New coordinator Kendal Briles lays out spring goals for South Carolina’s offense

South Carolina football is three sessions in to its 2026 spring practices, and new offensive coordinator Kendal Briles has his work cut out for him.

Briles joins the Gamecocks after three seasons at TCU and a decade of coordinator experience. He’s helped boost the offense of every program he’s joined, and head coach Shane Beamer is asking Briles to the same in Columbia as USC looks to bounce back from a 4-8 record in 2025. A big part of doing so will be rebuilding a Gamecock offense that averaged the second-lowest marks in the SEC last season in yards (336.3) and points (22.7) per game.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Can Briles’ offense be installed in a spring? He thinks so.

“We’ll try to put everything in,” Briles said Monday at his first spring press conference. “Hopefully we’ll get everything installed, and then you kind of reinstall in the summer, and then you do the same thing once you get in fall camp.”

The spring install will include the bulk of material USC needs for the year, Briles said, and personnel and gameplan would dictate the rest.

As for last season’s playbook and results, Briles seems intent on starting fresh and building on his own foundation, but he also said that he’s found some “carry-over” between this year’s offense and previous years that’s made things smoother.

“To be honest with you, we didn’t really look at, previously, what was going on from a playbook standpoint. We knew that we wanted to come in and how we’re going to implement our system,” he said. “Nowadays, there’s so many players to come in and out of programs. Whether that helps or not, it may help a couple guys, but that part of it’s been pretty easy.”

Briles said his main concern is less about learning all the material and more being able to get enough reps in 15 scheduled spring practices.

“Hopefully by the end of spring, when you get done with 15 practices, you’ve got enough reps of what you’ve tried to install. The worst thing you do is go out there and install a whole bunch of material, and not get to rep it,” he said. “Hopefully we’re able to install and be good at what we’re trying to get done. And then not do too much. We want to get these guys out there and let them play free and not have to think too much.”

As for what exactly his offense would ideally look like come fall, the only quantifier Briles mentioned was wins.

“We need to be productive enough for us to win football games,” Briles said. “I don’t care if we average 12 points a game if we’re winning every single game. That’s what it’s all about, and that’s how we’re judged, is go win games.”

This story was originally published March 16, 2026 at 2:24 PM.