Changes are coming at South Carolina, Muschamp makes clear as season ends
South Carolina football coach Will Muschamp will face some difficult choices this offseason.
His Gamecocks offense struggled mightily under the guidance of Bryan McClendon in his second season as USC’s coordinator. It was the seventh offense with problems in his eight seasons as a head coach.
Muschamp sat down at his postgame news conference and promptly said he wouldn’t go into details about the kinds of changes that are coming. Some questions poked around the evaluation and the like, and Muschamp stepped aside from those.
“We’ve got to make some changes moving forward,” Muschamp said. “I’m not addressing anything as far as that’s concerned. Don’t ask. We need to get better.”
He said the evaluation — from staff to players to scheme to anything else — is an ongoing process. The staff will hit the road recruiting Sunday.
Asked if he expected to make wholesale scheme changes, Muschamp said it was more about making smaller shifts than anything else.
“I think we need to tweak some things,” Muschamp said. “As far as how we’re looking at him. I don’t want to expand much past that.”
Muschamp several times said the Gamecocks need to be more productive. USC was one of the 20 worst teams in the country in points per game and yards per play vs. FBS competition, and that was before putting up three points and 3.3 yards per play against No. 3 Clemson.
“There’s a lot of different areas that are at fault,” he said in speaking about the offense. “It needs to get fixed and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Players admitted they were not happy with the way the season ended, a performance that was disjointed at times.
“It was frustrating because I’m a competitor,” wide receiver Shi Smith said. “Going out there and not getting the job done, really frustrating.”
This year of inconsistency and struggle on that side of the ball came after the 2018 season, when the Gamecocks topped 30 points per game and 400 yards per game. Injuries hammered USC at pretty much every offensive spot, most heavily at wide receiver and costing South Carolina its starting quarterback Jake Bentley.
“I don’t have enough fingers to put in the dike right now,” Muschamp said. “Confidence is a major issue. But we’re having a hard time in a lot of areas. And to sit down and blame one person, I’m not going to do that.”
Muschamp fell back on that season, hitting the 30-point and 425-yard mark. He made reference to the fact USC didn’t hit those marks all that often with Steve Spurrier, a man he called the greatest play-caller of all-time.
And a year removed from that, he insisted this team, with all its struggles and some key playmakers such as Bryan Edwards, Tavien Feaster and Rico Dowdle set to depart, isn’t so far removed from that success.
“We had a great year” on offense in 2018, Muschamp said. “And that’s more what we need to be, and we just didn’t manifest itself to that. I can list some issues that I think were probably contributing to that. But that’s called excuses and I’m not gonna make excuses. Bottom line is we weren’t productive and we need to get better and we will.”
This story was originally published November 30, 2019 at 3:51 PM.
