Kevin Byard knew life was going to be different when Mike Vrabel took over in Tennessee. The Titans had just made the playoffs the season prior, but their new head coach didn’t care about that, or who you were in the pecking order. He wanted more. From everyone. For everyone.
“We had our first OTA practice, and it was kind of like a jog through,” Byard recalled earlier this week. “Derrick Henry got the ball to the left, just kind of running - jogging it out. And Taylor Lewan, who was one of the best left tackles in the league at the time, and I want to say he was in the middle of contract negotiations or something like that. And he ripped him. ‘You talking about you done this, and you jogging, and you need to run full speed.’ And it was like, ‘Whoa’. And it was kind of like a shock to everybody, because it was like, man, it's our top player basically, and he was just ripping into him. It's like the first thing that he had kind of said. He kind of just set the tone. Everybody in this building will be held accountable. So if you're not the top guy, you're not working hard, like what do you think you need to do if you're a young guy? So I think he's always been just holding everybody accountable.”
Now Byard and Vrabel are reunited. The veteran safety signed a one-year deal ($9 million) to come to New England and subject himself to that all over again.
"To say (the coaching staff) is ecstatic is an understatement," Eliot Wolf said of Byard. "I know he's an older player, but I haven't seen any real drop-off from him. He proved that last year by obviously making All-Pro."
Byard led the league with 7 interceptions last season in Chicago, but also piled up 93 tackles as the Bears made a big leap under Ben Johnson. He doesn’t run as well as he used to, but that doesn't mean he doesn’t run well. Even though he turns 33 in August, Byard has a training method that has worked for him, and even if he can’t crank out a 4.4 40, his intelligence often allows him to see what’s coming before it does. That, in turn, leads to the ball production.
"It's a combination of a couple of things," Byard said. "Some interceptions that I've had, especially last year, the two interceptions against Geno (Smith) and a couple other ones, that's almost all