What Shane Beamer said on SEC teleconference during bye week

South Carolina football coach Shane Beamer did not hold his weekly Tuesday press conference with the Gamecocks idle this week but he did speak on the SEC’s Wednesday teleconference to discuss a number of topics including injuries, the focus this week, and recruiting plans.

Below is a transcript of what Beamer had to say as well as a video above where readers can listen to the entire teleconference.

[Win South Carolina vs. Florida football tickets]

OPENING STATEMENT

It’s the middle of the open date for us. We’ve had three good days of practice. Certainly, this open date could not be coming at a better time. We’re beat up, to say the least, and it gives us an opportunity to get some guys healthy and help others who have been playing healthier. And then really to step back and reevaluate where we are after five games and what we need to do to perform better in these last seven games.

On takeaways after stepping back and assessing the first give games…

Yeah, a lot. You know, you look back schematically, are we doing the things we need to be doing in all three phases? Is it maybe schematically something we want to do that we just don’t have the personnel quite for right now? So we’ve done that in all three phases.

You look at personnel, are there some guys that maybe haven’t been playing that can help us? This is a week to get them opportunities to see what they can do. Are there guys that have been playing that maybe would be better suited to play somewhere different at that position? Those are things you look at and really just get back to work.

I would say there’s been a lot of things in all three phases, so I’ll wait until after the Florida game to talk more specifically about those things, but certainly feel like we’ve gotten better as a team during these three days and really appreciate the effort and energy that our players have practiced with the last three days. They’ve been fantastic and have a great eagerness and desire to improve.

On bye week philosophy… (do you spend time working on Florida or recruiting or what?)

All the above. You know, it’s certainly a recruiting week for our staff. We know our guys will hit the road recruiting here this week.

It’s a week to get ourselves better. So we’ve certainly spent the bulk of our time on us. And we’ve certainly introduced Florida to our players. I think you got to be careful about spending too much time on one opponent when you have two weeks to prepare for them. So we’ve intro’d ’em, but we’ve tried to, you know, use the same schedule that we’ve had the last two seasons during our open week, as far as meeting times, practice times. Everything’s a little bit shorter, but great work on the field and in the meeting room as well.

And then we just finished practice this morning. Our players will be off football-wise until Sunday, and then our coaches will be able to hit the road recruiting here the rest of the week.

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On breaking tendencies after self-scouting…

Yeah, it’s critical, and it’s something that we try and do each week, not just wait until the open week. I mean, every game we’re trying to break tendencies, whether it be how we line up to punt the ball, our team is getting a bead on anything that we’re doing defensively, what we’re doing offensively with formations or play calling, whatever it might be.

So we look at that every single week from a self-scout standpoint. But when you have the open week, you have more time to really dive into that, any tendencies that you might have. But then two, how we’re going to continue to get ourselves better schematically, personnel, all the things along those lines.

On potential of transfer portal window going from 60 to 45 days…

I think everybody’s in agreement that the window is too long as it is. I mean I would be in favor of just continuing to shorten it. I mean, to me, if a guy is planning on transferring from your program, he knows that when the window opens and doesn’t necessarily need 45 days or 30 days or whatever it might be to figure that out.

For us, the season ends, we have in-season meetings with our players, and they have a pretty good idea of where they stand and vice versa. So we’re always trying to have open and honest communication with our players, and I think it’d be great. I’m in favor of it, and I would say most coaches across the country would say the same, and same thing for the players too. Certainly want them to have the freedom that they need to have in order to do the things that they want to do that’s best for their career, but also trying to help them with that process also.

On the approach this week with the guys who are banged up (do you rest them completely?) …

It’s a little bit of both. There’s nobody on our team that we’ve said, “Okay, we’re not going to let this guy get any work this week.” Because I told him in the locker room at the Tennessee game, this is a week we’ve got to work and we have to get better. But you also want to be smart. Defensively, Tonka (Hemingway) and Boogie (Huntley) on the defensive line are pretty banged up, so they got some work this week, but it wasn’t like they were taking every rep. It’s an opportunity for our young defensive tackles to get work this week.

Trey Knox, a tight end, he practiced this week. He’s pretty beat up, so we limited what he did, but then gave some of our younger tight ends opportunities to get better. Spencer Rattler practiced every day this week. He took a little bit of a beating the other night, but we were able to get other quarterbacks some work as well. So everyone practiced, nobody that we said, “Hey, take these three days off and rest up.” But certainly, we were smart with our guys too in getting them work, but also getting them healthy.

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