KNOXVILLE – Zach Azzanni simply played the numbers game, and it landed him one of Tennessee’s most promising freshmen.
At one point after Tyler Byrd signed with the Volunteers, it appeared one of the nation’s top-ranked athlete prospects was going to play defense, but Tennessee needed more help at wide receiver.
Byrd was capable of playing there, too, and he’s shown as much during preseason training camp this month.
“We would have taken Tyler Byrd at any point in time, but he was going to Miami,” Azzanni, the Vols’ receivers coach, said during the team’s media day at Neyland Stadium on Friday afternoon. “Then when the whole coaching change thing happened, we were able to get back in on him, because he wanted us to, and the rest was history.
“We had our DB number and we had our wideout number. He was a bonus in the class. We told him, ‘You’re going to play whatever you need to help the team,’ and he was like, ‘I’ll do whatever I need to do.’ That right there told us what kind of kid this kid was. He came in and we just happened to need him at wideout more than we needed him at defensive back.