How South Carolina’s receivers are handling the extra attention
South Carolina’s wide receivers group is getting plenty of hype heading into the 2018 season.
Deebo Samuel and Bryan Edwards were recently named two of the top 30 receivers in the country by Athlon Magazine, while Shi Smith appears ready for a breakout year after hauling in 29 passes for 409 yards and three touchdowns without a drop as a freshman last year.
Gamecocks offensive coordinator and receivers coach Bryan McClendon is instructing his unit on how to handle the added attention.
“Those guys have played a bunch of ball, so those are the guys that people know,” McClendon said Tuesday night at the South Carolina Coaches for Charity event in Greenville. “I think what has to happen is those guys have to go out there and they have to kind of block out everything that’s being said and everything that’s being written a little bit. The one thing I feel that helps is it’s not just those three guys, I feel like we have a deep room.”
In addition to the three projected starters, the Gamecocks return OrTre Smith, who caught 30 passes for 326 yards and three scores as a true freshman last season. Junior Chavis Dawkins and sophomore Randrecous Davis will be back in 2018, and sophomore Chad Terrell projects to return from a torn ACL during the season.
“We’ve got a bunch of ability,” McClendon said. “Now it’s a lot of stuff that has to be done on a lot of different fronts, but we have a bunch of ability, and we have the ability to do some good things.”
The Gamecocks missed not having Samuel in 2017 as freshmen were forced to step up, but McClendon believes that Samuel missing most of last season helped the rest of his receivers grow up.
“With Deebo going down, it was a blessing in disguise,” McClendon said. “Some of those guys still had to play before they were ready. OrTre Smith still had to play before he was ready … There’s still a lot of learning left that needs to be done on all of those guys’ parts.”
In addition to the guys returning, South Carolina brought in a talented recruiting class at receiver with four-star prospect Josh Vann, three-star prospect Darius Rush and three-star prospect Tyquan Johnson. Vann was rated as the No. 146 overall player in the country and the No. 25 receiver by the 247Sports composite rankings.
McClendon added that with the veterans and newcomers, there is plenty of competition at the receiver positions heading into 2018.
“What it does is those guys have to go out there and they have to prepare and compete every single day just because they know that there’s a guy that’s right next to them or right behind them that’s just as talented as he is,” McClendon said. “So to go out there and know that they can’t take a day, they can’t take a rep for granted, I think it’s going to make them be at their best, which I feel like competition does that. So that’s a good problem to have.”
This story was originally published July 25, 2018 at 1:21 PM.