Carter Owen

Raiders.com is publishing a series of Q&As with members of the Silver and Black's 2025 coaching staff.

First up is wide receivers coach Chris Beatty, who brings 19 years of coaching experience at the collegiate and NFL levels. He most recently served as wide receivers coach and interim offensive coordinator for the Chicago Bears in 2024 and as wide receivers coach for the Los Angeles Chargers (2021-23).

Read through for Beatty's thoughts on working with Chip Kelly, his early impressions of the Raiders receivers room and more.

Q: What have you enjoyed most about the first six to eight weeks being on the job here in Las Vegas?

Beatty: Just getting to know everybody. Obviously got a great group of guys starting with Coach [Pete] Carroll. All of us have followed him a ton, so to get to work with him and for him, that's a big deal. Then getting to know the offensive staff, Coach [Chip] Kelly and all those guys, the defensive guys too but you spend so much time with one side. It's been really good so far.

Q: You're back coaching in the AFC West for the second time. Those three defenses with Jesse Minter (Chargers), Steve Spagnuolo (Chiefs) and Vance Joseph (Broncos) all finished near the top of the league last season. What do you look forward to about the challenge of seeing those teams twice a year?

Beatty: That's as good as it gets. "Spags" has been doing it forever. We've had some tussles with him playing on the other teams. Minter has obviously done a great job in LA and then the job that Vance is doing in Denver, you can't say enough about the improvement they've made and the direction he has them going. One thing about this league is all these guys are Hall of Fame or close to Hall of Fame caliber head coaches, and the coordinators are right there too. If you want to play the best, you come to play against the best and that's here right now.

Q: What intrigues you about the style of offense Chip Kelly wants to run and how the wide receiver room plays a part in that?

Beatty: Chip's a proven guy in both this league and in college. He had a lot of success in Philadelphia. Go back and watch some of those tapes. He had some legitimate Hall of Famers on that team and did some great things. We're putting all the ideas together, because you've got a lot of great coaches on the offensive side that have a lot of great ideas. Coach Kelly does a nice job of letting everybody be heard to put in our offense, not necessarily one person's offense or his offense in the past.

Q: Jakobi Meyers is coming off his first career 1,000-yard season. What excites you about working with him and what stands out about his game?

Beatty: Everything excites me about him. I've been watching him from afar for a while. All the coaches in this league know who the best players are, who the really good players are. Whether they get the accolades that they should get or not, we all kind of know who's underrated. He's one of those guys that is a technician. I've been watching him not only being in the division but previous to that. You watch him in New England doing a lot of great things. So, I'm really excited about working with him and then getting to know him, I like him even more.

Q: Have you gotten a chance to talk with Tre Tucker and what have you seen from him on tape?

A: I talked to Tre and actually talked to him quite a bit through the draft process as well. He's a really fast guy, confident guy, strong guy for his size. His speed is different though. We're looking forward to hopefully developing some other parts of his game. I think last year he made a lot of strides, and you hope that we can continue to make those strides and do them even more so. But he's a great kid, so I'm really looking forward to working with him too.

Q: Percy Harvin in high school, DJ Moore in college, Keenan Allen in the NFL, you've coached the best of the best at every level. What is it about the best guys that you've worked with that makes them as good as they are and what are some of those traits that you've seen translate at each level?

A: One is the work ethic. All those guys have similar work ethics. Whether it's Percy way back when or Jordan Addison and all those guys in college. Then Keenan, obviously, is different. Mike Williams is different. DJ Moore, I've had him in college and in the pros. Those guys have a different kind of work ethic than the normal person would. The second thing is their coachability. Those guys are so successful. They could easily sit back and not quite listen to what everyone has to say. But those guys want to be coached, they want to get pushed and want somebody to make them the best they can. Those guys make you better as a coach. You know you have to bring your best to them because they can sit back and tell if you're BS-ing. Those guys challenge you and hopefully I challenge them the same way.

Q: Part of being able to challenge players comes with trust. When you come into a new place, how do you go about building and maintaining trust with the staff and your position room?

A: I think you want to show consistency. Whether it's in the meeting room as a staff or with the players, you want to make sure that every day you're coming with your A-game, that you're consistent. Your background and your knowledge base has got to be where it needs to be. But you also have to be striving to grow as well. None of us have all the answers, so we need to be able to try to go find them to help those guys get better. It's one of those things where you want to make sure that you're trying to find out the newest techniques, trying to find out the newest ways to reach them and to help push them to be better.

Q: Some coaches show motivational speeches, quotes or movie scenes in their meetings. Is there anything like that that you've found to be helpful in getting through to your players?

A: You do whatever you have to do to be able to reach them as players. One of the things I've learned in the NFL is those guys like to watch the best of their league. So, I'm really big on taking the best of everyone's game in the league. We're watching Justin Jefferson's reps, we're watching Ja'Marr Chase's reps, Keenan Allen, DJ Moore. We're trying to learn from everybody in the league because they're so competitive. They want to say, 'If he's doing this really well, I'm going to do it even better than he does.' That's one of the things I've learned and try to reach out to these guys. But as a coach, there's no magic formula or blueprint. You're always evolving every day, every week, every month, every year.

Q: You mentioned dealing with players. Some wide receivers get a reputation for demanding the ball and being unhappy when they don't get it. How do you approach the mental aspect of the game where a player may run a great route but the ball gets overthrown or pressure gets to the quarterback first?

Beatty: I think a lot of these guys get branded the wrong way, but at the same time, there are some elements where you have to be able to deal with those setbacks or whatever they may be. I always just tell them to stay consistent. To me, that's the one thing. You never get too high, never get too low. It's really important for us, and myself personally, to never show up the quarterback. The one thing I've learned is you deal with everybody individually. The way you deal with one player might not be the same as the way you deal with another. To me, the way to handle some of those things is to have an even-handed approach and be able to deal with everyone differently, but knowing what makes them tick. Because everybody wants to get paid, everybody wants the ball, and the ball is the way you get paid. But you also have to understand winning takes precedence in that too.

Q: Back when you yourself played, you left East Tennessee State as the school's all-time leading receiver and went on to play professionally. What comes to mind when you think about life playing for the Baltimore Stallions and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats?

Beatty: Those were great times. You always think you're a little bit better than you are and then you get to pro sports and realize there are a lot of great players out there. They might not have rang up the numbers that you had, but once you get into a situation, everybody's trying to compete. That's kind of one of the things that I take into coaching. I want to coach people the way I would have wanted to be coached myself. I think about a lot of that stuff as how would I have adjusted as a player to some of the things I'm trying to do as a coach. Then if there's something I think I would look at sideways as a player, I try to take that out of the equation because I know if I didn't like it, then they probably don't either.

Q: When your mind's not on football, what do you enjoy doing?

Beatty: I travel a bunch back and forth because my family lives in Maryland. So, I go see my son every weekend that I can and try to watch him play. I try to help those coaches coach there probably too much. But I don't have a whole lot of hobbies. I'm trying to learn to swing the golf club a little bit better. I'm not really good at that though (laughs). I'm trying to find out what my hobbies will be for the next part of my life.