What South Carolina coach Shane Beamer said about Dylan Stewart’s recovery
To the South Carolina fans who saw the photos of Dylan Stewart in street clothes during spring practices and, got spooked and went down the rabbit hole of believing a nagging back injury could keep USC’s star edge from missing the start of the 2026 season, Shane Beamer has a message.
Pump your brakes. He’ll be good to go by September.
“I don’t know why there’s any thought that he wouldn’t,“ Beamer told The State at SEC Spring Meetings in late May.
Beamer spoke just a day after the Gamecocks’ entire roster — Stewart included — reported back to Columbia and sat in the start-of-summer team meeting.
“He had a good month of May,” Beamer said. “He was in the meeting last night, at workouts today, progressing on schedule and eager to get back out there on the field and get back rolling.”
That’s a much more optimistic outlook on Stewart’s recovery than Beamer was sharing in the spring, when the USC head coach wasn’t ready to rule out surgery.
“He just needs to rest,” Beamer said in mid-April. “It’s not like we send him to a doctor, he makes a couple of adjustments, and he’s good to go.”
This goes back to a back injury Stewart suffered late in the 2025 season. The severity wasn’t clear then, but Beamer noted that the 6-foot-5, 245-pound pass rusher was playing despite “basically (having) a broken back.”
He gutted it out against Ole Miss and Texas A&M — recording sacks in both games — before being sidelined for USC’s penultimate contest against Coastal Carolina and the second half of the finale against Clemson.
Still, despite playing through a severe injury and missing time late in the season, Stewart managed to take on double- and triple-teams while racking up 33 tackles (12 for a loss), 4.5 sacks and three forced fumbles.
His health is key for a South Carolina defense that has health concerns all over the edge position. Still, Beamer said, the Gamecocks are not going to rush Stewart back.
“You don’t go from not really doing anything in spring practice to all of a sudden he’s (at full speed),” Beamer said.
“Between our staff and everyone else,” he continued, “we’ve got a good plan for his return and his future. And it all leads to him playing a lot in 2026 for us.”
