Everything Shane Beamer said after South Carolina's loss to Texas A&M

South Carolina head football coach Shane Beamer spoke to the media after the team’s 31-30 loss to Texas A&M on Saturday. Here’s everything he had to say.

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Opening statement

“First of all, credit to A&M. They did what championship teams do. I said coming into this game that there was nobody in the country playing better in all three phases than those guys, and they showed that. To respond in the second half like they did, credit to them. That’s why they’re gonna play for the SEC Championship, certainly be in Playoff and have a chance to win it all. So, congrats to Coach (Mike) Elko and that team.

“Having said that, to say that I’m hurt for our guys is a understatement. I know the rest of the country was surprised with what was going on in the first half. We weren’t. If you’ve been watching us play all season… I mean, we had great confidence coming into this game. Fully expected to be in this game, fully expected to be a four-quarter game. And, certainly, we got off to a great start. We had great confidence. I get it, our record is what it is. But our guys also understood.

“We won this game by 24 points last year, and we had great confidence coming into this game for a lot of reasons because there’s a lot of players that played out there today that were in that game last season. Like the game last season, we were up, they came back, took the lead; and then, we scored 24 straight in the second half. And then, today, we were up, they came back, and they were able to finish it.

“What a heck of a first half. Like I said, we weren’t surprised. Nobody came into the locker room at halftime celebrating, thinking the game was over, thinking that we could just go out there and coast in the second half. We talked about it at halftime. The soreboard is irrelevant. Our whole mentality today was coming in here and dominating. You don’t look at the scoreboard when you’re trying to dominate something. Just keep going. And that’s what we talked about.

“In the second half, just really disappointed with the way that we performed, coaches and players. We had our opportunities. And, I think, in the locker room, we’re gonna be sick when we watch this tape because there’s a lot of missed opportunities in the first half that made it whatever it was at that time, 30-3? Could have easily been 42-3 if we just score touchdowns in the red zone and make some more plays. And then, in the second half, I think we’re going to be sick offensively and defensively with the number of plays that we left out there.

“So, I guess, a credit to them. This one hurts, to say the least. And our guys will respond. We’re gonna come right back to Columbia and got two home games left to finish the season.”

Do you think the offensive play calling got a little more conservative in the second half?

“No, I don’t think so. I mean, they did a great job. Our whole thing was being the most physical team, and they certainly kicked our butts in the run game in the second half. We couldn’t get anything going from a run game standpoint, and that was disappointing.

“I don’t think we got conservative at all. We talked about it. When you go out here and play good football in the second half, and keep our foot on the gas pedal, that was the whole mentality. We weren’t going to be conservative by any stretch of imagination, like the Dean Smith ‘four corners’ offense in the second half; we were trying to score points and keep it rolling.

“We left a lot of plays out there in the run game and the pass game. Had some open receivers that weren’t able to connect with for whatever reason all the way to that last drive. They just did a good job of playing better the second half that we did.”

Is there any update on Nyck Harbor?

“As I walked in here, the plan was to take him to the hospital. Just saw him in the training room with his dad. He landed on the sideline, and the guy came down on his chest. So, I think they just want to, from a precautionary standpoint, make sure everything’s okay. So, keep him in your prayers. And, hopefully, he’ll be on the plane that’s going back to Columbia.”

On the fourth-and-12 play that Marcel Reed converted, what did you sense at that point in the game?

“I mean, they came out and made plays. He’s a weapon. Just really disappointed with some of the things in the second half. I don’t know how many yards they threw in the second half, but for them to throw for
439 yards against our defense, it’s inexcusable, frankly. The defensive backs that we have back there, and some of the plays that they made… Give that quarterback credit. He’s a heck of a player. He made a lot of really good plays with his arm, and he can hurt you with his feet.

“But, yeah, got a chance to get off the field right there. Fourth down, they run for it to get the first down. And then, a fourth-and-one where we get blown up and don’t get anything out of that. Two really, really disappointing plays right there.”

Do you have a sense of what was going on in the pass game where you couldn’t slow them down in the second half?

“No, I don’t know what to tell you. I mean, that last ball over there on their sideline, we’re in three-deep coverage. They made a throw, they made a catch. Threw a touchdown where we should have had a post player in the field, and for some reason, we didn’t have a post player in the field. We got to go back and look at it from a coaching standpoint why we had some of those busts in the secondary.

“Like I said, we’ve been really good in pass defense here for a long time. And we were in the first half, too. So, I don’t know what happened in the second half. That was very disappointing, certainly.”

What was going through your mind, and Coach (Mike) Furrey‘s mind, offensively on play calls when you got the ball back after the fourth-quarter fumble?

“If had I told you guys on Tuesday when we started this week that we had the ball with three minutes left in the game and a chance to go kick a field goal to win on the road against the No. 3 team in the nation, we would’ve all signed up for that. I told LaNorris (Sellers) that the two-minute situations I put him in every day… We do two-minute on Sundays, and we do two-minute on Thursdays, and I try to make it as hard as possible. And I told him, ‘This is easy compared to what you usually have. You got three minutes and a timeout.’

“We had a good understanding of what they were going to try and do. And I told our whole team in the beginning of the fourth quarter, and I told the offense right here in the huddle, like, ‘What a story this is gonna be. For all the crap we’ve gone through, and the heartbreak, and the criticism, and whatnot, we got a chance to go win the game. And what a story that’s gonna be for this offense, for this football team, for this program.’

“We had plenty of time. Blew the ball there a little bit. Huge fourth down, Nyck over there on the sideline, popped the screen in there to get positive yardage. And then, to not finish the drive was really disappointing.”

Did LaNorris Sellers hold onto the ball for too long when he was sacked on the final drive?

“I thought the protection was solid in there. They were covering the receivers. But, like we talked about all week, and like we did earlier in the game, give those receivers a chance to go make plays. Looking at the iPad, was anybody wide open? No, but we trust our guys to go make plays.

“I’m not sure what he saw. I know we had one (where) Jayden (Sellers) is running down the hash wide open, and we didn’t hit it for some reason, or for whatever reason. I don’t know what LaNorris saw. He played his rear end off and gave us a chance. But, certainly, guys got to make plays.”

What did you see on the fourth-and-one play where Matt Fuller got the hand-off?

“They brought up edge pressure. They brought up, I guess it was the ‘Sam’ strong safety. But they brought that pressure across the face at the tight end position, it looked like. Thought we had a good play called. It wasn’t penetration in the middle. It was, you know, they got a guy right there that’s a really good player. He made a play right there in that fourth-down situation.”

Is there something going forward that you would want to implement, or something that you’ve seen as a theme of why you guys haven’t been able to finish out these games this year?

“If I knew, I would have done it long before now. This is, what, the sixth game that was a one-score game going into fourth quarter? The third SEC game — Alabama, Missouri and A&M — that we led going into the fourth quarter? It makes me want to puke because whatever our record was around here going into the fourth quarter was pretty darn stellar going into this season. And, for whatever reason, just haven’t been great in the fourth quarter.

“We told our guys all week. We’ve talked about it a lot that, you know, the fourth quarter comes down to technique and execution. Guys got to go make plays, and they made the plays today in the fourth quarter.”

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In the first half, how much of that offense was the things that Mike Furrey put in and you practiced for the last two weeks, and how much was it your players just executing?

“A little bit of both. Mike and the offensive staff, I thought, did a really good job of putting a plan together. Having an opportunity to study for two weeks and having a good understanding of their defense and what they were trying to do certainly helped us. And I thought Mike really did a great job of giving our guys on offense clarity on ‘Here’s how we’re going to attack Texas A&M, and here’s how we’re going to score points on offense.’

“The opening drive, and throughout the first half, really did a nice job of that. There was certainly some new things schematically that we did, nothing too radical. I think it was more just guys playing with confidence and taking what we do in practice over to the game.”

With a bowl game now off the table, what’s your message to your players for the next two weeks?

“Go finish this thing out the right way. Nobody thought we’d be sitting here right now with two games left knowing that that’s off the table. But competition is a core value of our program. To me, the best competitors are the ones that are intrinsically motivated, meaning they don’t need some something out there to motivate them. They just love to go compete. And I know our guys do, too.

“They hurt. We’re going through this right now, and I hurt. But we’re going to be stronger for it next season. I know that. These guys that we have coming back will remember this feeling. I don’t know why we’re going through it. I don’t know why we’ve had this heartbreak that we’ve had. But we will be better and stronger and hardened because of it as we go into next season. I really, really hurt for these seniors that have given so much that there won’t be postseason.

“I’m sad for our team. That’s one thing we talked about on Sundays. It’s such a great group of guys. That’s why I hurt for them so much. Like, they’re such great kids. You don’t have issues off the field. We don’t have issues with academics. They work their rear ends off. I don’t have to come into the meeting every week and figure out ways to get them to practice hard. They love competing. They love being around one another; they love playing for each other. And that’s what we talked about on Tuesdays is we didn’t want this thing to end. We wanted a whole month of togetherness with the team throughout the month of December, and that hurts.

“But, really, really hurt for these seniors that deserve better than this. And I hate that, as the head coach, I haven’t been able to help them more in the fourth quarter this year.”

What happened with the time management at the end of the first half?

“There’s a play that we threw the ball to Brady (Hunt), and I couldn’t see it from the sideline. I thought it was an incomplete pass, but he caught the ball. He kind of got stumbled up and almost went in and scored. That may have been the play. I’ll have the better answer for you (tomorrow during the teleconference).

“But, yeah, I think there was about five seconds right there where we had a chance. Certainly, we need to get points right there. We got a play on first or second down we thought was gonna score. I think that’s the scenario right here where… Yeah, communication’s gotta be better.”

You talked about missed opportunities. Specifically, in the first half, the interceptions that you had dropped, how much do you feel like those played into it? What kind of difference would it have made if you had those plays?

“Yeah, huge. That’s disappointing, too, as we had a couple of those against Alabama — some dropped interceptions and opportunities to make plays all across the defense. So, it was disappointing to see that again. But yeah, that’s one thing that, coming into the game, we talked about. I mean, Reed’s a heck of a quarterback. You go wherever he was — 22 for 39 (attempts) for 439 (yards) and three touchdowns — and then, to run the ball effectively. He’s a dynamic player, but we did feel like we’d be able to affect him, and that he would give us some opportunities to get some interceptions.

“We talked about it in the team meeting yesterday, right before we left to go to the airport. I showed the whole team some plays where, at the end of the Notre Dame game — I’m not taking anything away from him — but everybody remembers the fourth-down play that they threw to beat Notre Dame. There was a second down and a third down where Notre Dame had an opportunity to end the game and get an interception right there, and they weren’t able to capitalize. And we talked about it yesterday in Columbia that we need to capitalize on those opportunities. He’s going to throw some, and we’ve got to capitalize. But those guys are playing their rear ends off and had a chance. They got their hands on balls, and that’s all you can ask for.

“The margin for us, for anybody, especially in this league… Coach Elko and I were talking before the game. People don’t understand what a freaking war this league is week in and week out. It’s absolute war. It’s unlike any other conference in the world, and the margins are just that small. And we’re making plays that are on the other side of the winning margins that we need to right now.”

Did you get an explanation about the interaction between Nyck Harbor and the police offer in the tunnel?

“I did not see that, wasn’t aware of that. Got a ton of respect for the people here in College Station. It’s a first-class operation. Everybody, from a game operations standpoint, they really do a great job. So, I appreciate them handling that the right way and sending him home.”

What is your message to the fans that watch the game and are, like, ‘What the heck just happened?”

“That we’re all disappointed and nobody hurts more than the guys in that locker room. I know our fans will respond this week in Columbia like our players will. We’ve got the greatest fans in America. They are passionate and loyal. And they were loud out there today, too, and made their presence felt. Appreciate the ones that came out here to College Station.

“I know they’re disappointed and hurt and saying the same thing, ‘What just happened with that?’ We’ll look at it, we’ll learn for it. And, like I said, we’ll be better for it. We’ll be better next week against Coastal Carolina because of it. We’ll be better in two weeks against Clemson because of it. And we’ll certainly be better as we go into 2026 because of it.

“There’s a lot of young players on this team right now that are hurting, that will be back next season. Like I said a minute ago, we’ll be battle-tested and hardened because of this. We’re right there.

“If we came out every week getting the crap kicked out of us 42-7, that’d be one thing. I mean, we’ve had a chance to win literally every game this season. We’re just not doing the things that we need to to win, and that’s on me. I’m going to get it fixed where, next year at this time, we’re sitting here not feeling sick about not being bowl eligible, but we’re sitting here talking about a playoff run and what
we’re about to do in December.”

There’s been some talk this week, rumors, about LaNorris Sellers’ status with South Carolina next season. What do you have to say about that?

“I think there’s a bunch of absolute horse garbage that’s on social media right now. I love y’all, but it’s gonna be the end of all of us.

“But to answer your question, I’ve had some really good conversations with a lot of guys on our team in regards to the future. And again, right now, our focus this week was on A&M, and this week is getting better for Coastal Carolina, who I know is really hot. I don’t know if they played yet today, but they’re on a roll right now. I know they’re scoring a lot of points.

“But, yes, I’d be not doing my job as the head coach if I wasn’t having conversations with players throughout the season in regards to their futures. We got guys that have NFL decisions to make, and a lot of that. I want to speak for everyone, there’ll be a time for all that.

“I’ll say this, though. There’s a lot of guys on this team that love being a Gamecock, and there’s a lot of guys on this team, in this program, that hurt like hell right now about what we’re going through. But there’s a lot of guys that have great grit and resolve to get this right and understand how close we are to being where we want to be.”

What did you see on the play where Dylan Stewart forced a fumble and Nick Barrett returned it for a touchdown?

“We got some really good players. And what a cool play that was for our whole team — the defense, the offense, everybody. And we talked about it. We’ve got a bunch of great players on this football team. There’s a bunch of great players on A&M’s team. This was going to be two great teams going out with a bunch of great players.

“Our guys had to go make plays. All week long, in the last period of practice, we talked about, when we get this thing to the fourth quarter, individuals got to go make plays. That’s what it comes down to is individual players just making great plays in the fourth quarter. And that was one in the first half.

“Very proud of Dylan and all those guys. They put in great energy and great resolve out there today.”

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