Shane Beamer expands on Freddie Kitchen's role with South Carolina
After spending 2004 and 2005 together at Mississippi State, South Carolina football coach Shane Beamer and Freddie Kitchens stayed in touch for the nearly 20 years that followed.
As Beamer worked his way up the college football ladder and Kitchens spent the next 15 or so years in the NFL, the Gamecocks’ future head coach would drop in on his old friend, checking out the Arizona Cardinals’ camp or visiting Kitchens when he was with Dallas.
This spring it was Kitchens who dropped by to see Beamer, taking in South Carolina football practices and spending time with the staff.
“He came and just visited Columbia a couple times and hung out just visiting with our coaches, me and the offensive staff and the defensive staff,” Beamer said Wednesday at the York County Welcome Home tour stop. “And really, it was one of those things that he just he came around a couple of times and everybody kind of hit it off and our staff enjoyed being around him. He enjoyed being around our staff and it was kind of one thing led to another, started talking.
“A lot of it was there were some other schools that were certainly interested in Freddie that he had connections to the head coaches, and the staffs. And we started talking about some opportunities and some other places, and it really just kind of turned into, ‘Well, why not here? I mean, there’s a lot of areas that I feel like you can help us at’ and started talking and here we are.”
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Kitchens, a veteran NFL coach who was also the head coach of the Cleveland Browns for a season, was named South Carolina’s senior offensive analyst on Wednesday, adding another impressive resume to the Gamecocks’ staff.
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While Beamer hasn’t been afraid to hire up and comers like Sterling Lucas, who is in his first full-time college assistant job, he seems to prefer balance on his staff — youth and experience — and Kitchens will provide a wealth of the latter.
“He’s been a head coach, for one,” Beamer said. “So, it’s great to have former head coaches on our staff. We’ve got him and Pete Lembo, and being able to have guys like that. That’s great. So he’s got experience there. He’s coached in the NFL for a long time, but he’s also coached and recruited in college, so he can certainly help with that. He’s been around some high-profile players from Odell Beckham Jr. to Baker Mayfield to Saquan Barkley, he’s been around some really good players and strong personalities. And I think that experience would be good with our guys as well.”
The title “senior offensive analyst” can encompass many roles but usually it means a coach who can be an extra resource on that side of the ball, helping with game planning, opponent and self scouting, and evaluations.
Kitchens’ exact role, according to Beamer, is still being formulated.
“Just his overall knowledge of football, not just offense,” Beamer said. “He’s called plays in the NFL, but also, defensively as well, understanding defenses and things like that. So I think there’s a lot of areas he can help us and as we get closer to the season — we’ll really, we’ve already talked about some things that we see him doing this fall — but as we get closer to the season, we’ll continue to really hammer down what he’s going to be doing exactly.”
