Beavers coach Shevin Smith Jr. details NFL experience in Tampa Bay Buccaneers coaching program
· Yahoo Sports
Jun. 16—Around 2023, just before he began his journey as a coach, Shevin Smith Jr. sat down with a pen and paper and wrote a letter to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Not an email, not a direct message, a letter that he put in the mailbox.
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He didn't pick the team arbitrarily. He had a connection with the Bucs since his late father, Shevin Smith Sr., played for the franchise from 1998-1999 as a safety.
Smith didn't expect much; all he wanted was a little advice about the qualities of being a good coach. To his surprise, an assistant to head coach Todd Bowles invited him to Tampa Bay's facilities and watch practice.
Smith was ecstatic. He booked a flight from Lincoln, Nebraska — where he had just accepted a graduate assistant position for the Cornhuskers — to Tampa, Florida, as soon as he could.
Only one slight problem.
"I missed my flight," Smith said. "I got the dates mixed up. So I drove six hours in the middle of the night from Lincoln to Denver to catch a flight (to Tampa) and go make it to the practice."
It may have been a whirlwind, but Smith made it to practice on time and got to pick the brain of Buccaneers coaches.
It was then that they told him about a new program: the Tampa Bay Buccaneers National Coaching Academy. It's a program for young, up-and-coming coaches to have firsthand experience with NFL coaches and players during minicamp. They encouraged Smith to apply after he gained three years of coaching experience, one of the requirements of the program.
Now a co-defensive coordinator and special teams coordinator for the Bemidji State football team, Smith was one of 25 coaches selected for this year's coaching academy, held last month.
The program invited coaches from around the world, including some from the Canadian Football League and the NFL Academy in Europe.
"It's crazy with all the different accents," Smith said. "But it's cool because it just shows how global (football) is getting. Growing up, I never would have thought I would be with a German coach doing football. ... You can really learn from everybody."
For one week, Smith got to work with Buccaneers veterans and rookies, and got to hear speeches from former players and coaches about what it's like to get to the top level.
One of those speakers happened to recognize Smith's name: Tony Dungy, the man who coached his father in the NFL. While Smith got to take a picture with him and chat about his dad, it was Dungy's speech that would truly resonate with him.
As Dungy entered the room full of young coaches, Smith included, he began speaking in his trademark quiet, soft-spoken manner.
It's a quality of his personality that he addressed to those in the room who may not know his impressive resume, which includes a Super Bowl in 2006 as head coach of the Indianapolis Colts and a Hall of Fame induction in 2016.
There isn't one mold for a head coach, Dungy explained. Not everyone has to be a rah-rah coach to get the best out of their players. As long as the players and staff know that the coach truly cares about them, they'll adjust to whatever personality they have.
The message really resonated with Smith, who doesn't fit the stereotype of a typical intense football coach.
"It's cool to see someone — I'm not as soft spoken as him — but somebody that's a little bit more aligned to my personality," Smith said. "(Especially) that level of coach."
Dungy coached the Bucs from 1996 to 2001. When picturing a typical football coach, many may expect a personality like Dungy's replacement in Tampa Bay, Jon Gruden. He was someone who was rah-rah, wore his emotions on his sleeve and wasn't afraid to speak his mind about his players in front of everyone.
In other words, the antithesis of Dungy.
Gruden would win a Super Bowl too, winning with the Bucs in 2002. The differences between the two coaches was something former Bucs cornerback Ronde Barber detailed in his speech to the coaching academy.
Paraphrasing Barber, Smith said: "You didn't want to mess up in front of Gruden because he was going to cuss you out in front of everybody. But you didn't want to mess up in front of Dungy because you didn't want to disappoint him in a fatherly kind of way.
"Both of them are effective because both of them cared about the players. That's why it resonated with them."
It led to the biggest piece of advice Smith learned from the coaching academy: be authentically himself. He's been doing just that throughout his young career, but it's rewarding to hear countless examples from all-time players and coaches that that can be a path to success.
"A lot of people try to force stuff on players," he added. "But as long as you are like, 'Hey, I want you guys to be the best. This is my authentic self. How can I help you be the best?' Then they'll naturally form a culture behind you. Because every team is different. And if you (try to force things) on guys, you are going to be at different wavelengths."
Outside of Dungy and Barber, Smith also got to hear from Bowles, general manager Jason Licht and Super Bowl-winning head coach Bruce Arians.
He also gained some hands-on experience with Buccaneer players during minicamp. During the first half of the week, he was running drills with the veterans, watching players like Chris Godwin and Baker Mayfield.
He got to work with the rookies in the second half of the week. Naturally, rookies are more malleable to coaching since they're just trying to make the team.
Learning the drills with the veterans before coaching the rookies was a helpful structure for Smith to learn, he said.
"The NFL guys are very self-governing," he said. "I know the drills because I watched them, but the vets are like, 'Hey, I'm supposed to do this.' The rookies, they don't know that. ... It helped build — not saying I was unconfident — but it helped build my confidence with the vets to when I got to the rookies."
Another thing he took from practice? Every player, whether it's the star quarterback or the last guy on the depth chart, has to have some knowledge of tackling, blocking, catching and more. There can be so many unknown circumstances in a game, especially coming from the special teams side of the ball, which Smith is in charge of at BSU. The more prepared a player is, the better.
"Everybody has to have some kind of knowledge of tackling and blocking, which in college you don't think about, because it's like, our receivers are never going to tackle," Smith said. "But you might get in the game and it's like, he has to make a tackle on kickoff, but you never ripped it in practice.
"So from a structure standpoint, you got to make sure everybody on the team has some kind of knowledge of everything."
After his experience with Tampa Bay, Smith returned to Bemidji in mid-May even more excited to get to work for the 2026 season.
The Beavers finished a disappointing 4-7 in 2025, the first losing season in head coach Brent Bolte's tenure. While losing always stings, Smith looks at last season as a needed come-down-to-earth reset for a team that has been so used to winning.
"I think when you win for so long, you get in a situation where guys expect to win, but don't know what it takes to win," Smith said. "So I think last year kind of hit people because like, 'Oh shoot, I wasn't the guy when we were winning and I expect to win, but the whole world expects us to win. So they're really trying to beat us, and I didn't put in the necessary work to do that.'"
Smith has seen the hard work this year's players have been putting in throughout the spring. He's been getting more texts from players wanting to put in extra work outside of practice, and he feels like there's more urgency with this year's squad.
"The vibe of spring ball is more urgent, more meticulous, I think, more than anything else," Smith said. "Because everybody can go out there and practice hard, but it's like, 'Am I taking a right step on this play? Am I going (at the right) angle?' It's the meticulous details of it that really is the difference between winning and losing.
"And I think that was overlooked a little bit last year. Because it's like, 'If I play hard, I win.' No. If you play hard with execution and preciseness and communication, you'll win. Which is what we did in the spring."