Shane Beamer shares South Carolina is 'close' to finalizing special teams coach
Less than a week after Pete Lembo left South Carolina to become the next head coach at Buffalo, NFL Network reported the Gamecocks had his replacement in their sights. GamecockCentral confirmed the program was closing in on former Los Angeles Rams assistant Joe DeCamillis for the role, meaning South Carolina would be adding some NFL pedigree to its special teams unit.
However, while meeting with reporters at halftime of Saturday’s men’s basketball game, Shane Beamer said nothing is official yet. That said, he said things are “close” to coming together and he hopes to have an announcement early next week.
“I’d say we’re close to being able to announce something,” Beamer said. “Not quite finalized yet. Been busy with that, been busy with recruiting. Certainly wish Coach Lembo well, awesome opportunity for him. Because of what we’ve done on special teams and my background with it, we did attract a lot of people for this position. So no lack of interest and close to having something done, for sure.”
DeCamillis has spent the majority of his career at the NFL level as a special teams coordinator, starting in 1993 with the New York Giants. He also had stints with the Atlanta Falcons, Dallas Cowboys, Chicago Bears, Denver Broncos and Jacksonville Jaguars before joining the Rams in 2021. After two seasons in Los Angeles, DeCamillis headed to the college ranks at Texas as a special assistant to the head coach in 2023.
Now, he’s preparing to take over at South Carolina — a place his family knows well. His wife’s father is Dan Reeves, who played quarterback for the Gamecocks in the 1960s before winning a Super Bowl with the Cowboys.
Shane Beamer confirms he considered running special teams after Pete Lembo’s departure
The special teams coordinator position is a special one to Shane Beamer. He rose up the coaching ranks in the role at South Carolina and Georgia before becoming a head coach in 2021. In fact, he considered running the unit after Lembo left — something people wondered if he’d do after he took over as a head coach.
“For me, one, from a special teams standpoint, somebody that can make us even better than what we’ve been already,” Beamer said of what he was looking for in a new coordinator. “It kind of goes back to when I first hired Pete and some people said, ‘Well, you’re a special teams guy, why wouldn’t you do it yourself?’ And I said, well, [if] I didn’t feel like I could hire the best person in the country, I would have, and I felt like I did with Pete. If the thing continues to trend like it looks like it’s going to, I feel like we’ve made a grand slam hire potentially with what I was looking for, somebody that can make us better.
“I certainly thought about doing it myself. We had different ways to structure it, whether it be me doing the special teams myself or breaking it up amongst the staff and hiring another defensive coach or hiring an offensive coach or whatever could make us better from a football standpoint, recruiting standpoint, offense, defense. I’m looking at everything.”
With that in mind, Beamer didn’t want to just make a hire to fill a spot since he could feasibly run the special teams. South Carolina didn’t go through a wide-ranging search, but still wanted to make the right hire “Plan A” for next season.
With DeCamillis’ hire looming, Beamer now doesn’t have to go with “Plan B.”
“To this point, I’ve only interviewed two people for this special teams position,” Beamer said. “So it wasn’t like I was going to cast a wide net just to hire a guy, to hire a guy. It would have to be somebody that I felt like was a grand slam hire. And if I was able to make that, then I would hire a special teams coach, and if not, I would look at Plan B.
“I don’t think we’re gonna have to do Plan B. And Plan B’s okay, too. There’s nothing wrong with that. I just felt like Plan A was a little bit better.”