All set up in a one-bedroom Airbnb in Miami, Bhayshul Tuten’s days of training since early January have had a rhythmic quality to them.
The former Virginia Tech running back and NFL Draft hopeful rises early, at his training facility by 6:30 a.m. A full day’s worth of workouts and physical therapy run through the early afternoon. Back home, he’ll heat up one of the prepared meals provided to him by staff nutritionists — the grilled Cajun chicken strips with mashed potatoes and corn being his favorite.
Tuten walks around for at least a half hour every day, dodging the daily rain and taking in a little bit that South Florida has to offer. He even made his way down to Miami Beach one day.
“Why be in Miami if you’re not going to look around a little bit?” Tuten told Tech Sideline for the first in a series of Draft Diary entries before April’s NFL event.
Through it all, though, Tuten has a singular focus: Be the best he can be when it comes time for this spring’s NFL Draft.
Draft evaluators have varying opinions on the 5-foot-11, 209-pounder, who was a second-team All-ACC pick in 2024 after starring for the Hokies, running for 1,159 yards and 15 touchdowns.
CBS Sports has Tuten ranked eighth among a running back class that includes Heisman Trophy runner-up Ashton Jeanty, North Carolina’s Omarion Hampton, Iowa’s Kaleb Johnson and a pair of Ohio State standouts — TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkins.
How he fares over the next few months — from the Senior Bowl to the NFL Combine to Virginia Tech’s Pro Day and beyond — will help determine where he stacks up in that group, making all the work worth it.
“Yeah, I get up early, but at the same time, I get to advance my body and myself even more, push myself to another level that I didn’t do before, that I didn’t do yesterday,” Tuten said.
“One percent each day and I can get better day-by-day. So just being able to get up and go to training, run faster, lift stronger and just be active is what I look at being the best so far.”
One Last Run
With 15 carries, 47 yards and an early 6-yard touchdown run to his credit, Tuten was having an okay day against Virginia in what was turning into another Hokies rout in the regular season finale. He hadn’t broken any long ones like he did on the ground and in the kick return game the previous year in Charlottesville.That was about to change.
Tuten started Tech’s second drive of the fourth quarter with runs of 14 and 5 yards. Then it happened. On third-and-5 from the Hokies’ 42, the tailback took a handoff out of the shotgun and darted up the middle. He ran through an arm tackle at the line of scrimmage, shed the defender and popped free around midfield.
Once he got in gear, nobody was catching him. Tuten sprinted to the end zone for a 58-yard touchdown, slowing up a bit — almost as if he was trying to prolong the moment — before being tripped up as he crossed the goal line.
https://twitter.com/theACCDN/status/1863073331215274151
It’d be his last carry in maroon and orange.
“It’s kind of awesome to go out with a touchdown,” said Tuten, who finished with 124 yards, his sixth 100-yard game of the season.
The Hokies’ celebration went big — “I think that win for us meant more than any other win this year” — but while teammates headed out to downtown Blacksburg for a night of revelry with the Commonwealth Cup, the running back stayed low-key, chilling with his family at his apartment before hitting the hay.
Once finals were done, he headed back home to decompress in Paulsboro, New Jersey, just south of Philadelphia, taking a few weeks to heal up before jumping back into training.
After discussions with head coach Brent Pry and running backs coach Elijah Brooks, Tuten decided not to play in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl. He’d labored with a high-low ankle sprain suffered late against Georgia Tech on Oct. 26 that kept him out of the Syracuse game and limited his mobility and explosiveness in the season’s second half.
Even though he estimated he was up around 90 percent for the Virginia game, Tuten considered his future. He needed time to get completely healthy and didn’t want to take the risk of re-injuring the ankle, not with an invitation to an important week at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, at the end of January. Arriving in peak health was atop his list of priorities as his professional career took off.
“I played all year for the guys,” Tuten said, “but there was a point in time too where I knew I had to be selfish in a sense because my future was bigger than a bowl game.”
‘A Hokie at Heart’
While some players seamlessly transition from the end of the season to training, Tuten knew his body needed a break. He took about two weeks off to “de-load” from the rigors of the season before running and lifting again, filling that time by catching up with friends back home he hadn’t seen in a while.Though his body was on pause, his professional path wasn’t. Tuten went to work finding an agent and a place to train ahead of the NFL Draft, quickly coming to conclusions.
After speaking with several agents, he found one pretty easily, going with Andy Ross of Upper Edge Management. Familiarity helped seal the deal. Ross went to Virginia Tech, walking on the wrestling team originally before spending his final two years as an intern in the athletic department. He graduated in 1999, but has never been far from Blacksburg through jobs at Octagon, Select Sports Group and, for a little over three years now as CEO at Upper Edge Management, a boutique NFL sports agency with offices in Chicago, New Jersey, Denver and Leesburg, Virginia.
Ross’ clientele is flush with Hokies, going back to Duane Brown and currently featuring Tim Settle, Wyatt Teller, Greg Stroman and Brock Hoffman. Tuten met Ross last year and developed a bond. Ross, in fact, was at the Boston College game when Tuten broke the Hokies’ single-game rushing mark with 266 yards.
“I felt comfortable with him. … He had the most trust with me,” Tuten said. “He’s a genuine guy. He’s a Hokie at heart.”
Once the running back signed, Ross got the ball rolling, taking the logistical stress off of Tuten through the process.
When it came to a place to train, Tuten had a primary request: Somewhere in Florida with nice weather.
Ross whipped together a list of possible spots, with Bommarito Performance Systems in North Miami being the choice.
“He makes everything fluid,” Tuten said of Ross. “I just tell him where I want to train, he tells me where he knows is the best for training and strength and conditioning … I really don’t have to worry about nothing. Just having him do all the heavy lifting has been extremely easy on me.”
Treatment and Training
Bommarito Performance Systems has it all. At the 20-acre sports complex in Aventura, Florida, there’s a 10,000-square foot weight room, a full outdoor football field, an indoor/outdoor heated pool, data and video analysis centers, an indoor basketball facility and a nutrition station to go with a full staff of trainers, physical therapists, chiropractors and more.Tuten got to know the treatment staff well, spending lots of time there in the early going to make sure his ankle got back up to 100 percent.
“When I first got here, it was strictly treatment, treatment, treatment,” he said, with some weight room work and sled pulls mixed in.
It didn’t take long for that regimen to expand, with Tuten adding speed and band work, more lifting, 40-yard dashes and shuttle drills into his repertoire. Top-end speed work is high on the priority list, with trainers — including the man in charge, Pete Bommarito — getting into specifics to help the athletes perform their best in the 40, vertical and broad jump — all events they’ll encounter in the lead-up to the NFL Draft.
“It’s a very technical spot here, and I like it because you have to pay attention to details,” Tuten said. “Because the science is the science. And if you do everything right with your details — your hand is right, your shoulder’s back or whatever the right knee bend — it can help you so much in your 40 and your testing that it’ll boost you in your draft class.”
Tuten’s not the only Hokie in South Florida. Both Antwaun Powell-Ryland and Aeneas Peebles are working out at the same facility, with Jaylin Lane and Kaden Moore at the Bommarito center 16 miles up the road in Davie, Florida.
Tuten’s in a different group than APR and Peebles. He starts his workouts at 7 a.m., a half-hour after arriving for treatment. It’s an eight-hour training day that tries to balance the workload, following up sprints or weight room workouts with a massage session or physical therapy.
“It’s an eight-hour day, but it’s not like you’re running rampant for eight hours straight,” Tuten said. “He breaks it out pretty good so you’re not dead in the legs and stuff like that.”
It’s an eye-opening experience for Tuten, who’s trained hard his whole life, though never quite like this, with so much attention to detail.
“When I first got here, it was a change for me, because I never trained in this manner like this,” he said. “But this is how the NFL trains now, and it’s good to have that experience now and understand it now instead of getting there and being lost in the sauce and trying to figure it out. We have a regimen that is close to an NFL offseason script and how they train. Just being able to do something similar to that definitely helps.”
In addition to general fitness, Tuten hopes to improve his pass protection heading into this week’s Senior Bowl.
“But pure training, my main focus is getting back 100 percent healthy,” said Tuten, who arrived in Mobile on Sunday. “Running fast, feeling good, legs feeling great, body feeling great.”
He’s gotten some helpful advice about what to expect this week for the Senior Bowl. Coaches like seeing how the backs fare in the aforementioned pass protection, with one-on-one routes with linebackers another favorite drill. They’ll throw players feet first into a playbook to see how they pick it up.
It’s a lot to handle, but Tuten’s enjoying the process.
“It’s definitely fun,” he said. “[The NFL] is a dream I’ve had ever since I first started playing football, since I’ve seen it on TV. Just seeing that I’m literally a few months away from that dream coming true, it’s definitely a bittersweet moment for me.
“I’m not there yet, but I’m going to be there shortly, and I’m excited to be on that journey.”
-- Be sure to check out our two Bhayshul Tuten posters at the Tech Sideline Poster Store: