Bru McCoy ready to lead Tennessee's wide receivers after playing through injury last season

Bru McCoy finally got on the field for the final week of spring practice. He wasn’t in pads when Tennessee football got back to work on Tuesday morning, but the redshirt senior was wearing a practice jersey, going through warmups alongside his teammates and finally freed from the large brace he had worn for so long on his left arm. 

McCoy, the USC transfer, spent nearly the entire 2022 season dealing with the arm injury, saying on Tuesday that it happened in Week 2 last season, during the 34-27 Tennessee overtime win at Pittsburgh last September.

Instead of addressing the issue immediately after it happened, though, he opted to play through the pain the rest of the season, finishing the year with 52 catches for 667 yards and four touchdowns in 12 games.

“I knew I wasn’t going to not play,” McCoy said after Tuesday’s practice, “so it was an afterthought. I didn’t think about it. I grinded, I worked, I rehabbed the best I could and made sure I was at my best on Saturdays. I knew it was something I would have to deal with after the season, but it’s not a big setback for me.”

Did he ever think about shutting himself down? In short, no.

“I mean, that’s not really the character of player I am,” McCoy said. “But also I knew I could go out there and do what I could do with what I was dealing with. So if I shut it down, I would be shorting my team and myself. It was even a thought. I didn’t think about it.”

Bru McCoy looking to build off first year with Vols

He didn’t think about missing time this spring as a step back, either. Instead, he found the positives in being sidelined after having an offseason procedure done on the injured left arm. 

“Obviously having setbacks like that, it’s not ideal,” McCoy said. “But the opportunity it gave me off the field, to learn more and be more supportive of my teammates, it’s a younger room now so I get to help them take the steps I had to take when I first got here. I found the silver linings in it and I’ve enjoyed this time.”

McCoy is the elder statesmen in a wide receiver room that is now forced to move on from Jalin Hyatt and Cedric Tillman, who will start their NFL careers later this month at the NFL Draft in Kansas City. 

Tillman and Hyatt gave Josh Heupel back-to-back 1,000-yard receivers in his first two seasons at Tennessee. Tillman had a breakout season in 2021, going for 1,081 yards and 12 touchdowns. Hyatt last season caught 67 passes for 1,267 yards and 15 touchdowns, a new single-season Tennessee record, on his way to becoming the first Tennessee player to win the Biletnikoff Award. 

McCoy would be Tennessee’s next breakout wide receiver, but he knows there is more than just talking about it. He has to do it the same way his teammates did.

“The work, I saw their preparation,” McCoy said of Tillman and Hyatt, “I saw the way they attacked each day. Yeah, there’s a model to it. You want to see yourself go as a high draft pick — the fruit of the the labor. 

“But it’s a process, it’s a grind. Seeing that they went through the same process I’m going through, and the opportunity they have, it shows a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Up Next: Tennessee’s Orange & White Game, Saturday, 2:30 p.m. ET, Neyland Stadium

The light is getting brighter and brighter for McCoy. When asked Tuesday about his understanding of Tennessee’s offense after being in the program for a full year, he stopped short of calling it a night and day difference. 

“But similar to that,” McCoy said. “A lot better understanding of the offense. A lot more comfortable. Have a better understanding of the broader goal of what we’re trying to do, why we do certain things a certain way.” 

In Tennessee’s high-speed spread offense, that takes some getting used to.

“Coming from a different offense, it was very unorthodox and it broke a lot of rules I had kind of been beat over the head with for a while,” McCoy said. “Now I’m more comfortable knowing we’re not going everything a certain way. There’s leniency to certain things and there are rules. There’s a goal in mind and a why.”