Shane Beamer highlights key figures, question marks on roster heading into spring practices
Shane Beamer acknowledges that current trends have made rebuilding South Carolina’s roster each season an increasingly challenging task.
“Every year is starting over in college football because you just don’t return players like you used to,” Beamer said. “Obviously, you lose guys to the NFL. You lose guys that graduate. Guys, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on the situation for them, decide to transfer.”
On Tuesday’s episode of The Hard Count with J.D. PicKell, Beamer touched on numerous facets of the South Carolina’s roster as the team heads into spring practice.
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Spencer Rattler and Antwane Wells Jr., both of whom announced their returns to the team in the offseason, are expected to be the focal points of next year’s offense. Beamer said he was excited to bring back two “great young men” that he enjoyed being around during the season.
“Spencer’s awesome. He and I were obviously together at Oklahoma and got a great relationship,” Beamer said. “Juice is just an awesome personality and does so many things for our program.”
Beamer said he was just as excited to have Rattler and Wells’ on-field production to build around for another season. Beamer added that the two have the potential to be one of college football’s most potent offensive duos in 2023.
“We got a lot of great players coming back around both those guys, which we’re fired up about,” Beamer said. “The way they finished the season, they were playing as well as any wide receiver-quarterback duo in the country.”
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While Rattler’s and Wells’ roles are set in stone, question marks remain at other positions on the roster. Beamer said he hopes spring practices will provide opportunities for players to gain leadership experience and develop into starters.
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“We lost three starters on the offensive line. Who’s going to step up at that position? We lost both of our starters at defensive end. Who steps up there? We lost both or our starting corners. Who are the next guys to step up?” Beamer said. “So there’s some awesome position battles and opportunities that I’m eager to see.”
From a recruiting standpoint, five-star athlete Nyckoles Harbor was the biggest name South Carolina brought in during the offseason. Harbor, who is expected to play at wide receiver, is part of a freshman class ranked No. 16 in the country according to On3 Consensus.
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Beamer said Harbor’s commitment provided the program with revamped energy ahead of the 2023 campaign.
“When you have a player the caliber of Nyckoles that’s ranked as high as he is, but then he decides on national television where the whole country is watching, that just resonated with a lot of people,” Beamer said. “Most notably, it resonated with a lot of high school prospects who saw that.”
Overall, Beamer’s primary goal from a personnel standpoint this spring is to get all players, new and old, better integrated into the team’s practice routine.
“It’s really just trying to instill how we do things because there are so many new faces here that weren’t a part of South Carolina football last season,” Beamer said. “Let’s instill the mentality and toughness and physicality that we want to practice with.”
