Post by joemcrugby on Jul 21, 2023 18:13:59 GMT -7
Chargers Assistant Chris Beatty keeps developi receivers, looking for opportunities
Daniel Popper
During the 2021 offseason, Chris Beatty sat Mike Williams down and gave the No. 7 pick from the 2017 NFL Draft a rather specific prediction.
After more than two decades coaching high school and college football, Beatty had recently achieved his longtime goal of reaching the NFL, joining Brandon Staley’s Chargers staff as the receivers coach. Over the ensuing weeks, Beatty had immersed himself in the tape, learning all he could about his group.
What Beatty saw from Williams was untapped potential. Williams was entering his fifth NFL season on an expiring contract. He was a good NFL player, but he had not yet lived up to where the Chargers drafted him. Beatty had a plan to change that.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Beatty remembers telling Williams that offseason. “If you do what I ask you to do, you’re going to get 80 catches, 1,200 yards and 10 touchdowns and get a big contract.”
Williams, a man of few words, gave Beatty a simple reply: “I got you, Coach.”
What happened next provides a window into what Beatty brings to one of the most talented and expensive receiver rooms in football — and why Beatty could soon be achieving another of his coaching goals by becoming an NFL coordinator and play caller.
Beatty had a grander vision for Williams. In his first four seasons, Williams was used almost exclusively as an outside-the-numbers threat. And he made plenty of jaw-dropping plays in those areas of the field. Williams’ greatest gift is how he uses his huge frame, long arms and elite body control to win jump balls.
But while watching film, Beatty could not understand why Williams wasn’t being used in other areas of the field. The Chargers were building a new offense in Staley’s first season, and this was the ideal opportunity to explore what else Williams could become.
Staley had tapped Joe Lombardi as his offensive coordinator. Lombardi came from the Saints, where, over the previous five seasons, Michael Thomas had set records as one of the most productive receivers in football. Thomas was the X receiver in those Sean Payton-Drew Brees offenses, typically lining up as the isolated receiver.
As the Chargers offense was developing that offseason, Lombardi approached Beatty about where Williams could fit.
“Mike can be Mike Thomas,” Beatty told Lombardi.
There was some consideration into moving Keenan Allen around to fulfill some of the many duties Thomas excelled at in the Saints offense. But Allen is at his best in the slot. Giving Williams the Thomas role would put Allen in the best position to be successful and create a more dynamic passing attack overall. That is, as long as Williams was up for that challenge. And Beatty believed he was.
“He can do more,” Beatty said. “You go back to Clemson, he was running in-breakers, in-cuts, slants. … So, it was like: ‘I think we can do these things with him. We don’t need to move anybody there. He can do them.’ He just hadn’t been asked to do them.”
Lombardi agreed. So did Staley.
And the vision became a reality. Williams finished 2021 with 76 catches, 1,146 yards and nine touchdowns — just missing Beatty’s predictions across the board. Williams’ potential was fully realized with an expanded route tree that included many of those in-breakers Beatty first pitched.
Williams signed a three-year, $60 million extension that offseason.
“They trusted in me,” Williams said at the Chargers facility a day after inking his deal.
Last season brought some adversity to Beatty’s room.
Allen strained his hamstring in Week 1 and went on to miss seven games. Williams suffered a high ankle sprain in Week 7 and missed most of the next five games. Jalen Guyton, the Chargers’ lone dangerous deep-field speed threat, tore his ACL in Week 3. Joshua Palmer, the Chargers’ No. 3 receiver, battled through knee and ankle injuries. Palmer also missed a Week 7 loss to the Seahawks with a concussion; it was the second time he had been in the concussion protocol in two months.
Amid all the moving pieces, Beatty helped DeAndre Carter emerge as one of Justin Herbert’s most reliable targets. Carter entered training camp as the fifth receiver and returner. He ended up playing close to 700 offensive snaps. Carter caught 46 passes. His previous career high was 24. He had 538 receiving yards. His previous career high was 296.
This would have been surprising to someone who isn’t familiar with Beatty’s career. But Beatty has been elevating and developing receivers through his 25-year coaching career that started at North Stafford High in northern Virginia.
He coached Percy Harvin at Landstown High in Virginia Beach, leading that program to a 40-2 record over three seasons. Beatty has a framed Harvin Vikings jersey hanging in his home in Maryland.
Beatty coached Tavon Austin and Stedman Bailey at West Virginia. Those two share the school single-season receptions record, which they set in the same season a year after Beatty left for a job at Vanderbilt. Austin played nine years in the NFL; Bailey played three.
At Vanderbilt in 2011, Beatty coached Jordan Matthews, who broke the school’s receiving record the following season. Matthews then broke his own receiving record and set the receptions record in 2013 before being drafted in the second round.
After a year of calling plays for Illinois, Beatty left to coach receivers at Wisconsin. There, in 2013, Jared Abbrederis set the single-season receptions record for the program. In 2016, Beatty joined the staff at Maryland, where he coached DJ Moore. In his first season playing for Beatty, Moore caught 41 passes for 637 yards and six touchdowns. In his second season playing for Beatty, in 2017, Moore caught 80 passes, which remains a school record, for 1,033 yards and eight touchdowns. That spring, Moore was the first wide receiver drafted, at No. 24 to the Panthers.
Beatty coached receivers at Pitt for two seasons after leaving Maryland. In 2019, Beatty’s first season, Maurice Ffrench set a school record with 96 receptions. Beatty then coached Jordan Addison in 2020. The next season, after Beatty had joined Staley’s staff, Addison won the Biletnikoff Award as the best receiver in football. He caught 100 passes, breaking Ffrench’s record. Addison finished just shy of the program receiving yards record set by Larry Fitzgerald Jr. in 2003.
“You hope people recognize that and will give you an opportunity,” Beatty said of his career.
That opportunity, though, did not come until 2021.
“A lot of it’s just perseverance,” Beatty said.
Beatty and Staley first met in 2007 at Northern Illinois. Beatty was the running backs coach. Staley, two years removed from his playing career as a quarterback, was in his second season as a graduate assistant.
As Beatty recalls, Staley was working primarily with the defense but was looking to get back to the offensive side.
“He wanted to talk ball all the time,” Beatty said.
So Beatty would invite Staley over for late-night discussions, scratching that offensive itch for the future Chargers head coach.
“I didn’t treat him like a GA. I’ve never tried to treat any of my GAs like a GA,” Beatty said. “That’s a big thing: You treat people like coaches and like people. You don’t treat them like they’re lesser than you.”
Almost 15 years later, Staley had a receivers coach opening on his NFL staff. He offered it to Beatty, who had maintained his desire to get to the league throughout his journey.
“It’s amazing how things go full circle,” Beatty said.
It is hard to square Beatty’s impressive resume with how long it took for him to reach the NFL.
But, Beatty said, that can be the “frustrating” reality for Black coaches. As The Athletic’s Jim Trotter noted earlier this offseason, only five of the 33 non-interim head-coaching vacancies have been filled by Black coaches over the past five hiring cycles. And this trend is starker on the offensive side. With training camps beginning around the league this week, there is only one Black coach slated to call offensive plays in the NFL this season: Washington’s Eric Bieniemy.
Beatty has been working his whole life for that type of role — really, to become an NFL head coach. He interviewed last offseason for the Vikings’ open offensive coordinator position on Kevin O’Connell’s staff, which Beatty believes was a “positive step.”
But he added that, at times, it is hard not to “lose hope.” He last called plays in 2012 at Illinois.
“We’ve all had that feeling,” Beatty said. “If you’re never given an opportunity, how do you know that someone can’t do it?
“If we have a real conversation, like, ‘Hey, I’m really going to interview you for my job, and I’m not interviewing you to check a box, but I’m interviewing you to see if you’ve got the smarts to run my offense and the opportunity is there,’ I think there would be more people getting hired that don’t look like everybody else that’s been hired.”
All Beatty can do for now is keep developing receivers as he has for decades.
He will keep thinking outside the box to unlock talent.
He has another such receiver this season in rookie Quentin Johnston, the Chargers’ first-round pick. And Beatty is already getting promising early returns.
One morning during OTAs in the spring, Beatty was meeting with Johnston and the rest of the receivers. The Chargers had practice scheduled for 11 a.m. Beatty wanted Johnston to try a new release called a “diamond release” at the line of scrimmage that day. Effectively, the receiver fakes a route to one side before cutting back the other way. It has the same effect as a crossover in basketball. Beatty detailed the release to Johnston in the meeting room: “Give him a little cha-cha and then beat him across the face with a foot in the ground and burst.”
As practice began, the Chargers broke into position groups. The receivers practiced diamond releases in the individual period, working against the hand shield and dummy.
When the seven-on-seven period started, Johnston got his opportunity. He was matched up one-on-one with cornerback Asante Samuel Jr. in the red zone, isolated on the right side. Johnston faked Samuel out of his shoes and caught the touchdown from Easton Stick, executing the diamond release to perfection.
“He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, so you tell him something, and it’s almost like, ‘Oh, you can do that?’” Beatty said of Johnston. “You’re looking at it like, man, this guy, the sky’s the limit.”
Staley and the Chargers trusted that Beatty could get the most out of Johnston — “polish that raw jewel to make it into something that shines,” as Beatty put it. The same way he got the most out of Williams.
It is a safe bet. Beatty has been polishing jewels his whole career.
And one day, he hopes they all shine bright enough to help him reach his ultimate goal.
“You can’t take the fact that somebody is not opening a door,” Beatty said. “You still got to keep pounding on it. And eventually, you hope somebody opens it.”
theathletic.com/4689994/2023/07/20/chargers-receivers-coach-chris-beatty/
Daniel Popper
During the 2021 offseason, Chris Beatty sat Mike Williams down and gave the No. 7 pick from the 2017 NFL Draft a rather specific prediction.
After more than two decades coaching high school and college football, Beatty had recently achieved his longtime goal of reaching the NFL, joining Brandon Staley’s Chargers staff as the receivers coach. Over the ensuing weeks, Beatty had immersed himself in the tape, learning all he could about his group.
What Beatty saw from Williams was untapped potential. Williams was entering his fifth NFL season on an expiring contract. He was a good NFL player, but he had not yet lived up to where the Chargers drafted him. Beatty had a plan to change that.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Beatty remembers telling Williams that offseason. “If you do what I ask you to do, you’re going to get 80 catches, 1,200 yards and 10 touchdowns and get a big contract.”
Williams, a man of few words, gave Beatty a simple reply: “I got you, Coach.”
What happened next provides a window into what Beatty brings to one of the most talented and expensive receiver rooms in football — and why Beatty could soon be achieving another of his coaching goals by becoming an NFL coordinator and play caller.
Beatty had a grander vision for Williams. In his first four seasons, Williams was used almost exclusively as an outside-the-numbers threat. And he made plenty of jaw-dropping plays in those areas of the field. Williams’ greatest gift is how he uses his huge frame, long arms and elite body control to win jump balls.
But while watching film, Beatty could not understand why Williams wasn’t being used in other areas of the field. The Chargers were building a new offense in Staley’s first season, and this was the ideal opportunity to explore what else Williams could become.
Staley had tapped Joe Lombardi as his offensive coordinator. Lombardi came from the Saints, where, over the previous five seasons, Michael Thomas had set records as one of the most productive receivers in football. Thomas was the X receiver in those Sean Payton-Drew Brees offenses, typically lining up as the isolated receiver.
As the Chargers offense was developing that offseason, Lombardi approached Beatty about where Williams could fit.
“Mike can be Mike Thomas,” Beatty told Lombardi.
There was some consideration into moving Keenan Allen around to fulfill some of the many duties Thomas excelled at in the Saints offense. But Allen is at his best in the slot. Giving Williams the Thomas role would put Allen in the best position to be successful and create a more dynamic passing attack overall. That is, as long as Williams was up for that challenge. And Beatty believed he was.
“He can do more,” Beatty said. “You go back to Clemson, he was running in-breakers, in-cuts, slants. … So, it was like: ‘I think we can do these things with him. We don’t need to move anybody there. He can do them.’ He just hadn’t been asked to do them.”
Lombardi agreed. So did Staley.
And the vision became a reality. Williams finished 2021 with 76 catches, 1,146 yards and nine touchdowns — just missing Beatty’s predictions across the board. Williams’ potential was fully realized with an expanded route tree that included many of those in-breakers Beatty first pitched.
Williams signed a three-year, $60 million extension that offseason.
“They trusted in me,” Williams said at the Chargers facility a day after inking his deal.
Last season brought some adversity to Beatty’s room.
Allen strained his hamstring in Week 1 and went on to miss seven games. Williams suffered a high ankle sprain in Week 7 and missed most of the next five games. Jalen Guyton, the Chargers’ lone dangerous deep-field speed threat, tore his ACL in Week 3. Joshua Palmer, the Chargers’ No. 3 receiver, battled through knee and ankle injuries. Palmer also missed a Week 7 loss to the Seahawks with a concussion; it was the second time he had been in the concussion protocol in two months.
Amid all the moving pieces, Beatty helped DeAndre Carter emerge as one of Justin Herbert’s most reliable targets. Carter entered training camp as the fifth receiver and returner. He ended up playing close to 700 offensive snaps. Carter caught 46 passes. His previous career high was 24. He had 538 receiving yards. His previous career high was 296.
This would have been surprising to someone who isn’t familiar with Beatty’s career. But Beatty has been elevating and developing receivers through his 25-year coaching career that started at North Stafford High in northern Virginia.
He coached Percy Harvin at Landstown High in Virginia Beach, leading that program to a 40-2 record over three seasons. Beatty has a framed Harvin Vikings jersey hanging in his home in Maryland.
Beatty coached Tavon Austin and Stedman Bailey at West Virginia. Those two share the school single-season receptions record, which they set in the same season a year after Beatty left for a job at Vanderbilt. Austin played nine years in the NFL; Bailey played three.
At Vanderbilt in 2011, Beatty coached Jordan Matthews, who broke the school’s receiving record the following season. Matthews then broke his own receiving record and set the receptions record in 2013 before being drafted in the second round.
After a year of calling plays for Illinois, Beatty left to coach receivers at Wisconsin. There, in 2013, Jared Abbrederis set the single-season receptions record for the program. In 2016, Beatty joined the staff at Maryland, where he coached DJ Moore. In his first season playing for Beatty, Moore caught 41 passes for 637 yards and six touchdowns. In his second season playing for Beatty, in 2017, Moore caught 80 passes, which remains a school record, for 1,033 yards and eight touchdowns. That spring, Moore was the first wide receiver drafted, at No. 24 to the Panthers.
Beatty coached receivers at Pitt for two seasons after leaving Maryland. In 2019, Beatty’s first season, Maurice Ffrench set a school record with 96 receptions. Beatty then coached Jordan Addison in 2020. The next season, after Beatty had joined Staley’s staff, Addison won the Biletnikoff Award as the best receiver in football. He caught 100 passes, breaking Ffrench’s record. Addison finished just shy of the program receiving yards record set by Larry Fitzgerald Jr. in 2003.
“You hope people recognize that and will give you an opportunity,” Beatty said of his career.
That opportunity, though, did not come until 2021.
“A lot of it’s just perseverance,” Beatty said.
Beatty and Staley first met in 2007 at Northern Illinois. Beatty was the running backs coach. Staley, two years removed from his playing career as a quarterback, was in his second season as a graduate assistant.
As Beatty recalls, Staley was working primarily with the defense but was looking to get back to the offensive side.
“He wanted to talk ball all the time,” Beatty said.
So Beatty would invite Staley over for late-night discussions, scratching that offensive itch for the future Chargers head coach.
“I didn’t treat him like a GA. I’ve never tried to treat any of my GAs like a GA,” Beatty said. “That’s a big thing: You treat people like coaches and like people. You don’t treat them like they’re lesser than you.”
Almost 15 years later, Staley had a receivers coach opening on his NFL staff. He offered it to Beatty, who had maintained his desire to get to the league throughout his journey.
“It’s amazing how things go full circle,” Beatty said.
It is hard to square Beatty’s impressive resume with how long it took for him to reach the NFL.
But, Beatty said, that can be the “frustrating” reality for Black coaches. As The Athletic’s Jim Trotter noted earlier this offseason, only five of the 33 non-interim head-coaching vacancies have been filled by Black coaches over the past five hiring cycles. And this trend is starker on the offensive side. With training camps beginning around the league this week, there is only one Black coach slated to call offensive plays in the NFL this season: Washington’s Eric Bieniemy.
Beatty has been working his whole life for that type of role — really, to become an NFL head coach. He interviewed last offseason for the Vikings’ open offensive coordinator position on Kevin O’Connell’s staff, which Beatty believes was a “positive step.”
But he added that, at times, it is hard not to “lose hope.” He last called plays in 2012 at Illinois.
“We’ve all had that feeling,” Beatty said. “If you’re never given an opportunity, how do you know that someone can’t do it?
“If we have a real conversation, like, ‘Hey, I’m really going to interview you for my job, and I’m not interviewing you to check a box, but I’m interviewing you to see if you’ve got the smarts to run my offense and the opportunity is there,’ I think there would be more people getting hired that don’t look like everybody else that’s been hired.”
All Beatty can do for now is keep developing receivers as he has for decades.
He will keep thinking outside the box to unlock talent.
He has another such receiver this season in rookie Quentin Johnston, the Chargers’ first-round pick. And Beatty is already getting promising early returns.
One morning during OTAs in the spring, Beatty was meeting with Johnston and the rest of the receivers. The Chargers had practice scheduled for 11 a.m. Beatty wanted Johnston to try a new release called a “diamond release” at the line of scrimmage that day. Effectively, the receiver fakes a route to one side before cutting back the other way. It has the same effect as a crossover in basketball. Beatty detailed the release to Johnston in the meeting room: “Give him a little cha-cha and then beat him across the face with a foot in the ground and burst.”
As practice began, the Chargers broke into position groups. The receivers practiced diamond releases in the individual period, working against the hand shield and dummy.
When the seven-on-seven period started, Johnston got his opportunity. He was matched up one-on-one with cornerback Asante Samuel Jr. in the red zone, isolated on the right side. Johnston faked Samuel out of his shoes and caught the touchdown from Easton Stick, executing the diamond release to perfection.
“He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, so you tell him something, and it’s almost like, ‘Oh, you can do that?’” Beatty said of Johnston. “You’re looking at it like, man, this guy, the sky’s the limit.”
Staley and the Chargers trusted that Beatty could get the most out of Johnston — “polish that raw jewel to make it into something that shines,” as Beatty put it. The same way he got the most out of Williams.
It is a safe bet. Beatty has been polishing jewels his whole career.
And one day, he hopes they all shine bright enough to help him reach his ultimate goal.
“You can’t take the fact that somebody is not opening a door,” Beatty said. “You still got to keep pounding on it. And eventually, you hope somebody opens it.”
theathletic.com/4689994/2023/07/20/chargers-receivers-coach-chris-beatty/
