Will Muschamp’s plan of where to play Zacch Pickens this spring
As South Carolina football closed in on the dawn of spring practice, a question loomed with five-star early enrollee defensive lineman Zacch Pickens.
The 293-pound Pickens had been an end in high school, but at that weight seemed to fit the mold of the slightly smaller defensive tackles the staff had been moving toward last season. So how will USC’s staff approach the question of his position?
They’ll split the difference.
“Zacch is going to play both,” Gamecocks coach Will Muschamp said. “He can play both end and tackle. He’s athletic enough to slide outside and play the end position. He can play both spots.”
In the past, USC has often limited a player to one spot or the other, just for the ease of learning it. But for the moment, it seems they’ll take the path of versatility with the 6-foot-5 crown jewel of the 2019 recruiting class.
One South Carolina veteran went through a similar process in Keir Thomas. The Miami product was kept at tackle his first year and ended up playing a good bit for a thin front, before eventually sliding toward playing both spots depending on need and situation.
And Pickens won’t be the only player asked to play both this spring.
“We’ll cross train Devontae Davis and Jabari Ellis,” Muschamp said. “Those three guys, and obviously Keir’s done it before.”
Davis is a 6-foot-3, 284-pound junior college product who spent some time with the team during bowl practices. Ellis was a junior college transfer last season who saw action in four games and took a redshirt.
Pickens is coming off a dominant high school career capped by winning the Mr. Football award at T.L. Hanna High School in Anderson. He made a team-high 87 tackles, including 15 tackles for loss and six sacks, while also contributing as his team’s fullback.
Muschamp said he goes into spring practices with early enrollees not necessarily looking for hard and fast marks of progress, but rather energy, effort and buy-in. There’s a good deal of acclimation going on, and that’s its own challenge.
He told the story of walking off the field with one of his four defensive early enrollees in the past few days. The player told him he was trying to learn USC’s defense. Muschamp gave him a bit of reality.
“You’re not going to do it in one day, I can assure you of that,” Muschamp said. “And you’re not the first guy that’s come in early and tried to learn it. You’re going to have times where you’re frustrated. You’re going to have times where you don’t think you can do it, and all of a sudden, you’re going to have the light go off on a certain day and it’s going to be like, ‘It’s kind of easy, coach.’”
This story was originally published February 26, 2019 at 2:42 PM.
