Well-deserved.
Last month as teammates and others reacted to Kevin Byard’s record-setting contract extension with the Tennessee Titans, the same sentiment was expressed over and over again — this was well-deserved.
A five-year, $70.5 million pact is something unimaginable to many, based solely on the numbers — Byard will earn close to an average of $1 million per game over the course of the contract. Others might question the sanity of franchise officials who signed off on such a deal. There are those who certainly will see green in one manner of speaking (a desire to cash in on another’s success), but seemingly no one was green with envy.
Good luck finding anyone anywhere to question whether Byard, a 26-year-old safety out of Middle Tennessee State University, toiled hard for the sizable stack of money he will earn beginning with the 2020 season, or whether he should have been rewarded for all he did to get to this point in his life and his career.
Never has he benefited merely from his reputation. Byard has always fought to be noticed — and has performed in a way that he can’t be ignored. Somehow he never complained or wallowed in self-pity. Every step of the way, the only thing he knew to do was work harder.
With the 2019 NFL season set to open in two weeks, a guy who has been overlooked for virtually all of his football life — which dates back to when he was 8 years old — is suddenly the player his teammates look to as an example. He’s an example of what is possible, and the one his fellow Titans see as the standard for professional conduct. Names like Mariota, Lewan and Henry are better-known, but Kevin Byard is now the face of a franchise that constantly fights for recognition amid 31 other franchises — many of which are in bigger media markets, and nearly all of which have been rooted in their current homes much longer than the Titans have been in Tennessee.
“That was definitely well-deserved by K.B.,” says wide receiver Corey Davis. “He’s a phenomenal player. He’s a great dude. And he comes to work every single day.”
Byard himself heard the same thing many times on the day he put pen to paper (July 25) and those that followed. There is no reason for him or anyone else to think it’s hollow praise rather than genuine respect.
After all, Byard wasn’t a high school phenom awash in scholarship offers. He didn’t play college football at a school that routinely sends players to the professional game, and NFL scouts weren’t overly impressed by his body of work during his college days. He didn’t enter the league with any sort of guarantee that he’d one day be in this situation. Yet here he is.
“The main thing a lot of guys have been saying is it’s well-deserved,” says Byard. “It makes me feel good to know that my hard work [paid off] and they’re seeing it. But I want to continue to do it. That’s the main thing: You see a big number — you see a big contract, but my whole mindset is, ‘I’m going to earn every single dollar, every single penny.’ ...
“Really, nothing’s changed but the change.”
It sounds nice, but the reality is that much is different now.
This season, Byard will play out the four-year contract he signed as a rookie. But beginning in 2020, he will earn an average annual salary of $15.1 million, the highest of anyone who plays his position. It will make him one of the highest-paid players among the Titans, a team that has increasingly handed out some sizable contracts in its three-plus seasons under current general manager Jon Robinson and his staff.
With money comes status. It’s true in the NFL as it is in pretty much any walk of life — and status is something Byard has rarely known, and certainly hasn’t enjoyed for any extended period of time.
“There’s a lot of guys in that locker room that work hard, that show up, that were probably told at some point in their football careers that they couldn’t do something, and they’ve overcome those odds, and they’re on an NFL roster,” says Robinson. “[Byard] has earned everything he’s gotten, and we’re proud he’s a Titan. … To have him in a Titans uniform for several years to come was pretty important.”
Byard was a standout player at Martin Luther King High School in Lithonia, Ga., and a Class 5A all-state selection as a senior. But college recruiting services rated him as a two-star prospect (on a scale of five), which did not exactly open doors to a lot of the top programs. There was some interest from Kentucky, but no scholarship offer.
Byard ultimately made his way to MTSU, where — after a redshirt season — he was a four-year starter at safety and set program records for interceptions, interception return yards and touchdowns on interception returns. He also ranks among the top 10 in career tackles.
It was enough to earn Byard an invitation to the 2016 Senior Bowl, where he more than held his own against players from more prominent programs. Several outlets that reported on the events of that week identified Byard as a player who had greatly improved his prospects for the draft, yet inexplicably the NFL didn’t invite him to its annual scouting combine in Indianapolis — a snub that suggested he might not get drafted at all.
But the Titans called Byard’s name on the second day of the 2016 NFL Draft, a three-day affair. He was the 64th overall choice among the 253 players selected that year. It was a satisfying result, but one that also motivated him to live up to — if not surpass — the expectations that came with his draft position. In 2018, during Byard’s second season in the NFL, he tied for the league lead in interceptions, and earned All-Pro and Pro Bowl recognition. More than a year later, the money followed.
“Being in my dorm room or my student apartment down at Middle Tennessee, I honestly never imagined I could be in this position,” Byard says. “Don’t get me wrong — I prayed for it, for sure, and I sat there and I envisioned it. But to see it happen and see this moment come to fruition, it’s just a testament to hard work. It’s a testament to, honestly, just believing in yourself and staying humble and understanding to keep working, keep working — keep your head down and everything will work itself out.”
Of course, even at the pinnacle of his athletic success (to date), Byard had at least one doubter. Months after the 2018 season, he attracted attention when he got into a Twitter spat with Deion Sanders, a Pro Football Hall of Fame member and current television analyst who didn’t mention Byard as someone he thought was one of the NFL’s best current safeties. The most maddening part? Sanders’ response to Byard’s protest suggested that the former assumed the latter was a fan, not a player — let alone a player who believed he belonged in the discussion.
These days, Byard politely declines to discuss the back-and-forth. He is quick to recognize Sanders’ place in the history of the game and notes that he ultimately would like to accomplish as much, or close to it, in his own right.
“You play this game long enough, you’re going to be able to do a lot of things that other people can’t,” says Titans coach Mike Vrabel. “But it’s about coming to work every day, staying consistent in that attitude and your desire to improve. Your leadership can’t change because you got a couple extra zeros at the end of your paycheck.”
But Byard’s salary and reputation aren’t the only things expanding. Somewhere around the start of the season, he and his wife Clarke will welcome their first child. It promises to be a significant life moment, particularly for someone like Byard, one of the oldest of seven children whose parents divorced when he was in high school. The time spent wrangling his younger siblings while his mother, who had custody of the children, was at work helped hone his sense of responsibility and the idea that there is always work to be done — even when it seems like everything is in place.
Byard now has the accomplishments and the contract that will have a locker room full of professional athletes looking to him for guidance and inspiration. Before long, there will be a tiny person in this world counting on him for everything.
Money. Responsibility. Expectations. Those are things that change many people, often not for the better. The contract, Byard acknowledges, means he will encounter people with their hands out — and not with the offer of a congratulatory handshake. Having an infant at home will mean sleepless nights throughout the coming season. The professional standard he has set on the field only means that coaches, teammates and fans will expect even more.
Byard seems uniquely equipped to handle it all. He’s never traveled on Easy Street. Whatever challenges he faces in the coming weeks, months and years — on and off the field — his instinct will be to work harder to make it right.
“[We’re] just really proud of certainly the player he is on the field, but more importantly the person he is in this community, the husband he is, and the soon-to-be father he will be,” Robinson says. “Nothing here is given. Everything here is earned.
“He came in as a rookie and was a special teams player, and a role player defensively. Earned a starting spot second year, was a starter and a Pro Bowl player, and then last year really matured, became more of a vocal presence for us, and still a really good playmaker back there.”
Not many people — who Byard knows, at least — thought he could do it. That includes college recruiters and NFL scouts. Doubters and detractors were with him every step of the way, but he never carried their skepticism with him. Few told him he could do it. Yet here he is, the NFL’s highest-paid safety with seemingly the majority of his career still in front of him. That’s a lot of time to add to everything he has already accomplished and to further convince those who were unconvinced at so many points along the way.
Byard, however, doesn’t seem to plan on saying, “I told you so.” He’s got more of an “I knew I could” mentality, because that was the internal dialogue he maintained every step of the way. To look back at those who doubted is to miss the view on the way up.
These days, he gets to see a whole lot of things from an entirely different perspective.
“Coming from humble beginnings, every next step for me was a blessing,” Byard says. “I always looked at it like a blessing. So I never really looked at it like, ‘Oh, they doubted me.’ … Most success stories you hear, it’s always a humble beginning. You always hear that people go through different tests and trials, and I understand that when you’re trying to make it to a great destination that you have to go through tests and trials. The road is not going to be straight, it’s going to be crooked. So I always understood that, and I kept working.
“This is not the end, where just because I signed my contract this is where it’s all downhill. No. My whole mentality is to keep elevating, to keep going higher and higher.”
It’s the only direction he knows.
Kevin Byard
