The hints Beamer dropped about possible direction of Gamecocks’ offense, defense
The anecdote from Shane Beamer seemed to point to where he wants his offense to go.
After an extended stint on his father’s staff at Virginia Tech, he landed at Georgia, working for a good program in a nice, small college town. His family liked the place, but then came a different chance.
“There’s not a program in all of college football that I would have left to go be an assistant coach at other than the University of Oklahoma,” Beamer said. “And that was because of Lincoln Riley. I felt like I had done a lot in my career. I had a lot of different roles. But the opportunity to go to learn from Lincoln and learn the offensive system at Oklahoma and how we do things, for my family and I to get out of our comfort zone a little bit, that was an opportunity I didn’t feel like I could pass up.”
If that opportunity was enough to get him to leave the ACC and SEC footprint for the first time in his career, it stands to reason that’s probably the sort of offense he’ll aim to run, or draw inspiration from, when he takes over USC’s team full-time.
Beamer is a bit of a blank slate when it comes to schemes. He’s never run his own offense or defense. But he’s been part of offenses by Riley, Jim Cheney and part of an Ellis Johnson defense. He’s worked alongside Bud Foster and Kirby Smart.
He laid out a few of the philosophies he’d like to put in place as he was introduced on Monday as the new Gamecocks coach.
The offense
The first factor that Beamer wants to bring from the Riley offense isn’t the tempo or the formations.
It’s the flexibility.
“Your system has got to be flexible enough where you can adjust it to the strengths of the players that you have,” Beamer said. “Our offensive system, for example in Oklahoma, it’s a little bit different — right now, a lot different — this year with Spencer Rattler as our quarterback than it was last year with Jalen Hurts, and a little bit different than it was the year before, with Kyler Murray.”
That group includes a prolific pocket passer, a power runner whose passing was augmented by the system and a Heisman winner who could do almost everything at a high level. Re-creating what has been probably the best offense in the country across the past five years isn’t that likely at South Carolina, but creating something more in that vein could be attainable.
That scheme has layered a base of Air Raid passing game with variations on power running (especially counter plays), working in tempo and run-pass options aplenty. At times, it’s been a power scheme with Hurts as a battering ram, and this year it’s shifted a little away from that.
“It starts with toughness, starts with being physical,” Beamer said. “Offensively I think you’ve got to be multiple. You’ve got to have the ability to run and pass from a system standpoint.
“Got to be explosive. In today’s college football, the name of the game is explosive plays. We’ve got to be able to create those through scheme and through recruiting, and we certainly will.”
Under the Will Muschamp coaching staff, explosive players were also emphasized.
Beamer inherits young quarterback Luke Doty, who was up and down in an undermanned offense late this season. The backfield has pieces in 1,100-yard rusher Kevin Harris and former borderline five-star MarShawn Lloyd, assuming the staff can keep them from possibly seeking transfer opportunities.
The name most strongly connected to the coordinator job via various reports is Garrett Riley, Lincoln’s brother. Garrett Riley has SMU at better than 38 points a game in an up-tempo scheme. He previously worked for Eli Drinkwitz at Appalachian State and worked for his brother at ECU.
The defense
Beamer hasn’t worked on this side of the ball since 2010, when he was last with the Gamecocks. The first word he went with to describe his ideal scheme was a bit of a catch-all term.
“We’ve got to be multiple,” Beamer said. “Offenses are too good nowadays. The name of the game is scoring points and I’ve seen that the last three years out Norman. We will be about that here at South Carolina, for sure. And then from a defensive standpoint you got to be multiple. You can’t line up in the same thing every time and allow teams to attack you that way. You’ve got to be able to affect the quarterback.”
Multiplicity was a key phrase for the last USC coaching staff, with a defense that shifted between three- and four-down looks. That approach did well when it could assemble the talent, especially up front, but injuries and a disappointing defensive line turned the Gamecocks into one of the worst defenses in the conference.
Tracking any true school of thought here for Beamer is tricky. Johnson was an early adopter of the 4-2-5 look, and could perhaps end up with a role on the new staff. He was an analyst for Muschamp for a few years and hasn’t coached on the field since 2014 at Auburn.
Beamer didn’t work on the defensive side when at Virginia Tech, but his father will be around the Gamecocks in some way. And his father’s top lieutenant, Foster, is currently not coaching but built good units most every year (Frank said Tuesday that Foster was enjoying fishing on the lake).
And in an SEC where offenses have taken a decided upper hand on defenses this season, Beamer pointed to a simple factor he hoped to bring to a team very much lacking it.
“You’ve got to be so good fundamentally, fundamentally sound,” he said. “You’ve got to be great tacklers. Those are things I believe in.”
