South Carolina to hire experienced NFL coach as special teams coordinator, report says
A special teams savant, Shane Beamer is perhaps pickier about nothing more in his football program.
After he hired special teams coordinator Pete Lembo to his first South Carolina coaching staff, Beamer was so adament about nailing that hire that he admitted if Lembo declined, he would have just coached special teams himself.
Perhaps that was again on the table this week, after news broke that Lembo had accepted the head coaching job at Buffalo, leaving Beamer without one of his most trusted assistants.
Beamer, though, will not be the Gamecocks’ special teams coordinator and, if its possible, might have found someone a longer special teams resume than him and Lembo put together.
NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero reported Saturday morning that South Carolina will hire former longtime NFL assistant Joe DeCamillis to be USC’s special teams coordinator.
A two-time Super-Bowl-winning special teams coordinator with the Denver Broncos (2016) and Los Angeles Rams (2022), DeCamillis was an NFL special teams coordinator for 14-straight seasons before the Rams parted ways with him in 2023.
For the past year, the 58-year old spent a year away from the NFL for the first time since Ronald Reagan was in the Oval Office. He jumped into the college game and served in an off-the-field role as the Texas Longhorns special assistant to the head coach (Steve Sarkisian). Texas went 12-2 and made it to the College Football Playoff.
A former wrestler at the University of Wyoming, DeCamillis married Dana Reeves — the daughter former Gamecock great and Denver Broncos head coach Dan Reeves — in 1987. Dan convinced DeCamillis to take a job with the Broncos as an assistant strength and conditioning coach.
DeCamillis worked his way up and followed Dan Reeves from Denver to the New York Giants and then to the Atlanta Falcons before going off on his own with the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2007.
Now, over 15 years later, DeCamillis will embark on a new adventure as a college football coordinator in Columbia.
This story was originally published January 27, 2024 at 9:12 AM.
