Shane Beamer addresses reason behind South Carolina staff change, goal moving forward

South Carolina coach Shane Beamer spent nearly five minutes at a press conference discussing his move to part ways with offensive line coach Lonnie Teasley. In steps Shawn Elliott, looking to turn things around.

Off the cuff, Beamer offered a little humor when noting how big a change the switch could provide. He warned Oklahoma, the team’s next opponent.

“Yes, if I was Oklahoma I would go back and study every game that Shawn had as the head coach at Georgia State,” Beamer said wryly. “Every game that he coached here as the offensive line coach. And every game that he coached at App State, and that’s a good start for them and everything.”

On a more serious note, the South Carolina coach opened up on how things could shift with Elliott in charge. But he noted the Gamecocks aren’t going to suddenly throw out everything they’ve been doing.

“Now having said that, in all seriousness, certainly there’s going to be things in the run game that he really likes that maybe we haven’t been doing as much that we’ll add,” Beamer said. “Certainly we’re going to add some things to the scheme. But we’re also, you can’t just blow everything up and say, ‘OK, all the sudden we’re going to become a whatever type team’ when we haven’t been doing it all season.

“So we’re going to continue to do what we do, but there will be some new twists off of it. There may be one or two new schemes that he feels like he wants to implement. So there will be some schematic changes.”

Beamer thinks the biggest thing that will change for South Carolina is potentially how players respond to having a new coach in the room. It could spark things in unexpected ways.

“I think more than anything it’s just a different voice in that room,” Beamer said. “Every coach is different. My style is different than Kirby Smart‘s style or Steve Spurrier as a head coach. Every coach is different and you’ve got to be who you are. And Lonnie Teasley’s style of coaching is different than Shawn Elliott’s. Doesn’t make one right or wrong, it’s just different.

“So that will probably be the biggest thing, it’s just the coaching style, the voice in that room. There will be some things that we’ve tweaked already just in regards to some technique things and terminology of how we call some things that Shawn’s more comfortable with. So there will be some changes. You can’t blow the whole thing up, but definitely some schematic changes and then general coaching tweaks.”

Elliott’s biggest challenge at South Carolina, on top of producing a line that can allow quarterback LaNorris Sellers to shine a little more, is cleaning up the operation. The Gamecocks have been far too penalized of late.

Drives are stalling because of negative plays and penalties. That can’t happen if you hope to survive in the SEC, especially against this week’s opponent.

Beamer noted he thinks things will be better. But it’s not a given.

“Confident, but then also you turn on the tape of Oklahoma and you see how active they are,” he said. “I think they’re right at the top of the SEC in sacks and TFLs. And I think I’ve told you guys before on Mondays I always watch what I call the havoc tape and it’s just the opponent’s tackles for loss, sacks and turnovers. And usually in a four-game body of work there’s, I don’t know, 30 plays on there. I think it was 68 yesterday.

“And even Hunter, he had the day off from school and he was up here with me and went to the fair and came over here for about 30 minutes and brought me dinner and he was watching it with me and he was like, ‘Oh my God.’ So it’s a lot on there, and they’re active. But that is the hope, certainly — that we can cut down on the presnap penalties.”

To that end, Elliott has been taking a more active approach with the South Carolina big men. He’d doing everything in his power to get them ready.

“Today at practice Shawn was literally lined up across from center pretty much every play of practice, screaming, yelling, clapping, barking, blowing whistles, making move calls himself, just trying to make things as difficult as he possibly can,” Beamer said. “Would it be nice to say that we’re going to go out there and have zero presnap penalties on Saturday? Yes, it would be nice to say that. Is that realistic? I don’t know, but it definitely needs to be less than — I think we had six on offense the other night alone. And I think of those six, five were on the offensive line.

“So yeah, we need to cut down on that without a doubt, and maybe a different voice will help us do that. And that’s certainly, we’ve been trying to emphasize it and implement it even more in practice, but different voice in that room may help things from a mental standpoint of the scheme we’re asking them to run, what we’re asking them to do on the play once the ball’s snapped, but also leading up to the snap, too, the things that’s going on in our minds.”