On a June after­noon in 2014, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ten­nessee receivers coach Zach Azzan­ni put a group of high school play­ers through drills at a Vol­un­teers foot­ball camp. Like every col­lege team, the Vols were eval­u­at­ing which play­ers should rise or fall on their recruit­ing board.

That was when Azzan­ni saw Jer­ry Jeudy run around for the first time.

Jeudy was 15 years old and enter­ing his sopho­more year in high school in south Flori­da and weighed maybe 150 pounds. Azzan­ni, though, didn’t care.

“Absolute­ly, I remem­ber like it was yes­ter­day,” he said. “(Coach Butch Jones) told me to take a look at Jer­ry. I ed him run a cou­ple of routes and he was dif­fer­ent than every­body on the field at the time. I pulled (Jones) over and he offered Jer­ry a schol­ar­ship on the spot. He was one of those guys who had nat­ur­al abil­i­ty and nat­ur­al instincts — things you can’t coach. You knew he could grow into something.”

Jeudy ulti­mate­ly chose Alaba­ma, where he devel­oped into a first-round pick by the Bron­cos this past spring. His posi­tion coach in the pros is now Azzan­ni, work­ing togeth­er six years after their first meeting.

“Oh yeah, I remem­ber that,” Jeudy said with a laugh dur­ing a recent inter­view with The Den­ver Post. “Coach Azzan­ni recruit­ed me real­ly hard when I was in high school and Ten­nessee was one of my top five schools com­ing out. I’ve known him for a long time and we already had a good thing when I came here.”

The Bron­cos spent the off­sea­son plot­ting ways to add a receiv­er to line up oppo­site Court­land Sut­ton. Sit­ting at No. 15, the con­sen­sus was if they want­ed Jeudy, they would have to move up.

“I fig­ured both Jer­ry and CeeDee (Lamb) would be gone, hon­est­ly,” Azzan­ni said.

But Las Vegas at No. 12 took Hen­ry Rug­gs, Jeudy’s Alaba­ma team­mate. Just like that, Jeudy fell to the Bron­cos and Lamb to Dal­las (17th pick).

“It was great that things fell our way,” Azzan­ni said.

Jeudy has been ter­rif­ic ear­ly in train­ing camp prac­tices. He has lined up all over the for­ma­tion and run a vari­ety of routes, catch­ing pass­es from quar­ter­backs Drew Lock, Jeff Driskel and Brett Ryp­i­en. Bron­cos coach­es have embraced the strat­e­gy that the best way to get a young guy up to speed, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a trun­cat­ed camp in which there are no pre­sea­son games, is to give him reps. Lots of them.

“At this lev­el, (Jeudy) has to be able to do it all,” Azzan­ni said. “He did a good job in the slot at Alaba­ma because that’s what they asked him to do. Ear­ly on in his career there, he played out­side. He’s good at both, but I would say he’s a lit­tle more pol­ished in the slot cur­rent­ly. But we’re going to get him ready to play every­thing for sure.”

The good news for Jeudy is he won’t have to do every­thing. Sut­ton caught 72 pass­es for 1,112 yards last year and made the Pro Bowl. Sec­ond-round pick KJ Ham­ler brings a com­bi­na­tion of sud­den­ness and deep speed the Bron­cos didn’t have last year. And the bat­tle for the Nos. 4–6 spots will be intense.

In addi­tion to talk­ing about Jeudy, Azzan­ni was asked about sev­er­al oth­er receivers:

On Sut­ton: “This is his third dif­fer­ent offense in three years so he’s run just about every route you can and he’s heard just about every call you can hear, so he’s now under­stand­ing the whole con­cept of every­thing we’re doing — the ‘why’ of a play and the rhythm of a play.”

On Ham­ler: “I’ve known KJ a long time and recruit­ed him as well. Thing about KJ is I know his make-up and what kind of kid he is and what kind of fam­i­ly he comes from, so I know any defi­cien­cies in his game, we can fix because he has a real­ly high ‘care fac­tor,’ he’s such a good kid and a real­ly hard worker.”

On Dae­Sean Hamil­ton (in a ros­ter bat­tle for the first time in his three-year career): “Dae­Sean is extreme­ly smart, so he’s going to know what to do and where to be, so he’s going to come out and be locked in.”

On Tim Patrick (a spe­cial teams ace who missed eight games last year because of a Week 1 bro­ken hand): “I can’t say enough about Tim Patrick. He’s so ver­sa­tile and can do a lot of things and he’s come such a long way. I’m excit­ed to see his devel­op­ment as we keep going in camp.”

On Tyrie Cleve­land (sev­enth-round pick): “I recruit­ed Tyrie as well. When you his (col­lege) tape, you see a big receiv­er and he remind­ed me of Tim Patrick. Even though he got his butt coached off at Flori­da, he still has a long way to go, which is cool because I think he has a lot of potential.”