Shane Beamer evaluates South Carolina's best attribute, youth movement this season

In 2023, Shane Beamer will be dealing with higher expectations for the South Carolina football program. Beamer knows his team has a number of strengths. However, it is also looking at a youth movement this season.

During an appearance on SEC This Morning ahead of his appearance at SEC media days, Beamer broke down South Carolina’s hard working nature while warning that the youth on the team is going to be a big question.

“[I] know a decent amount, obviously, from going through spring practice with them,” Shane Beamer said. “One thing I know is it’s a hard working group. They’re hungry to show that last year, the end of last season, wasn’t a fluke. To show that we have a much higher ceiling than just eight wins. Certainly, they’ve shown me that with their work ethic since they came back in January.”

One thing that Beamer is concerned about is how young his team is going to be this season. That youth is all over the South Carolina roster and could make things difficult this season.

“I think the question mark is just how quickly — we’re gonna have to play true freshmen at every single position on our football team, and they’re probably gonna be, the majority are gonna be in the two-deep,” Beamer said. “And it’s about how quickly these freshmen and develop and mature as the season goes.”

On the set, Chris Doering then asked about how big a challenge playing so many young players is going to be, especially if they’re not ready to get out on the field.

“Hopefully, you’ve recruited well enough and developed well enough where you can give these guys a little bit of time to develop. But, you’re exactly right, CD, there’s somewhat of an urgency to get guys on the field earlier, and a lot of places they’ll bolt, but you don’t ever want to put a guy out there before he’s ready,” Beamer said.

“I also think that young men are more prepared now than when you and I were in college to play as true freshmen. Some are graduating high school early, so they’re able to go through spring practice as well. It’s not like, I remember when I was in college, the freshmen you didn’t show up a lot of times until July. Then you had about three weeks in the weight room and you went and practiced. So, those times are different but there’s a lot of balls in the air that you’ve got to consider about whether to play a guy early nowadays.”

Shane Beamer on how South Carolina can take the next step

Under Shane Beamer, South Carolina has been a good program. However, the Gamecocks want to take the next step and be great, and to do that Beamer wants to improve on the offensive side of the ball.

“What we’ve talked about since January is there should be no complacency in our program. We went from two wins to seven wins to eight wins. So we’ve done some great things. But we’ve got a lot to improve on as well,” Beamer said.

“We haven’t done a good enough job running the ball, we haven’t done a good enough job of stopping the run. We’ve got to be better there for us to take the next step. Two years in a row we’ve been last in the SEC in giveaways. No offense in this conference has turned the ball over more than we have the last two seasons. That’s embarrassingly bad. So we’ve got to correct that first of all as one of the many things. There’s a lot of areas to improve. And that’s what we’ve just challenged our coaches and players [to do] since we came back in January.”