Everything Shane Beamer said previewing South Carolina's matchup with LSU

Fresh off the bye week, South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer spoke to the media on Tuesday to preview the Gamecocks’ Week 7 matchup at LSU. Kickoff on Saturday is at 7:45 p.m. and will be on SEC Network.

Here’s everything Beamer had to say.

Opening statement

“I hope everyone had a great bye week. We certainly did. Got some really good work in last week on the practice field, like every college team, being able to balance, self-scout, opponent scout for the next team, recovery, rest, all that. So we got a good combination of that. Gave our guys the weekend off. Coaches went out recruiting on Thursday and Friday, myself included. I was in six states on Thursday and Friday, and was able to get to a high school game on Friday night, and got home about 1 a.m. and then gave everybody off Saturday. We needed it. First off-day since August. It was good to lie around and kind of be a football fan for a day. I know our players enjoyed that also. And then everybody got back in here on Sunday, back to work, and was eager to do that. The bye week came at a great time. We needed it from a mental and physical standpoint. Had a really good night on the practice field Sunday night, and then a really good practice this morning also.

“Got a big challenge this week, excited to be going down to Baton Rouge. A ton of respect for Coach (Brian) Kelly, one of the great coaches in college football, and has been for a long time, whether it be at Cincinnati or Notre Dame, or now what he’s doing at LSU. Got a really talented team in all three phases, weapons on offense, weapons on defense, weapons on special teams, in the return game, and they’re specialists. So really, a complete team that has played really good football throughout the season. They had a really good team last year, then added to that with the freshman class. They brought in and then transfer portal additions. So, a really talented group. It’s what life in the SEC is. But our guys are excited to get down to Baton Rouge, one of the great venues in college football, on Saturday night. I know it’ll be loud and electric and rocking in there, and we’ve got to prepare well this week in practice to be able to go perform well on Saturday night, but excited about the group we’re taking down there and looking forward to the challenge of going down there.”

In your opinion, what is a balanced offense?

“The ability to run and throw both when needed, meaning you can run the ball. Is it 50/50? No. Some weeks, defenses are going to say, we’re going to put nine guys up there, and you’ve got to be able to throw the ball and make plays. So you’ve got to be able to throw it. There’s going to be teams that say we’re going to rush three and drop eight or play a two-high structure with two deep safeties and dare you to run it, and you’ve got to be able to run it. So I think every team, every week, is different. It’s not 50/50. To me, it’s the ability to run when you need to run and throw when you need to throw.”

How are you preparing to simulate the noise of what Death Valley brings for your players this week?

“It starts in practice. We’re doing some crowd noise things in practice, which we always do when we go on the road. We did it when we went to Missouri, and did it today, and we’ll do it tomorrow and Thursday in practice, just trying to mainly simulate crowd noise. But you can’t simulate 100,000 probably heavily intoxicated Louisianans down there, which is going to be awesome. I mean, you want to coach in those environments. But I would say the same thing that Coach Kelly said about coming into Williams-Brice Stadium last year, which is a loud environment. You can control the crowd with how you play, and that’s what we need to focus on is playing winning football, offensively, defensively, and special teams, and being able to minimize the impact of that crowd. But this isn’t going into some 40,000-seat stadium. This is one of the great venues in all the college football, so we know it’s going to be loud and we’ve got to prepare that way in practice and then play well on Saturday night.”

Do you feel the offense is as balanced as you’d like it to be right now?

“No. It is what it is. We’re not running the ball consistently enough right now, and we haven’t been as effective running the ball as we need to be. We’ve done what we needed to do to win three games, but we’ve got to be able to run it more consistently than what we have. We’ve got to be able to throw it even more consistently than what we have. But I would say there’s a lot of areas defensively that we’ve got to be better, a lot of areas on special teams that we have to be better. But certainly, we’ve got to be more consistent offensively, staying on the field, sustaining drives, and that’s running and throwing.”

LSU’s defense has vastly improved so far this season. A lot of that has to do with how Harold Perkins is deployed in a multi different ways. What’s the challenge like for you to try to account for a player like that who does line up all over the place?

“A ton of respect for Blake Baker, their defensive coordinator. He does an awesome job; he did when he was at Miami and Missouri. We saw plenty of film when we played against Missouri my first couple of years, and now at LSU. Perkins is a great player, and they do a great job with him. Most teams you play have a nickel or a SAM linebacker, meaning, if you’re in 11 personnel, tight end, three receivers, they’re probably going to play with five DBs, and your SAM linebacker is going to come off the field, and they’re going to play nickel, which is what we do with Jalen Kilgore. But then most teams have where, if the team is in 12 personnel, meaning there you have two tight ends, a lot of teams are going to play base defense, where they’re going to have their true three linebackers, and they’re going to sub it in. We did that, we’ve done that in the past with some of our bigger linebackers. When Bam Scott was here, we did a little bit of that. They don’t have to do that because Perkins is one of the rare guys that’s a Sam and a nickel, and he can match up against tight ends and stay on the field in base defense. He can match up with receivers and stay on the field and be their nickel, but then they have a multitude of other personnel groupings that they can utilize out there.

“And then he’s just a really good player. He can run, he can cover, and he’s just got a great knack for they bring him on pressures a lot, and he’s got a really nice feel, knack for, he’s just got great instincts, knack for making plays in the backfield. But then you combine that with the tackles that return, plus 88 (Bernard Gooden), the transfer from South Florida. He’s a dude inside. The two ends that came in from Florida State and Florida, they’re issues, we know all about the Weeks brothers and the players that they are. And then, it’s as good a secondary as there is in this league. So, yeah, they present a lot of problems, and he’s a big part of that.”

Have you seen any differences from Garrett Nussmeier when you’re preparing last year versus this year?

“No. He’s an athlete, he’s a competitor. I’ve got a ton of respect for Garrett. Coach’s son, grew up around the game. He’s a competitor. He’s a really good athlete. He’s tough; he sits in the pocket. He can make plays outside the pocket. He’s made some throws this year that are wow throws that you know, you’re like, man, there are very few people in the country that can make that throw. The one thing I’ve seen, I mean, they’ve had some injuries on the offensive line. They lost some really good offensive linemen. I mean, 66 (Will) Campbell is starting for the Patriots now, and that was a really good group that they had last year. And then they basically had to replace that group with some portal guys and new players, freshmen. And then they’ve had some injuries, and it’s tough, man. I mean, y’all see it with us, and probably get tired of me saying it like, this league’s a freaking bear, and the defenses that we play, you literally line up and play first-round draft picks every single Saturday. Their offensive line is lined up and done that already this season. They’ve had some injuries, so there’s continuity on the offensive line, where they’ve given up some pressures, which is going to happen in this conference. He hasn’t been able to sit in the pocket maybe as much at times as he would like. But from what I read, he hasn’t been 100 percent healthy. I know they said they rested him some last week with an injury that he’s had, but I see him gutting it out and making plays and being the great quarterback that he is.”

What do you feel like the overall identity of this offense is through five games?

“We’re still developing as a team. Told our players, coaches, we’re still developing the brand and the identity that we play with. There were a lot of signs of that against Kentucky last Saturday night, and offensively, as I told you guys, to line up and run the ball 14 straight plays, or 14 out of 15, that’s a pretty strong freaking identity right there that we put on tape against Kentucky. We want to continue to put that on tape, the ability to run the football and make explosives in the passing game. We’ve shown signs of that throughout the season with our big plays in the passing game, with our ability to finish the game like we did running the ball the other night offensively against Kentucky. We just haven’t done it consistently enough.”

With the defensive tackles being a question mark coming into the season, how do you feel like those guys have performed so far?

“I feel like they’ve done a nice job. Really proud of Nick Barrett and the leader he’s become and the plays that he’s making on the field. He’s really having a good year. And then you add Gabe (Brownlow-Dindy) Monkell (Goodwine) and Davonte Miles and Troy Pikes, and the way those guys continue to come along, it’s been a solid group. I feel like they’ve been very consistent and continue to get better. And then some young guys that continue to come along that I see flash in practice, and I’m excited about in regards to their potential as we get into the second half of the season.”

What has been your message to your guys about how to prepare as you enter this gauntlet of a five-game stretch starting with LSU this weekend?

“One at a time. But if you don’t want to play that schedule, I told our players, y’all chose the wrong conference to come play in, like you should have gone to play in another conference. If you don’t want to play that schedule, you chose the wrong school to come to. I mean, that’s just life in this league. So don’t tell me in recruiting and when we brought you in the portal that you want to compete and you want to play against the best in the SEC, and all of a sudden, shy away from it and look at our schedule and say, ‘Oh shoot, look who we got to play.’ Again, if you don’t want to compete against the best, there’s plenty of other conferences that don’t play ranked teams every single week. There’s plenty of other conferences where you don’t go in front of 100,000 people every Saturday. There’s plenty of other conferences where you don’t play against NFL draft picks all over the field every single Saturday. You do in this league, and as a competitor, that’s what our guys chose to do. So I get tired of the ‘Look at South Carolina’s schedule’ and things like that.

“And I get it. It is what it is. But look at everybody else’s schedule in the SEC. I mean, look who Oklahoma plays the next five weeks, look who Missouri plays, LSU, Alabama, Texas. I mean, there’s a lot of teams. Just look at the month of October, and all it is is ranked team after ranked team after ranked team, because that’s what the SEC is. I don’t even know what the rankings are this week, but 10 of the top 20 teams in the country, for God’s sakes, were in the Southeastern Conference last week. 10 of the top 20, guys. So everybody plays a tough opponent, because it’s the greatest conference in America. As a competitor, you love that opportunity to go compete. So that’s been my message. Go freaking compete, because this is what y’all came here for.”

As a head coach, when do you see the officiating assignments for your next game?

“Sunday night, Monday at the latest.”

When you look at the officiating assignments, has there ever been an occasion to look at that and lobby for a switch?

“No. Now, I think my predecessor did that, because I’ve talked to the SEC Head of Officials a couple of times, and I think he may have had that conversation. God’s honest truth, there’s one time I think in five years, where I saw the officiating crew that was going to be coming in here for that Saturday, and I made a call to John McDaid, the head of officials, about, ‘What’s your thinking here? Like, ‘Are you sure about this because of whatever may have happened in the past?’ But that was probably two or three years ago when I made that call. I didn’t do it last year, and I haven’t done it this year, and I didn’t do it this week.”

You’ve mentioned that you make notes a lot as time goes along throughout the season, so you can reference them back in future years. Is that pretty accurate?

“Absolutely.”

Given the bye week, did you make any notes or anything about the first five weeks of the season that you feel like you want to implement next year, or things that need to be corrected?

“I think you’re always doing that. So, yeah, to answer your question, I did, but I do that all the time, every year. For me, it’s thoughts that I have as a head coach that I always want to look back at where my mind was at or what I was thinking, observations that I have. And then it’s also, you know, for this week with LSU and all the notes from that, and so I can be able to look back at LSU thoughts for sure. But always doing that, and certainly there’s some things that I liked about what we do in the month of August, and I like how we practice and how we prepare. But the fact of the matter is, we weren’t consistent enough early this season and had way too many self-inflicted mistakes. Hopefully, we’ve corrected that and will continue to be better. But I think you’re always looking at how to be better from year to year, and those are conversations that I’m having with the people in this building, also in regards to how to be better. But yeah, plenty of that during the off week, and plenty of that even before that also.

“But at the same time, there’s a lot of good too. I think for me, it’s more looking at it, okay, we have a lot of young players, and you’re always going to have a lot of young players and freshmen that you’re relying on. How do you implement them into things even better? And how can we get off to a better start, where we’re scoring more points earlier in the season than we did, you know, this season and even last season, too, in so many ways. So you’re always trying to find ways to be better, and plenty of time over the off week to think about that and LSU, but more LSU, because that’s what’s right in front of us.”

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You guys have had to dig yourselves out of a hole in each of the last four games. Going on the road to an environment like LSU, how important is it going to be to start hot in this game?

“You don’t want to dig yourself out of a hole. Now, (LSU) did it last year. When they came in here, they dug themselves out of, you know, 17-0, I think. And then they dug themselves out of a hole going into the fourth quarter, when they had taken the lead, and then we came back and took it again going into the fourth. So they did it. We know it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be a 60-minute game on Saturday night, and they’re going to make plays. We’re going to make plays. There’s going to be momentum shifts and adversity that we face. The key for us is going to be to continue to just play and get better as the game goes on. But certainly, when you go on the road, and when you’re going into a hostile environment like we are on Saturday night, you want to get off to a good start and not allow that crowd to get even more into it, because of how successful LSU is playing.”

What do you feel like you guys, as a coaching staff, did well in working with the players to ensure there were going to less missed tackles and penalties against Kentucky? Moving forward, how do you make sure it becomes sustainable to have those numbers remain as low as they were?

“Just continue to emphasize it. I mean, every week is different. We always work tackling in practice. It wasn’t like we all of a sudden missed a bunch of tackles against Missouri and said we’re gonna start working tackling in practice. We always do it, but just continuing to find different ways to teach it and techniques and emphasizing and getting 11 guys to the ball. The penalties, just continuing to emphasize that. We know that it’s going to happen. I told the team this morning, I was reading an article about the Denver Broncos and how they started out 1-2 and had a lot of self-inflicted wounds and penalties in their first couple of games that they lost. There was a quote from Courtland Sutton, the receiver, where he was just talking about how they knew they were better than what they were performing, and they were having way too many self-inflicted mistakes, and they had to look at themselves and hold each other accountable.

“It’s kind of the same thing here. We look at ourselves and hold each other accountable. We were better against Kentucky. We’ve got to be even better on Saturday night, because, frankly, I know there’s certain penalties from last year’s game that people talk about. But I said it to you guys in the postgame press conference after last year’s game, we had 14 penalties in this game last year. Now, were some of them penalties? No, but we had 14. Self-inflicted things that hurt ourselves, whether it be pre-snap, not being aligned the right way, and some of the stuff that has popped up this year. So we’ve got to play a clean game on Saturday night. So to go back to answer your question, just emphasizing it, even in practice, and continuing to hone in on it and tweaking some things that we did to hold guys accountable when it happens, and just continuing to try and coach and be better.”

Will you use last year’s game against LSU at all as motivation for yourself or your team this week?

“No. We had our we obviously. He introduced LSU last week. We had a team meeting in practice on Sunday. We had a team meeting in practice today. I haven’t brought it up. For me, it’s more that we didn’t do enough things to win the football game. Y’all have heard me talk about our plan to win, and our plan to win, we didn’t do enough of those last season. We ran the ball effectively, but that was helped by, you know, I think a 75-yard touchdown run that LaNorris (Sellers) had, and then Rocket (Sanders) had a couple long ones, but we didn’t do enough things to win the game. So, for me, I don’t think I need to bring it up. There’s enough guys on our team over here that remember that Saturday last year. But again, that has nothing in so many ways to do with this year’s team, because there’s so many new faces. I remember it, and for me, it’s more, give LSU credit. Came into a hostile environment, went down 17-0 on the road, gave up a blocked punt for a touchdown, and found a way to come back and win the game in the fourth quarter. It was a great college football game that we didn’t make enough plays in to win it. My focus this week is just continuing to find ways to help us make more plays this week and play more winning football than what we did last season.”

How would you evaluate the special teams’ performance through five games, and what’s the next step for those units?

“I think the special teams performance has been really good. Max won’t mind me saying this, in our team meeting the Friday night before the Kentucky game, I was talking to the team about our team and how a lot of the things that we had question marks about going into the season, one of which was the specialists. They’ve done great, and they’ve answered that, and they’ve played their rear ends off, and I don’t even worry about it anymore. And then the very next play was the opening kickoff for the Kentucky game. We kick it out of bounds, the ultimate kick in the you know what.

“But Max has done a nice job kicking off as a true freshman. William (Joyce), I think, continues to get better as a kicker. Mason (Love) has done a really nice job punting and throwing like he did the other night against Kentucky. We knew we needed to get better in the return game, going back to last year, kickoff return and punt return, and we’ve done that with Nyck (Harbor) and Vicari (Swain) and even Jaquel Holman back there. So we’ve improved in the return game. I like our coverage units. Moe Brown, the way that he’s covering kicks, and a lot of these young players that keep coming along, Donovan Darden, and on and on and on. So I like that. I think the next step for us is just nobody’s satisfied. We need to continue to build and continue to make plays. That’ll be key on Saturday night, because (LSU’s) got some dangerous returners. And then also being able to just bring more of these young guys along, these young freshmen that were playing, that have played in games, that were full speed ahead on from a playing standpoint, Michael Tyler and Donovan Darden, Demarcus Leach, Kendall Daniels. It’s a lot of guys like that that keep coming along that we need to continue to make plays on special teams and help, Anthony Addison, to help us on special teams.”

How excited are you to see LaNorris Sellers play in this game, considering what he did last year?

“I’m excited to see LaNorris play every game. Certainly I would have been really excited to see him play the second half of this game last year, because he was doing some really good things in that game before he got hurt, and then would have loved to have seen him finish the LSU game and then be able to play against Akron and then be really dialed in when we played Ole Miss, but it didn’t happen that way. But I know he’s excited. It’s not so much playing LSU because he didn’t get to play the second half against them last year. They got a lot of new players, and they’re better on defense. That was a pretty good defense we played last year, and they’ve upgraded their personnel at all three levels of the defense, and they do a great job. I mean, nobody has scored a lot of points on them. I mean, Florida turned the ball over five times, and LSU still held them to 20 points, I think, in that game. That tells us that that’s a heck of a statement. And then, Ole Miss, I think it was the 48th play of the game before Ole Miss scored against them a couple of weeks ago. So this is a really good defense, better than last year. But I’m excited anytime 16 takes the field for us, and this Saturday is no different.”

I think Cole Cubelic was talking with Clark Lea at the Vanderbilt game a few weeks ago, and Clark was telling him about how big of an emphasis it was to make sure Nyck Harbor doesn’t beat them over the top. Have you seen teams cover Harbor differently over the last couple of weeks? And if so, does that kind of help somebody like Dre Jacobs to be able to get a couple of 100-yard games?

“Yeah, I saw Clark talking about it leading into our game. The comment he made just about always having a safety in the middle of the field to kind of have help versus Nyck on some of those deep balls. And then he mentioned the Virginia Tech game, where one of the very few times that Virginia Tech didn’t have a safety in the middle of the field when they threw the post for a touchdown, and that was towards the end of the game, where we had had some runs and they brought some safeties up to stop the run. So yes, teams have to be aware of Nyck, but that’s great because if you’re doing that, we’ve got other receivers that continue to get better and develop. As we get this running game going even better, that helps the overall passing game in general. So yeah, certainly when teams play us, it’s hard not to notice number eight for us out there, just with his speed and his size, but we’ve got other guys that you’ve got to worry about, quarterback, running backs, tight ends, receivers, and that certainly helps others, for sure, and Nyck’s done a great job of continuing to make an impact, no matter what teams are trying to do to negate him.”

What are your personal thoughts on cancelling the Miami home-and-home series? How hard is it to put a schedule together?

“My personal thoughts? It kind of is what it is. With the SEC going to nine conference games, I just went on that whole spiel a few minutes ago about not all nine conference games are built the same way. Nine conference games in other leagues aren’t nine conference games in this league. And when we also play Clemson at the end of every season, as a competitor, yeah, you want to play against the best. And if everybody in the country, everybody in the SEC was playing 12 Power Four teams, great, let’s have at it. But they’re not, and it’s an unintended consequence of it. It just is what it is that every team in this league is going to play nine conference games, plus a 10th Power Four, I believe. But that doesn’t mean that they all have to play another Power Four, and we would have probably been the only one, I think. You see that with other series getting canceled. I know our fans were looking forward to it. I was looking forward to it, but you’ve also got to do what’s best for the team. And just be completely frank, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to play 11 Power Four games when everybody else in the SEC is only playing 10. And especially until we as coaches understand what the metrics of the committee are going to be, because last year, it was clearly on how many wins you had, not who you lost to.”

Do you and Mike Shula feel like you have an idea of who kind of the consistent guys are in that wide receiver room, or is there still room to fluctuate for snaps and targets?

“Got a pretty good idea of what that group is. But again, I mean, we’re constantly competing and developing, and we’re not even halfway through the regular season at this point, so we’ve got a pretty solid idea of who those top guys are. And when I say top, I mean top, you know, six, seven, and eight that we feel like we can play in football games and win games with. But also, you know, there’s guys that aren’t in that six, seven, eight, that I see in practice continue to make plays and continue to get better, too. So, yes, where we are right now, I’ve got a good idea and feel good about it, but I like that group as a whole too, because there’s some guys that we recruited that really haven’t made an impact on the field yet, but I see them developing on the practice field and continuing to make plays in practice, which may lead to more and more opportunities and games as the year goes.”

What mood do you sense from the running backs over the last few weeks?

“They’ve been great. They’ve got great energy and spirit about themselves and have practiced the right way. And again, I think I said it after the game or teleconference with you guys after Kentucky. I mean, we left some yards out there that were more on the running backs than it was the offensive line, where some runs that I thought we may have missed the read or missed the gap and bounced it when we didn’t need to bounce it, left some yards out there. So that’s my message to them, just trust it, and then we’ve got to do a better job around you, meaning offensive line, tight ends, quarterbacks, and receivers, so you can trust it to run it where it’s supposed to be. But I think their attitude has been awesome, and they see what’s going on. And then we’ve been able to continue to get them involved in different ways, whether it be screens or two on the field at the same time, and then, like I said, the whole fourth quarter the other night against Kentucky was runs. We’ve got to be able to continue to lean on that and continue to develop as an offense running game and passing game as we go forward.”

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