By Jimmy Hyams
Talk with new Tennessee receivers coach Kevin Beard long enough, and you will hear him mention a favorite phrase: “tool belt.”
And the way Beard sees it, the more tools a receiver has in his belt, the more productive he will be.
“It’s like a handyman,” Beard said. “He can’t have a small tool belt because every time he’s missing something, he’s missing out on time. He has to go back to the car, go back to the shop and get something.
“But if he has enough tools on his belt, he can show up on the job and execute any job issued.”
So Beard tries to provide his receivers with enough tools in their belts to get the job done.
Beard said previous receivers coach Zach Azzanni did a “great job” establishing tools for the receivers. Beard said it’s his job to add even more tools.
“I try to give them everything I have,” Beard said. “We’ve all been different places and learned from different people. So you add to their tool belt.
“Now, when they show up to a game, they don’t have to go back to practice to figure out what this guy’s doing to them. My tool belt gives me all the tools I need to execute what I need to execute to be successful on game day.”
Some of those tools: good hands, route running, reading defenses, blocking, beating press coverage and learning each receiver position.
Beard thinks the latter is extremely important.
“It’s definitely better for them to learn what everyone is doing on the field because in this process, you’re not just developing them for the University of Tennessee, you’re developing them for life,” Beard said.
“When they learn what everybody is doing around them, it gives them more value. When they get to the NFL, if they can line up anywhere because they’ve learned conceptually, that gives them more value. That’s the part that will take them to the next level.”
To better instruct his players, Beard, a former receiver at Miami, has taken the unusual step of wearing cleats to practice so he can demonstrate route running.
“I adopted it when I was coaching high school football,” said Beard, who has only one year of full-time college experience as a coach, at Miami in 2015. “I was still young and working out and could run the same kind of routes, if not better routes, than those guys (he was coaching).
“I learned in that process how people can learn when they see and not just what you tell them. Seeing is believing. That’s one of my big ways of reaching and teaching at this point.”
Beard will gladly demonstrate how to block – one of the most important aspects of playing receiver, he said.
“If you make your block, and the ball carrier makes one guy miss,” Beard said, “instead of being first-and-10 from the 12, it’s a 22-yard touchdown and the offensive coordinator doesn’t have to call another play.”
Did Beard enjoy blocking when he was a receiver?
“Loved it, loved it,” he said. “I tell our receivers I wouldn’t ask them to do something I could not do or didn’t want to do.”
Tennessee might have one of the fiercest blocking receivers in the SEC in Jauan Jennings, a converted high school quarterback with an attitude.
“I just really love the fact I’ve never had anyone like Jauan Jennings and the way he wants to impose his will on defenders because it’s contagious,” Beard said.
Although UT lost its top receiver and deep threat, Josh Malone, Beard feels like he has some receivers who can stretch the field. And he said it’s not only about a 40 time.
“A lot of people put emphasis on speed,” Beard said. “If that was the case, then every cornerback that runs a 4.3 should never get beat. And that’s not the case. It happens all the time.
“Our receivers are learning more about technique and fundamentals and details to make them successful. With them learning it and seeing it and hearing it, it should pay dividends this season.”
(You can follow Jimmy Hyams on Twitter @JimmyHyams)
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