24 Hours with WR Coach Phil McGeoghan

8:45am – The wide receivers meeting is over and one by one they walk out of the room and prepare to head to Jack Hammett Sports Complex for practice. That is, all but one. Mike Williams has stayed behind for an extra 15-minute session with McGeoghan. The wide receivers coach has decided to take one young player aside each day for some additional one-on-one coaching.

“The first thing is I want them to know that I care about them, that I care about their development. The second thing is, it drops their defenses when there’s nobody around and I can be really critical, really get into their routes and their techniques and their fundamentals and they don’t take it personally.”

Today is Williams’ turn. Number 81 sits in the front row with McGeoghan right in front of him with a laser pointer. McGeoghan spent the previous day selecting a dozen plays from Williams’ first week of practices.

“There’s a thin line between love and discipline,” McGeoghan says, giving Williams a bear hug before firing up the film.

It’s actually the first day of training camp, and Williams ran a perfect route, getting skinny along the boundary. The two talk about how that play helped him gain confidence with a contested catch. The next play in the cutup is also from the early days in camp. McGeoghan asks him what he should have done differently with his release.

“A tighter arm-swing,” Williams responds.

“Yes! You want to control his wrist. Did you control his wrist?”

“So he got his hands on you?”

“So all that left you what?”

The pair go on like this through a series of a dozen plays, and Williams is grateful for the tutelage. That means the world to McGeoghan.

“Do you know what you can never do with somebody?” McGeoghan asks. “You can never give him back his time. No matter how much money you have, you can never buy time for someone. So when you give me your time, that’s the highest compliment you can give me. Because I don’t need presents. But you giving me your extra time, that’s value to me. It’s the same way I value you, you value me. So if I give you more, you give me more, and then we have more for the team.”