USC’s tight ends are getting more involved. That can only help Gamecocks offense
Shane Beamer glared into the crowd of sportswriters pecking away at their keyboards in the Wynfrey Hotel in Hoover, Alabama with a message in mind.
He’d spent the entire summer getting asked about tight ends. This day was no different. It’s a common refrain for South Carolina fans in recent years. It also bore some legitimate merit with a stocked tight end room heading into 2021.
“The tight end position is something that’s near and dear to me, something I’ve coached the last five years,” Beamer said at Southeastern Conference Media Days in July. “In my career, we’re always going to utilize the tight end. Every donor or booster club event that I go to, that’s the one question I get asked, ‘Are we going to throw the tight end?’ We are going to throw to the tight end. We want the premier tight ends in America and that’s the way we’re recruiting now as well, to go get those guys as well.”
South Carolina’s tight ends had shone out in spurts over its first eight games. But Saturday, they took on a more expansive role as the USC offense erupted for 459 yards in its 40-17 win over Florida.
“Like coach (Beamer) said during SEC media days, this is a tight end offense,” offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield said Wednesday. “And we’re going to recruit tight ends to this offense.”
Between Nick Muse, Jaheim Bell and Traevon Kenion, each of the Gamecocks’ top-three tight ends have at least four catches this year. Bell (286) and Muse (171) rank second and fifth on the team in receiving yards, respectively. The trio also combined for seven of South Carolina’s 14 receptions against Florida.
That Bell and Muse have been stalwarts this fall isn’t exactly a surprise. Bell is a unicorn-type player who runs like a receiver with the 6-foot-3, 240-pound body of a tight end. He’s lined up everywhere from receiver to tight end to fullback. He even had a 60-plus-yard touchdown run called back in the season opener against Eastern Illinois.
Muse hasn’t quite replicated the 30 catches for 425 receiving yards he notched last season, but he’s come on strong of late, while improving as a blocker. The one-time William & Mary transfer recorded four of his 16 receptions this season in last week’s win over Florida. His 13-yard, third-down reception in the middle of the second quarter was followed by a 39-yard Kevin Harris run and eventually ended in a Parker White field goal to spark a 30-7 South Carolina run.
Had Muse not converted on third down with an extra push that carried him over the line to gain, Florida would’ve received the ball with the score knotted at 10.
“The athletic ability in our room, I don’t see many people that can touch it,” Muse said Tuesday. “So hopefully we can keep it going and when it’s time to block, we block and when it’s time to run a route, run a route.”
Kenion is the most unheralded of the bunch. In two years with the program he’d only appeared in six games. He hadn’t recorded a single catch over that span.
But with E.J. Jenkins bouncing between tight end and receiver, Kenion has slid in as a nice change of pace to what Muse and Bell can do. He recorded his first catch of the season with an 11-yard grab at Tennessee. Two weeks later, he caught a late touchdown from Jason Brown for his first career score at Texas A&M. Saturday, his 18-yard reception helped set up one of White’s four field goals against Florida.
Muse told reporters earlier this week he’s seen a personality change in Kenion. He’s more focused on football these days. The results are starting to come with it.
“The key to the whole group is (Kenion), just how he’s really come on in the last three months,” Satterfield said. “It’s allowed Jaheim to not have to learn every single thing in the playbook — different positions, different blocks. He’s taken a little bit of load off of him and it’s allowed us to go a little more multiple with two tight end sets and three tight end sets.”
Asked what was different schematically about South Carolina’s offense against Florida, Satterfield assured nothing drastic was changed from week to week.
Part of the equation was the offensive line, which tied its second-best pass blocking grade of the year against the Gators per Pro Football Focus. Brown, too, avoided disastrous throws and made poignant decisions in the pocket.
Heading to Missouri for a game that’s likely South Carolina’s best shot to get bowl-eligible, it could use a steady dose of the tight end room once more.
