The first day of fall camp is usually filled with optimism, where everyone believes this could be the season. Colorado WRs coach Rashad Davis wasn’t interested in any of that. Instead, the newly promoted assistant stopped practice to deliver a message that cut through the noise. His target mostly was his own receivers after hearing enough complaints.

“I’m tired of the complaining,” Rashad Davis said in footage shared by Well Off Media. “We’ve been complaining since we stepped on campus. Stop complaining. I come from nothing. I work to get everything I got. Stop complaining because guess what? If you don’t like something, do something about it. And if you ain’t going to do nothing about it, shut up and play the next play.”

Taking over one of the biggest coaching jobs on Deion Sanders’ staff, Rashad Davis didn’t ease into it. Jason Phillips is gone, and the new Colorado receivers coach made sure everyone knew things were changing. On day one of camp, he was challenging how his players think.

He reminded the players that wearing Colorado’s uniform is a privilege, asking them where else they would rather be. Players responded “nowhere” in unison. The speech wasn’t just emotion for emotion’s sake. It matched the tone Rashad Davis had already set during the team’s opening meeting before camp.

“This is the year to do the impossible,” he told the room earlier this month. “So whatever they said was impossible for you to do, or for us to do as a unit, this is the year to do the impossible… One great year can change everybody’s life. But you’ve got to be intentional with doing it.”

Rashad Davis also dismissed the idea that success comes down to fortune, joking that “luck is for leprechauns,” before telling players that talent may get them to the top, but hunger is what keeps them there.

This season will also test him as the replacement of Jason Phillips who goes back decades with Deion Sanders. Besides being teammates on the Atlanta Falcons, Phillips coached a receiver room that sent Travis Hunter, Jimmy Horn Jr., and LaJohntay Wester to the 2025 NFL Draft. That run is over. 

Rashad Davis, though, isn’t some new face walking through the door. He has also worked alongside Deion Sanders since Jackson State and most recently coached Colorado’s inside receivers before taking over the position group. That continuity could matter even more with OC Brennan Marion installing his offense. And while he may be screaming his lungs out at fall camp, he has made it clear that his job extends beyond football.

“My role has always been an energetic guy,” he said earlier this month. “I’m very passionate in what I do, very energetic…  Now I’m stepping more into developing these guys on the field, and also off the field too. We want them to be good athletes, but most importantly, we want them to be good young men when they get into the real world.”

Colorado’s first practice produced a new position coach who walked into his expanded role, challenged his players head-on, and made sure everyone in the building understood one thing. You can bet excuses won’t be part of his receiver room.