Shane Beamer: Teams 'tampered' with Dakereon Joyner after 2021 Mayo Bowl

Dakereon Joyner is making an offseason position change for the second time in his six-year tenure at South Carolina. Once a quarterback, the wide receiver is now set to become a running back for his final season in Columbia.

It almost didn’t happen, though, Gamecocks head coach Shane Beamer revealed to On3’s Andy Staples. The transfer portal and a whole lot more has been calling his name to lure him away throughout his career.

“To me, [staying with the program] says what a fantastic human being he is,” Beamer told Staples. “How unselfish. If he is not the leader of our team, he is one of the top leaders of our team there’s no doubt about it. The other thing it says is that he loves South Carolina.

“After the way he played against North Carolina in the bowl game two years ago when he was our quarterback, he had other schools that were — let’s be honest — tampering with him, trying to get him to play for their college as a quarterback.”

He untimely decided to stay with the Gamecocks, citing his love for the program and that he wanted to finish what he started with his home state school. It’s a plus that he’s willing to be unselfish and once again change positions when he could’ve still been playing quarterback somewhere else, let alone wide receiver.

But that’s Joyner for you, Beamer says. He’s willing to plug the holes where needed and it just so happened that he was in the right place at the right time to become a running back. Especially because ever since Beamer has become head coach, South Carolina’s running back room has seen turnover each season. Kevin Harris and ZaQuadre White headed to the pros after 2021, and then lost even more in the transfer portal this post offseason.

Beamer said the depth at the running back position was not what it needed to be, and a change had to be made. Coming into the spring, JuJu McDowell and Mario Anderson were the only two scholarship running backs on the roster.

One person came to mind when Beamer began brainstorming on who could be the next player play running back for him.

“When you look at DK, he’s a big, thick receiver. When you look at his body type, he looks like a running back in a lot of ways,” Beamer said. “We’ve used him in a wildcat quarterback role over the last two seasons. If you go back and watch the Tennessee game, he a couple touchdowns in that game as a wildcat quarterback and he showed natural running skills.”

Beamer sat Joyner down before spring practice began and laid out his pitch for him to transition to running back. He’s since embraced the role and can figure to be one of the top backs in the South Carolina running room in 2023.