Shane Beamer reacts: USC head coach speaks on third-down play calls, injuries and more
South Carolina dropped to 1-2 on Saturday after the 48-7 loss to No. 1 Georgia at home. Here’s a quick look at what head coach Shane Beamer had to say after the loss.
Opening statement: “Obviously not a lot that went well today. We’ve just told the team in there we’re not playing well. We’re not playing our best football right now. And that starts with me as a football coach. I obviously did a horse-crap job of getting our team ready to play today, regardless of how many guys we had out. We had a good enough team to go out there and compete better than we did today. And we didn’t do it. We’re going to get right. We’re a fourth of the way through the season. We’ve played three games. We’ve got to get better. We’ve got to get right back to work and continue to find a way to play winning football.”
On if there’s any quit or give-up within the team: “Hell no. ... We’re 1-2. We’ve got a bunch of fighters in that room. ‘Give up?’ That’s not a part of this football program.”
On the atmosphere: “I want to apologize to our fans that were out there today. That was a poor performance, to say the least. We challenged them in the press conference during the week to show up, and they did. It was an unbelievable atmosphere throughout the game for a noon kickoff. That was awesome. The walk was great. The atmosphere pregame was great, and they were fantastic. Sorry we didn’t coach better and play better for them. Obviously, not a lot went well today.”
On injuries: “Devonni Reed hurt his hip. He’s getting an X-ray right now. We’ll see what the results are of that. We lost Darius Rush during the game to a hamstring injury. We’ll see what the MRI looks like on that. And then Stone Blanton went out with a shoulder. So clearly, we’ve got to get better and we’ve got to get healthy.”
On third-down play calling/calling for run plays: “A lot of those, I told (Marcus Satterfield) on the headphones, ‘We’re gonna go for it on fourth down.’ So you got two downs here. And then a couple of them we lost yardage, so we ended up punting. But obviously, we’ve got to look at that, ‘OK, it is two downs and we’re gonna go forward on fourth down. Let’s be smart about what we’re calling as well.”
“... Certainly, we gotta be better on third down than we were ... 4 of 13, not good enough. But that, to me, was what that was, if we ran the ball in a medium situation.”
On turnover battle: “Last year we were not very good offensively. We were last in the SEC in turning the ball over. We’re certainly on pace to do that again this year. So whatever we’re doing, clearly we got to do a better job of emphasizing it. And then defensively last year, we led the SEC and takeaways. And right now, we got one in three games. ... So we’ve got to go back to work on the practice field. And not that we don’t emphasize that already. We’re doing a lot of the same things we were last year defensively to emphasize turnovers. We’ve just got to continue to fly to the ball.”
This story was originally published September 17, 2022 at 4:35 PM.
