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.
"The kid can play whatever he wants, he's that special of a player."
The Vols are excited about Byrd's potential impact from the slot position. Of their five first-year players at receiver, Byrd and Brandon Johnson, who has missed the past few practices with an undisclosed injury, have stood out the most. While Johnson qualifies as a surprise given his recruiting background, Byrd is performing as expected.
He was a consensus four-star recruit, and ESPN ranked him as the top athlete in the 2016 class.
Tennessee can thank tight ends coach and Florida recruiting wonder Larry Scott for bringing him to Knoxville.
Scott on Friday recalled watching Byrd early in his career at Naples High School.
"You didn't have to watch it very long to figure out that he was one of the most talented guys in southwest Florida at that time, even as a young kid," Scott said. "Then as you got in the position where you, by the rules, got the chance to get to know the kid through phone conversations and those types of things, you find out that he was a really good person.
"He's got this smile as big as the day is long. He's 'Yes, sir; no, sir. How can I do things better, and how can I get it right?' You went through his school and you couldn't find one person that would say one negative thing about the kid. They all loved him. He's got a magnetic personality.
"He has all of the things that off the field lead to him being the type of player that he is on the field. Then it's just his natural talent level and how hard he actually works at it, because of his character. It stuck out, and that's why a lot of work went into recruiting that kid for three years."
For nearly all of those years Scott was recruiting Byrd to Miami, where he was the tight ends coach and then the interim head coach when Al Golden was fired midway through last season.
Then Tennessee plucked Scott as Mark Elder's replacement, and Byrd, at the prompting of Scott and Carlin Fils-aime, the longtime running back commitment who lived with Byrd, was convinced to visit the Vols.
"He had a lot of people breathing down his throat - Florida and a lot of different universities trying to get him to come and visit," Scott said. "He decided to come to Knoxville. With all these beautiful things we have to sell, it was kind of a done deal."
Most of the recruiting services pegged Byrd as a cornerback, but he also played receiver his senior year at Naples, turning 36 receptions into 641 yards and nine touchdowns.
The Vols knew when they landed Byrd they were getting a difference-maker regardless of where he played.
"As you watch his film, as long as it kept rolling and kept going," Scott said, "you see him make a play on defense and you go, 'Wow.' You see him make a play on offense and you go, 'Wow.' He's just one of those kids there's certain categories in recruiting that we use, and one of the best tags you can give a kid is, 'He's just a football player.'
"It doesn't matter where you put him. That kid, with his work ethic and who he is, will be able to master any position you put him at in time."
Azzanni said Byrd remains unpolished as a wide receiver, but other aspects of his game give reason to believe he'll be successful sooner rather than later.
"The most impressive thing is how the kid's mentality is," Azzanni said. "You'd think he's a senior out there. He's yelling formations, he's running in and out - all the little things that a lot of freshmen might think are silly or (don't) matter. Whatever you tell him to do, he does it. That's why he'll do this really fast."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.