Can Kendal Briles revitalize South Carolina’s offense in 2026? Beamer’s banking on it
Think back to all the hours you spent this year watching South Carolina’s offense and, whether at home or inside Williams-Brice Stadium, all the words you shouted to no one in particular.
How many were four letters and not suitable for print? A majority? Probably.
Those words, however cathartic, don’t fix the problem. Perhaps they create change — which is why offensive coordinator Mike Shula was fired in November — but they don’t inspire a solution.
And let’s face it: Solutions seemed grim a few weeks ago. South Carolina finished the season with a 4-8 record and perhaps the worst offense in the SEC. The Gamecocks’ offensive line was (maybe still is) putrid. Their starting quarterback, LaNorris Sellers, hadn’t (and still hasn’t) announced if he’s returning.
And Beamer is entering a make-or-break 2026 year — which means any prospective assistant coach has to at least question the longevity and stability of a job within the Gamecocks’ football program.
There are plenty of words to describe that predicament. Beamer chose the most optimistic.
“Every (potential) offensive coordinator that I talked to about coming here, they had to understand what a great opportunity this is,” Beamer said. “But there’s gonna be a lot of eyes on you because of what we return and the way that we fell short in ‘25.
“There were a lot of coaches that, early in the process, I had conversations with,” Beamer continued. “As it got closer and closer, I think they — just to be frank — I think the opportunity was maybe too big for them.”
And that led Beamer to talk about his solution — the three new offensive assistant coaches he hired: OC Kendal Briles, OL coach Randy Clements and RBs coach Stan Drayton.
“These guys,” Beamer said, “ran to the opportunity and said, ‘Let’s freaking go. What an opportunity to be here at South Carolina when we see how close we are, and we can be the guys that can come in here and help elevate this program to where we’re competing for championships.’”
For Drayton, this is his 16th-different team in 33 years of coaching. He spent a season at Mississippi State in 2004, where he met Shane Beamer. He was at both Florida and Ohio State under head coach Urban Meyer. He has had stints in the NFL, a short head-coaching tenure at Temple and, most-recently, spent 2025 at Penn State.
While Clements, who came from TCU with Briles, has made plenty of stops, he’s a disciple of the Art-Briles coaching tree — getting his first coaching job from Art Briles at Stephenville High (Texas) in 1990 and following him to Houston and Baylor before Art was fired following a sexual abuse scandal.
In any case, Clements stayed loyal to the Briles’ family and has since worked under the younger Briles at Baylor, Houston, Florida State and TCU.
“He’s a foxhole guy,” Briles said of Clements.
There is Briles himself, the man almost solely tasked with revitalizing this South Carolina offense and, in turn, the Gamecocks’ program. Some call that pressure. Briles chooses the same word as Beamer.
“It’s an incredible opportunity,” he said. “I believe in (Beamer) with this program. I believe in the players. I think they were really close at times; (and) I’m sure people don’t like hearing that, so we want to get over that.”
South Carolina is certainly going to have to add talent in the transfer portal — especially at running back and along the offensive line — but if the Gamecocks return Sellers and receiver Nyck Harbor, there is talent for Briles to build a foundation.
While Briles runs an evolved veer-and-shoot scheme (the system his father popularized), he made it quite clear on Friday that he’s not rolling into Columbia making players conform to his scheme.
Asked how Sellers might fit into his offense, Briles flipped the question.
“It’s really more about the offense fitting around him,” Briles said. “I’m not going to go out there and ask him to do something he’s not great at. So we’re going to build the offense around him and the rest of the personnel, and do the things that he’s really good at.”
Boy, that should sound like a godsend to any Gamecock fan who watched Sellers look lost trying to fit into Shula’s offense last year.
Now, will it be enough to completely revitalize the South Carolina offense? Enough for the Gamecocks to win eight or nine games? Time will tell. But we’ll have the opportunity to watch.
This story was originally published December 13, 2025 at 7:40 AM.
