Ryan Walk's 9-month journey from the produce section back to the Autzen sideline

Oregon's new assistant offensive line coach is back where he's supposed to be.

EUGENE — Something was up with the produce guy. 

He had only been working at the Albertsons on Coburg Road in Eugene for a few weeks and had developed a reputation for being pretty chatty when he returned from a lunch break one day last summer silent with a blank expression. 

Concerned, a coworker approached. 

You good? 

“Yeah,” Ryan Walk said. “Just got something on my mind.” 

His former position coach at Oregon, Alex Mirabal, had just called.

And, well, yeah. There was a bit to digest.

See, with his professional career stalling after a rookie minicamp with Jacksonville, the once-hometown walk-on turned All-Pac-12 offensive guard had moved back home while he figured out what was next. Eventually, Walk and his girlfriend decided on a move to Arizona — they had lived their entire lives in Eugene and Walk was in touch with Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham about getting a foot in the door in Tempe after a planned year off. They picked a move date, Walk picked up shifts at the Albertsons’ produce section and they were three weeks away from their new lives when Mirabal called during lunch wanting to know what he was doing.

He was on break. At Albertsons. 

Want to come work in Miami? 

“It was definitely a culture shock for me,” Walk says now, nine months later, back in Eugene. Since his days at Albertsons, Walk spent the 2023 football season working in Miami with many of the coaches who roamed the Hatfield-Downlin Complex during his six years on campus in Eugene. Strength trainer Aaron Feld was there. Defensive line coach Joe Salave'a was there. And, of course, there was Mario Cristobal and Mirabal, a pair of coaches who made the offensive line the fulcrum of the Ducks’ success from 2018 through 2021. 

“They were great to me. They didn’t treat me differently than any other coworker. ‘Hey, you’re one of the staff. Let’s get rolling,’” Walk says. “‘You have a job to do. I have a job to do. Here we go.’” 

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Miami was great, he says, even necessary for him to realize how much he loves it in Eugene. Remember, Walk didn’t just go to Oregon — his dad played football at UO, his mom ran track at UO and their entire family’s lives were spent attending events from Autzen to Hayward to PK to Matthew Knight. Walk has a Rose Bowl ring. He was a battering ram in Oregon’s 2021 win at Ohio State. If it wasn’t for that darned Justin Herbert, he’d be the Sheldon underdog story. So when an opportunity opened to become a graduate assistant as Alique Terry’s assistant offensive line coach back at Oregon this offseason, Walk jumped on it.

Courtesy Ryan Walk/X

“The one thing that I do appreciate more now is the atmosphere of the stadium on game day,” Walk says. “Miami doesn’t have a huge gameday atmosphere at home, there’s just a million other things to do in that city. I’ve seen it firsthand. It’s going to be 80 degrees and sunny and South Beach is right there. I get why people don’t go, but I think it really made me appreciate how special Autzen is on a Saturday. Just to be a player and to get to experience that was like nothing else. Being away and coming back now, like, even then I would see videos throughout the season and I was like, man, I miss Autzen.”

It helps, too, on “unbelievable” weeks like this one when the blue skies and temperatures reaching into the 70s in the Willamette Valley leave one wanting for nothing. Walk is slimmer these days — he no longer has to stuff himself sick to keep his undersized frame close to 300 pounds — and he’s found spring a bit more enjoyable as a coach than a player. He knows it can be a grind when the season feels so far away and a big part of his job is getting the linemen to maximize everything they can out of the 15 practices they get during the spring.

“I know there are times when guys need to be fired up. They don’t need it on Day 1 or Day 2, but it’s on a Day 11 and a Day 12 and making sure the guys are still showing up and bringing that same energy,” he says. “The game of football is a very difficult sport to play and be successful at, so it’s about challenging them every chance you get.”

Walk’s life has a bit more structure to it than it did nine months ago. There are more meetings and responsibilities and a bit more pressure dependent on his success than there was at the grocery store. He’s working in the field he loves, at the school he loves and with a group of guys with a common goal.

“I’ve always tried to not have a big ego in things. I try to put that aside, like, then I was just trying to make ends meet doing the best job I could at Coburg Road,” Walk says. “And the best part about the three of us¹in that offensive line room is there’s no egos in it.”

— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor

1. Walk, Terry and O-line analyst Mike Cavanagh.