Tucker Kraft’s remarkable rise to NFL stardom, from Timber Lake to Titletown

TIMBER LAKE, S.D. — Tanner Kraft’s beige, dingy, doorless Jeep rumbles down an uneven dirt road, splitting fields of corn, sunflowers and hay that stretch to the horizon.

As a semi truck approaches on this steamy early August afternoon, Kraft drifts the Jeep left and down a tiny slope into tall grass. He wants to avoid having the oncoming truck spray dirt and pebbles in our faces. The truck passes and Kraft glances at the driver. He chuckles. It’s one of his buddies. Because here in Timber Lake, a town of just 509 people, of course it is.

Press your ear to the town and you’ll hear more birds chirping than people stirring. Church bells, owl hoots and sprinklers keeping the grass hydrated during this dry spell fill the space between the occasional motor trudging along a main road devoid of commotion. Nestled serenely in northern South Dakota on Native American land and surrounded by livestock and crops as far as the eye can see, Timber Lake is a ranching community with two pumps serving regular gas and no stoplights.

Welcome to what many would consider the middle of nowhere.

To the Krafts, this is paradise.

There’s Tanner, the middle of three boys who lives in his hometown and pilots a plane for the family business that sprays pesticides on crops. There’s Cody, the oldest and a paramedic in Alaska. And then there’s Tucker, the youngest at 25 years old, one of the NFL’s best at his position and who could perhaps become the highest-paid tight end in league history later this week.

After his buddy’s truck passes, Tanner guides his Jeep back onto the road and puts foot to gas for five miles into Little Moreau Park. Kicked-up dirt tickles the lungs and cell phone service is spotty. He eagerly points out a bush growing plums, a herd of elk in the distance and a canyon of pristine views at our feet as we wheel along its edge. He enjoys showing off this slice of his life. But they really need to do something about the algae in that lake so people can use it again.

This is where the Krafts have enjoyed so many moments, worlds away from any roaring crowd or national television audience or expectation to perform at the highest level for one of the most iconic franchises in sports. Watersports on the lake, racing go-karts down a steep pavement hill, rolling trucks onto frozen ice in the winter to guzzle beers and rip cigarettes. That’s the good life for a family that rarely flicked on the television in their childhood home.

“I tell people stories all the time throughout college and now here in Green Bay, and they just don’t believe me,” Tucker tells The Athletic back in Green Bay. “It’s like a place you have to see for yourself.”

Spend a couple of days in Timber Lake, and you’d never imagine it produced a larger-than-life captain of the Green Bay Packers, an athletic marvel who strikes fear into NFL defenses weekly. To understand who Tucker Kraft is and how he rose from the smallest of towns to such stardom, however, you have to understand the place and people that raised him.

Gas station pizza. That’s what the mayor chose.

I texted Kraft for a food recommendation in his hometown two days before I arrived. He responded two minutes later. No need to think twice.

“You’re actually gonna have to get a gas station pizza,” he wrote. “A whole pizza. Medium pepperoni, extra cheese, extra sauce. Timber Lake Biegler service.”

So after I rolled into town around 9:30 a.m. MT on a Monday, I walked into the Biegler family’s food spot inside the Timber Lake Service gas station and recited Kraft’s order. As I did to start several conversations with locals who probably knew I wasn’t one of them, I asked if they knew who Kraft was before explaining why I was there.

The Timber Lake Service gas station and convenience store in Timber Lake, S.D., hometown of Packers tight end Tucker Kraft. (Matt Schneidman / The Athletic)

You know how people say there are no dumb questions? That was one of them. Everybody knows who Kraft is. After all, the town recently erected a billboard of its favorite son off Highway SD-20 just as you turn left onto Main St. that reads, “HOMETOWN PROUD TUCKER KRAFT” and shows him barreling toward a defender last season with ball in hand.

A young woman made my pizza from scratch. In all honesty, it was phenomenal. I guess it’s no surprise that a blue-collar tight end taken in the third round out of South Dakota State, who has exceeded expectations in the NFL, gave a blue-collar food recommendation that did the same. As I waited for my order, a man named Josh, who helps run the convenience store, popped up from his office chair in the back after overhearing my introduction, eager to talk more about the hometown kid he’s known for his whole life.

It’s not hard to find out how Tucker Kraft’s hometown feels about him. (Matt Schneidman / The Athletic)

He’s an NFL star now, sure, but perhaps the reason why Kraft is still so beloved in Timber Lake is because he remains one of them, whether by showing the town love in interviews, donating a signed helmet to raise $20,000 for a high school boy battling cancer or visiting home in the offseason to shoot Tannerite targets with a rifle on a frozen lake like he’d never left town. One of the things Kraft enjoys when he returns home is helping out in manual labor shops. Yes, an NFL star likes spending part of his offseason simply handing tools to people because it’s time well spent with those who knew him far before fame. Though he’s become a celebrity, the locals still treat Kraft like the regular member of the community he’s always been.

“He knows how cool it is to grow up here and to live here. I mean, we all do,” said Keith Jewett, a rodeo DJ and longtime family friend who still talks to Kraft regularly. “All the locals here know how special this place is to us. It’s cool that we kinda get a little bit of exposure with him being famous.”

Timber Lake hasn’t just reciprocated the love with a billboard of the kid who played 9-on-9 high school football because his town was so small. The lone cafe in town, Corner Bar and Grill, sells Kraft-themed merchandise and its walls are plastered with memorabilia. They’re normally closed on Sundays, but they obtained a special permit to sell alcohol on Native American land just to give people a spot to watch No. 85 in green and gold. A museum down the road houses a display honoring Kraft, built by two homeschooled boys and their mother, featuring his old yearbook photos, cut-outs of him on a white poster board and a binder of No. 85 Packers jerseys drawn on printer paper by students. His high school, college and NFL jerseys hang in the hallway of the only school in town (his 2019 graduating class of 23 people is considered big here).

Blane Biegler, 9, left, and Braden Biegler, 8, right, helped make a Tucker Kraft-themed museum display. (Matt Schneidman / The Athletic)

A rack of T-shirts, sweatshirts and hats donning Kraft’s name or number greets you at the town’s embroidery shop. It’s front-page news in the Timber Lake Topic, the town’s weekly newspaper, when Packers fans come into town because they’re fans of the tight end who’s similarly endeared himself to Green Bay. Tucker Kraft Day is a real thing, too, and the whole town gathered on Main Street in their Kraft gear while a drone flew overhead.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything bad about him,” said Kaleigh Biegler, mother to the boys who crafted the museum exhibit. “Tucker’s just a big inspiration to the whole town.”

“Kids are crazy about him!” said her son, 9-year-old Blane, who giddily added that Kraft once gave him a jet ski ride.

“Everybody here is proud of him,” said Jean Tehle, a longtime family friend and “second grandmother” to Kraft. “Everybody loves him, and not just for what he’s accomplished, but for the person he’s stayed.”

“Everybody thinks the world of him,” said Richard Gross, a Timber Lake lifer who’s known Kraft since birth. “It’s hard to put into words how the town feels. Everybody supports him, even the Vikings fans.”

Top left: Museum volunteer and town “grandma” Jean Tehle, left, and Cindy Biegler, who led the Tucker Kraft billboard effort. Top right: Longtime Kraft family friend Keith Jewett, a rodeo DJ. Bottom left: Richard Gross, who helps run the bar Kraft co-owns. Bottom right: Jon Flatland, publisher of the Timber Lake Topic.

Ask any local to describe the people of Timber Lake and you quickly learn where Kraft inherited some of the traits that have fueled his ascent on the field, and some that shape who he is off it — gritty, loyal, determined.

Those, in part, describe how Kraft became one of the NFL’s best all-around tight ends and a Packers captain, as voted by teammates, at just 24 last season (they voted him and quarterback Jordan Love as the offense’s two season-long captains this season). It’s those kinds of people who make this town run, too, individuals making an honest living who love their tight-knit community — the newspaper publisher hooked up to oxygen, Jon, who still regularly shows up to work, the crop-spraying pilot and trucker, Tanner, who also serves on the town council, the elderly museum volunteers, Jean and Sheila, who couldn’t hurt a fly and beam with excitement talking about everyone’s favorite football player.

“People are just so driven to accomplish their goals and their tasks and get work done because that’s what that community is,” Kraft said. “The people that live there built it up with their hands. All of the manual labor. The local contractor has lived there his entire life. The electrician, the plumber, all the farmers in the area that are part of the city council, the rodeo committee … the people in that town wear so many hats to keep it thriving.

“I would, without hesitation, say that my roots have made me into the man, player, husband, father that I am now, so switching up on that would take me away from where I believe my reality and my destiny aligns.”

Perhaps nobody embodied the spirit of Timber Lake more than Doug Kraft. Father to the three Kraft boys, Doug died in a plane crash when Tucker was 12, doing the same job as a crop sprayer that his brother, Jake, and middle son, Tanner, still do for the family company, Air Kraft Spraying. Inside their hangar, the site of Tucker’s infamous draft party and a stone’s throw from Doug Kraft Field on the edge of town, is a yellow-and-blue sign drilled to the wall. It reads, “In Loving Memory Of Our Dad Doug Kraft #82 Fly On” with each of the three boys’ names on a separate banner flying behind a plane.

A sign honoring the late Doug Kraft in the Air Kraft Spraying hangar. (Matt Schneidman / The Athletic)

A star football player at Huron College, where he roomed with Philadelphia Eagles cornerback Cooper DeJean’s father and met his future wife and the boys’ mother, Tauscha, Doug earned a tryout with the Miami Dolphins before returning home to do, literally, everything. He ran a grain elevator, drove a truck delivering feed, removed snow for neighbors free of charge, sprayed crops with his plane, coached football, you name it.

Gross, who helps run the bar that Tucker partially owns, served on the town council with Doug in the late 1990s.

“Doug was an exceptional athlete and even better person,” Gross said. “Not saying that because he’s gone. We said that when he was still around.”

Tucker has been alive longer without Doug than with him, yet there’s still a father’s influence in his youngest son as he ascends to the top of the country’s most popular professional sports league from this quiet patch of Farmland, U.S.A. “Handled s–t that needed to be handled,” Gross said of Doug, which fittingly describes Tucker between the white lines and even outside them. Tanner recalled his younger brother telling him after the 2024 season that the Packers needed more leadership and that he would be a captain in just his third season. Exactly that happened, so it makes sense that Tanner, when asked what qualities of Doug and Tauscha he sees in Tucker, said among them, “When you got a goal, you shoot for it and you don’t quit.”

The Krafts instilled in their boys the values of honesty, hard work and loyalty to those in your corner, but they also knew how to have fun. Maybe too much for their youngest son, nicknamed “Bam Bam,” who missed plenty of recess while in the principal’s office. The Krafts didn’t watch football or really anything on TV. Instead, they spent ample time outside playing football and basketball, jumping on the trampoline, riding dirt bikes and motorcycles, hunting prairie dogs and pheasants, fencing cows and tubing on the lake with Doug driving their Bayliner boat and trying his damnedest to whip his sons into the water. When summer turned to winter in Little Moreau Park, folks gathered around the frozen lake in their vehicles and threw wooden pallets on the ice to make a bonfire.

“I’m sure the Krafts have crushed a lot of beers on Little Moreau Park,” Tucker said.

Tucker Kraft, left, and his brothers, Cody, middle, and Tanner. (Courtesy of the Kraft family)

Doug worked every blue-collar job under the sun and made Tucker do chores on the farm from a young age. Tauscha went back to school when Tucker was young to become an emergency room trauma nurse working late nights. Yet they still showed up to all the boys’ sporting events, so it’s no surprise Tucker continues showing up for his Packers teammates even when he has reasons not to, whether those be injury- or contract-related.

“That was one of the biggest things that I’m proud of, is he’s just the same dude that I knew growing up and he’s not really changed and doesn’t want to,” Tanner said. “He’s who he is because of here, or partially because of here, and he’s gonna hold strong to that.”

Kraft drove himself home the day he tore his ACL last season. His wife, Baylee, whom he met in college, greeted him in the driveway.

“I just dropped in her arms,” Kraft said. “I was really upset for myself, feeling sorry for myself, and I looked at her, and I said, ‘This is gonna be hard. This is gonna test us, our marriage. I’m gonna have to invest so much time into this.’”

The week prior, Kraft had announced himself to the nation as one of the NFL’s best tight ends. His stat line in a Week 8 Sunday night victory in Pittsburgh: seven catches, 143 yards and two touchdowns. At the time of his season-ending injury, Kraft ranked first among tight ends in yards after catch per reception, tied for second in touchdown catches and third in receiving yards. Couple in his blocking prowess and Kraft would later say he was the NFL’s best tight end when he went down.

However cruel that injury was, Kraft was no stranger to navigating difficult terrain. It’s how he got here in the first place, with a “C” on his chest for the Packers, all the way from the town of 509 people in the middle of nowhere and that uneven dirt road leading to Little Moreau Park. Doing so required a heavy dose of grit with a side of loyalty, exactly how his late father, his mother and all those people in Timber Lake taught him to live.

In high school, he made his head coach leave fishing trips to join him in the weight room so he could play Division I football from a graduating class of 23 kids.

“I remember going, ‘I’m really leaving fishing right now to make sure that this kid gets in the gym,’” that coach, Ryan Gimbel, says now. “But I knew I had to for him.”

In college, turning down an NIL package of more than $200,000 from Alabama to stay at South Dakota State for free.

“I stayed because of the relationships and all of the time that I had poured into my time at South Dakota State,” Kraft said, noting scouts said his draft stock was solidified at SDSU. “You can’t get those when you are bouncing around from school to school … that’s not in the cards for me, for my personality.”

In the NFL, beating the Packers’ nine-month ACL recovery timeline and returning two weeks earlier, practicing at full speed coming off a major injury despite not having a new contract because that’s how much he loves his team.

“He means everything,” Packers wide receiver Bo Melton said of Kraft. “I think the biggest thing about Tuck is that he actually genuinely cares. Some people, they’ll say they care about you, but he goes the extra mile to talk to you. He goes the extra mile to be with you, around you, give you energy on the field, tell you he loves you on the field and that’s something different … he deserves everything coming his way.

“I love Tuck to death.”

Tucker Kraft thinks he was the NFL’s best tight end when he tore his ACL in Week 9 last season. (Mark J. Rebilas / Imagn Images)

Sitting at a conference room table adjacent to the Packers’ locker room, Kraft unfurls his left arm to explain each of his tattoos.

The first one he points to is on the inside of his left bicep, an illustration of the biblical figure Samson.

“Him and his father, in the Book of Judges chapter 12, he’s heading out to find himself a wife, and in the wilderness, a lion attacks him and God gives him the strength to overcome the lion,” Kraft explains. “And he rips it in half from the jaw … so you never know how strong you are until you’re provoked.”

Perhaps the most serious injury of his career was what Kraft needed to discover his true strength and potential.

He thinks he can be even better than where he left off, which, in his mind, was as the NFL’s best tight end.

If his journey from Little Moreau Park to Lambeau Field has taught us anything, it might be best to just believe him.