OU Co-Offensive Coordinator and wide receiver Coach Jay Norvell has been at OU since 2008 and he continues to be recognized as one of the top offensive and wide receiver coaches in the country.
Coach Norvell has worked both in the NFL and in the college ranks and he has worked with some of the greatest wide receivers that have ever played the game. Norvell has tutored amazing players on both the collegiate and pro level, and recently he was the coach behind the NCAA record setting career of Ryan Broyles at OU. Working with great talents like that is one of the reasons why Coach Norvell is always able to go out on the recruiting trail and have a chance to sign talented wide receivers.
“I mean it helps and I think people want to know that you have worked with great players and that you have helped develop good players,” said Norvell. “I have been really fortunate to be around some great players here in the NFL and here at Oklahoma. It helps to have been around Jerry Rice, Marvin Harrison and I have coached Reggie Wayne. All those guys, I have learned from them just as much as they have learned from me and those are the great things to pass along to players. Coaching Ryan Broyles was a great pleasure for me and I have not been more proud of a young man like I have for Ryan.
“I was telling them (current OU receivers) about Jerry Rice today. The thing that made Jerry Rice so great was that he tried to do the little things better than anybody else. Whether it was his stance, or his get-off, he would come up to me after practice and say ‘coach how is my stance, or how is my get-off clean,’ and I would just scratch my head and think man this guy is unbelievable because he just wants to do every little thing so well. He just wants to be better than everybody else.
This week a book written by Coach Norvell called “Complete Wide Receiver” was released by Human Kinetics, a teaching toll for generations of wide receivers to come.
“It was something that took two years to do,” said Coach Norvell. “A company called me and said I was recommended by people in the NFL and in college to do a book on receiver play, and at first I told my wife (Kim) that I have no time to do this, but she looked at me and said ‘are you crazy, when is anybody else going to ask you to write a book again.’
“So I actually did it over summer vacation over the last couple of years and it took two years. It was an exhausting process, but I am really glad that I did it, and I am proud that I did it now that it is over with. I have been around a lot of good people and I was able to share a lot of those stories in that book, so I am glad that I did it now that it is all over with and I am very proud of it.”
Coach Norvell’s book “Complete Wide Receiver’ can be purchased at book stores everywhere.
- James Hale
- Oklahoma Insider - OUInsider