develops into playground-style football.
“He’s running around back there and it’s like, ‘Oh God, Blaha,’ ” Nusbaum said. “But then he just does some crazy thing, and that’s just normal here.”
Frankly, Nusbaum thinks it’s weird that every team’s quarterback isn’t firing a dart on one play while running over defenders and flipping into the end zone on the next.
Generational.
This season, Blaha has run for another 1,090 yards and 16 touchdowns, But the major improvement has come through the air. The senior has thrown for 4,680 yards — nearly 900 more than the next leading passer in Division-III football — and 40 scores while leading the best offense in football.
“It’s kind of playing the game in a different way than I haven’t really played before,” Blaha said of his point guard-type role in the passing offense. “It’s very fulfilling, it’s very fun. I like getting the ball to everyone else and watch them work, too. It’s definitely something that I’m not used to, but it’s another reason that I love this game of football.”
Walker knew this year’s team had the talent to compete at a high level, but the ceiling soared to new heights when Blaha made the decision to return. The 2024 campaign was set to be the senior’s last, but a pair of hamstring injuries wiped out much of his fall.
After conversations with Walker, Blaha decided to take a medical redshirt, pushing back graduation and his prospective teaching career by a year.
“It’s like, ‘Oh my God, here’s the lottery ticket you never win,’ ” Walker said. “You’ve got the best player in the country back on a team you knew was going to be really good.”
There was one primary reason for Blaha’s return: to take the program where it’d never been before.
“I swear to you, when he said, ‘I’m coming back’ … he’s like, ‘I just care about winning it all. I just want to win a national championship.’ ” Walker said. “He honestly said that, because he’s such a good kid and he’s so humble and it’s all about the team for him. He almost gets embarrassed about this ridiculous line of accolades that he’s starting to collect now. He’d be the first to tell you, yeah, he’s proud of them, but he wants to win it all.
“That was the mission for this football team.”
Relationship is ‘everything’
With the season hanging in the balance, Blaha ripped a pass into a tight, cover-two window between the cornerback and safety to a streaking Blake Rohrer — a Woodbury product who came to River Falls to play basketball, but was convinced by, who else, Blaha to try out football — who leapt in front of the Johns Hopkins’ safety to snare the third-down completion and run 79 yards to the house to break the tie in the final minute of the NCAA semifinal and give the Falcons a 48-41 victory.
“The game was on the line,” Walker said, “(and) we rip it.”
True to form, Blaha downplayed the throw.
“That play was Blake making a crazy play,” Blaha said. “It shouldn’t have even been caught. And not only did he catch it, but he took it all the way for a touchdown.”
OK, but Blaha certainly did his part. The quarterback threw for 520 yards and five touchdowns while scoring one more on the ground — all after it appeared he would be knocked out of in the first quarter. A hard hit forced Blaha to exit the field while holding his throwing shoulder.
“You could lie and say you weren’t concerned,” Walker said, “(but) we were super concerned.”
For a moment. But the medical staff soon reported it was only a stinger, and Blaha was fine to return to play. The next step was getting the quarterback to believe it.
“It wrecks your brain a little bit,” Blaha said.
The first couple of possessions following his return, Blaha was hesitant to take off with his legs. He was sliding and ducking out of bounds to avoid contact. Walker never yells at the quarterbacks, the position he coaches; the freedom he provides Blaha is one of the things the senior values most. But Blaha wasn’t being himself, and that was a problem.
“He was a little soft after that,” Walker said.
It was something the coach had to address.
“That’s about as much as we’ve gotten into it on the sidelines,” Walker said. “I didn’t chew him out, but we had some passionate talk in the locker room, let’s just say. All good stuff, and he responded correctly.”
Blaha returned to from in the second half, putting his signature athleticism and physicality on full display. The Falcons scored touchdowns on each of their first three possessions of the half and were on their way. Walker was right. When it comes to his quarterback, he always has been.
“He’s very smart football-wise, but I think what matters more and has helped me more is his belief in his players and how much he supports the guys,” Blaha said. “He coaches me, but he also, to a point, let’s me do my own thing out there. If it’s not his way, he’s not going to be upset about it or come down on me. He’s going to let me do my thing. He knows that I’m out there playing.”
A few years after considering quitting the sport, Blaha now envisions taking a swing at the highest level. Given his success and dynamism, it wouldn’t be a surprise if a pro franchise at least wants to get a look at the signal caller in a rookie camp.
Regardless, Sunday will mark the final game of a historic collegiate career, and Blaha is proud of how much his trust and faith in himself as a person and player have grown.
“Just really believing in my dreams and what I thought could happen and what the coaches said could happen,” he said. “This is exactly what I came back for. Why I kept playing, why I kept trying. I don’t think I fully understand what’s happening now, but I know it’s been one heck of a journey, and I couldn’t be more grateful for it.”
Or the man who made it reality.
“He definitely helped me become the player I am today,” Blaha said of Walker. “Yeah, our relationship is everything to me.”
