In-depth with Mike Furrey on South Carolina wide receivers

The South Carolina wide receiver room is in transition this year.

The Gamecocks not only replace their top receivers from a year ago but also have a new coach in charge of the position in assistant Mike Furrey.

Furrey talked extensively about his group on this past Thursday at South Carolina media day.

Q&A with Mike Furrey

Q: Have you been able to see (Nyck Harbor) do some of that extra work (this summer)?

Mike Furrey: Yeah, I know he’s out here. I know he’s been around the facility a lot, which is a positive. That means it’s important to him. But again, we’ll start being able to critique and coach and push and help. And praise the things he does well starting tomorrow. And as well as we’ll do with everybody else.

Q: Is it positive or negative that there isn’t really a whole lot of proven guys at your position for you as a first-time coach for you guys?

Mike Furrey: Yeah, I think it’s a positive. I think sometimes when you have too many guys coming back that have been around, especially in a competitive room like we have, you can get comfortable.

Now with guys that are… it’s so refreshing that you’ve got a lot of guys with new faces or the freshmen coming in, both of them, Debron (Gatling) and Mazeo (Bennett), that were here in the spring. It’s kind of like an acclimation, right? But now they’re in, and they know the playbook, they know what we’re asking them to do in practice, and all that good stuff.

So now they get a chance to come out, be comfortable, work their tail off, and be competitive. And I think it’s healthy. I think it’s really healthy. It’s exciting. We’ll find out here as we get going over the next couple of weeks.

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Q: With Luke (Doty), he wanted to be put on the roster as an athlete. You, in your professional career, were an athlete. How much can you help Luke? How much can you kind of help unlock him and take that next step, based on y’all’s kind of similar traits, perhaps?

Mike Furrey: Yeah, again, I think the next three weeks will establish a lot of that in regards to the role that he has.

But when you look at, and anybody says the name Luke Doty, I mean, you’re talking about the pride of South Carolina. The University of South Carolina, the guy’s amazing. Everybody loves him around here. His work ethic is unbelievable. He’s so unselfish, and he just wants to be a part of this team. He wants to help this team become really, really successful.

And he’s an amazing kid. So it’ll be fun again to watch him kind of become that athlete over the next couple of weeks.

Q: I know you haven’t had him on the field yet, and I know David asked you a little bit about him earlier. But if there’s one thing that you know about (Harbor), having watched the film, having watched him do some things in the summer, what needs to be unlocked with him, do you think, to achieve some of that potential?

Mike Furrey: Yeah, I don’t know if it’s unlocked. I think when you look at any of the guys, I think it’s developed, right? I think it’s just the guys learning how to play the game, being comfortable with what we’re asking them to do, becoming more confident in what we’re asking them to do, become more consistent in what we’re asking them to do.

And I think that’s all part of growth. I don’t think that’s people being locked into things they can and can’t do. I just think when you look at him and some of the other guys in the room, they gotta play ball, right? They gotta play ball. And I think these next three weeks are gonna be really neat for him and for a lot of the guys just to see how they develop, see how they pick stuff up.

You don’t play as fast as you can when you’re thinking about a lot of stuff. And we all know he can run. We know there’s a lot of guys in our room that can absolutely run. But you’ll be at your fastest when you know what you’re doing. And I think getting to that point is part of that development. And I think that’s what I’m excited about, to see these guys get to that point.

Q: I know they weren’t here in the spring, but Dalevon (Campbell) and Vandrevius (Jacobs) are kind of getting in the mix this summer. I don’t know how much you’ve had a chance to see them, but do you have any maybe just early impressions on those guys as you get ready to go into camp?

Mike Furrey: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is just kind of you get a chance to walk around them or see them in the building. You look at Vandrevius, and he’s a wiry athlete that’s got a confidence to him and a swag to him that’s, I think, really healthy.

You’ve got Dalevon that’s a legit 6’2″, 6’3″, 220-pound guy that everything about him just speaks that he’s a strong individual, runs strong, I’m sure, catches the ball strong, the whole nine yards.

But when you’re around them, you can sense that they’re football players. And I think that’s why we recruited them, and that’s why we brought them in. And they’ve checked the boxes on all that so far.

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Q: When you go into a season where it feels like a lot of positions are up for grabs in that receiver room, how much are you looking at guys specifically like, hey, this is an X, this is a Z versus cross-training and being more like, well, this guy might fit that spot, but this would get our best three kind of on the field at the same time?

Mike Furrey: Yeah, I mean, obviously, a lot of it has to do with schematics. And so obviously, we’re not going to get into schematics. But I think the best thing nowadays is to put your best three wideouts on the field, right? And I think that’s the healthiest thing to do.

There’s a lot of intangibles that correlate into becoming the best three wideouts in the room. And that’s our job over the next three weeks to get that going and get it ready. But that’s what I think. I think you don’t just place a guy here and there just because.

I think you put the best three guys out there that can play football. And it’s our job to work to their traits and move them around and do whatever we need to do to make sure we showcase their abilities.

Q: What is your message to the room?

Mike Furrey: Yeah, I just talked to them a little bit ago, actually. And I just started off really by telling them that there’s been unbelievable camaraderie in this room over the last two months. The guys have been phenomenal. The relationships have been… we’ve built great relationships. There’s a lot of respect for the room.

You’ve got new guys, you’ve got returners, you’ve got transfers, you’ve got freshmen. There’s a lot of things that are going on. And our guys have done a great job of doing that. Starting tomorrow is going to be a healthy battle to compete for those seven, eight, nine spots to travel. And what that’s going to take is preparation. It’s going to take producing. And that’s going to start as we get going. And I think that’s the best way to do it.

Coach says it all the time: your reps create your reps. And sometimes when you don’t have a room that has the talent or the depth, it’s hard to stand to that, right? But when you do have the room I think that we have with the depth, that competition, those reps are going to create reps. And it’s going to be able to filter guys out. But at the same time, it’s healthy. And the guys respect each other. And that’s what I’m expecting from the room. They push each other and help each other, and that’s how we’ll become better.

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