Clayton White still very encouraged by revamped linebacker corps

Clayton White spent the last three years building and restocking what was a thin linebacker room when he first got to South Carolina. 

The Gamecocks defensive coordinator in charge of that position did a good job of that to date. And now finally gets to put a lot of those pieces on the field this season together. 

So it’s understandable why he’s excited about that position heading into the 2023 season. 

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“Some days they don’t think that I like them. That’s a good thing if they don’t think I’m fans of them,” White said, laughing. “Those guys have had a good camp in terms of trying to diagnose plays and read and react and be guys that aren’t just big hitters. They want to be guys who understand the game and the little details of playing linebacker. It’s not quite being a quarterback, but you can do a lot of things with the front and the DBs.”

White went to work trying to build that room up after getting the job, bringing in Debo Williams in his first offseason. South Carolina then landed four-stars Stone Blanton (2022) and Pup Howard (2023) in consecutive recruiting classes. 

Pair that with White inheriting another blue-chipper prospect in Mo Kaba, and it combines for maybe the deepest linebacker room since White and Shane Beamer took over after the 2020 season. 

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Blanton and Williams seem like the likeliest starters right now while Kaba continues to get healthy off an ACL injury and Howard gets his feet under him as a highly-touted freshman. 

“Between Stone and Debo, they’ve taken huge steps. Kaba is working back. I’m so glad to have him back,” White said. “He’s slowly grinding his way back to the old Kaba, but he’s getting better every day. Pup and those guys are getting better. It’s all about the details we’re trying to get better every day.”

All of those guys have bounced around to both the MIKE and WIL spots in White’s 4-2-5 defense and can help in a variety of different ways. 

“If there’s a hurry-up situation and you end up on the wrong side, you should be able to know both sides. Really, MIKE and WIL in a 4-2-5 are the same just on the other side. That’s one thing we preach to the older guys,” White said. “If you’ve been here for a year, learn two positions. If not, you’re hurting yourself down the road. At the time, you want to get the next best linebacker in there, not just the next best WIL.” 

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The improved linebacker room will be expected to help a Gamecocks defense that has shown flashes of being really good but struggled in some critical areas the last few years. 

The biggest of those issues is in the run game where South Carolina has struggled to consistently get teams on the ground. 

“We understand stopping the run is a major thing. We want to get rid of that Achilles heel. You have to watch the tape…When you turn on the tape, it’s not as bad as it looks on paper. It’s an incident here, a quarterback scramble there or a missed sack that would have taken 15 yards off a rushing average. We learn from it,” White said. 

“We’re trying to grow and get better at the end of the day. We’re trying to improve our tackling. If you improve your tackling from the tape I studied, there are a lot of things that would be negated. But it’s easier said than done. We’ve worked at it. As long as we learned from what we did last year and grow from it, I expect a big-time improvement.” 

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