Everything Shane Beamer said about South Carolina spring practice

South Carolina football head coach Shane Beamer spoke with the media on Tuesday afternoon to provide updates on spring football so far. Here’s everything he had to say.

Opening Statement

“Before I get going, certainly want to thank all the high school coaches, and other coaches that were here last weekend for our high school coaches clinic. Had close to 300 people, tons of head coaches from across the state of South Carolina, and North Carolina. Multiple states were represented, got great feedback from so many of the coaches that were here about the clinic that we put on. Certainly want to think our three outside speakers for coming in to visit and the presentations that they made, and we really got to spend a lot of time with those high school coaches. It was a great experience, and (I) appreciate the impact that our coaches had on them. Had a young coach on Saturday at practice that pulled me aside and said all his life he wanted to be an offensive coach, and considered himself an offensive coach, but after listening to Torrian Gray and Deion Barnes, he’s now inspired to coach defense. So, teaching is inspiring learning, and our coaches did a great job of that last weekend.

“(I) appreciate you guys that were out at practice, being out there today. You’re welcome for the bonus five minutes that we gave you of practice, so make sure you tell everyone that’s out west the amazing things you got to see in those five minutes that they missed, so appreciate y’all being here. Along those lines, congrats to Coach Staley on their win last night, and another birth in the Final Four. It will be a great event out in Phoenix this weekend, and really, really fired up for them and the opportunity to go win two more games and bring another championship back to Columbia.

“For us, it’s another three-day week of practice this week with Easter coming up. Happy Easter to everyone. But, we practice today, we’ll practice tomorrow, we’ll practice Thursday, and then giving our guys, coaches, players, staff a three-day weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday off, to celebrate Easter with their families, and then we’ll be back in here next week for the last week of spring practice. Last week was a big third-down emphasis for us, got a lot of work in in our three practice days. Culminated with pretty much a 65-play scrimmage or so out here on the practice field, so it was great to just get the coaches off the field, we’re not scripting anything, and just Kendal (Briles) calling the offense, Clayton (White) calling the defense and ‘Go play ball.’ So that was really good, great to see our guys work, and then today, this week is a red zone emphasis for us. So as we get inside the 20-yard line going in to score, the work, the schemes, and the technique we need for that area of the field. So good start today, back out tomorrow for more work, back out on Thursday to finish out the week, and then the weekend, and back at it next week.”

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What did you see from the offense on Saturday during the scrimmage?

“I thought they did a really good job of protecting the ball. Y’all have heard me say it, we’ve turned the ball over too many times over the last few years. If you count…I think it was about close to 60 plays in a scrimmage setting, 8 plays of some tempo work at the beginning of practice, and then about 20 plays of some situational second down, third down, fourth down stuff that we did before we scrimmaged. There were a lot of plays that we ran in team settings and our offense only turned the ball over one time, which was fantastic. Peyton Williams made a great punch-out, a receiver caught a ball to convert on a third down, and Peyton did a great job of knocking the ball out and scooping it up. That was, I think on probably the third, actually it was the second play of practice basically, and then the offense didn’t turn the ball over the rest of the day, so love that aspect of it, from a head coaching standpoint. Hate that aspect of it, because it means our defense didn’t get the ball out, and we’ve been really, really dominant over the five years that Clayton’s been the defensive coordinator at creating takeaways. I don’t think anybody in the SEC’s created more takeaways than we have over the last five years. We’ve been first or second every year in creating turnovers. We’ve got to be that way in ’26, but that part I was proud of. And then beyond that, I thought the running backs flashed, y’all know, not to make excuses…the conditions weren’t real conducive for throwing the football all over the field on Saturday, as windy as it was. But I really liked the way our running backs ran the ball and, you know, a lot of things to work on but some really good positives coming out of Saturday.”

First off, I saw it’s your birthday today, so happy birthday, sir.

“Thank you, Jack, I appreciate that. Getting older, but I had a mom of one of our players texted me happy birthday this morning, and she reminded me, not to get too religion on you, but the Book of Leviticus in the Bible, Chapter 25 talks about it. I’m 49, so in the 49th year, all the things happen in the 49th year, which leads to a great Jubilee in the 50th year. So that was what I needed to hear this morning. So it’s going to be great work in this 49th year, which leads to a great Jubilee next year, hopefully a Jubilee of the amazing season that we’re about to have that the 49th birthday’s leading into, but I digress. Thank you.”

What is the correct pronunciation of Neff (Giwa’s) last name?

“Neff, it’s all I got. It’s like Bu (Ebubedike Nnabugwu) on our team, and Damola (Ajidahun). Like, they’e just like Prince, they’re just first names, and I don’t even try to attempt the last names, like Damola I got, but Bu on our team, Bubu, and Neff, I’m sure I have it, but for me, he’s just Neff. I haven’t ventured too far down the road on that.”

So, if I may, how did it all kind of come about? How’d you first hear about him and then how’d you guys get him to come here?

“Yeah, so Brandon Collier does a great job working with, you know, a lot of these European football players. Two years ago when JO, Justin Okoronkwo came to camp, he was a part of the group from Europe that Brandon Colliers heads up, and that was the first time we ever saw JO. So he’ll go on some US tours with some European potential football players, you know, a few times a year, to multiple schools. He’s going everywhere. But he came out to our practice, I guess not last week, but the week before, I think he was out here on a Thursday maybe. They came the first time, didn’t really know much about him, or at least I didn’t but you look over there on the sideline, you’re like, ‘Who the heck is that?’ And then you start talking to him and getting to know him a little bit. He had a great visit, and they’re talking about Neff, and I don’t think they were really plans to come back to Columbia, but he had an amazing time on… I think it was Thursday, had an amazing time where he wanted to come back again the next week to visit some more, because he liked it so much.

“I know Bruce Feldman wrote an article, and you start reading about him and finding out more and more things about him. You see what JO has done in our program, and you get more and more intrigued, so there was an article. He had a great time when he was here the second time that he came back. I know there was a post on social media about how we didn’t want to let him out of the building, we were just throwing all this money at him to keep him from going somewhere else. That wasn’t true. We were trying to keep him from going somewhere else because he sat in my office and he told me how much he loves this place, and he told that from the first time he was here, how at home he felt, and that he had been to a lot of different schools, and he hadn’t had a feeling like he had at those other schools like he had at our place. So I said, ‘Well, shoot, let’s get this thing done. We’d love to have you here.’ And he had told another school he was going to visit with them before they made a decision, which I, you know, totally get, but this wasn’t just a ‘Hey, we got a bunch of money left over. Let’s just throw it all at the Irish soccer player.’ Because that wasn’t the case at all.

“He really, truly loved it here. He went on that visit and he FaceTimes me last week from the airport after he had finished up that visit and, you know, told me he wanted to be here. It was great. I was about to get Tony Annan on the phone, our soccer coach, and they were able to talk soccer and things like that. Tony had a lot of familiarity with where Neff is from, and similarities, and he enjoyed his time here. I know he was attracted to Coach (Randy) Clements and the way Coach Clements has been able to develop some similar stories, or guys with similar stories. But just really impressed with Neff, just his, you know his spirit, and knows what he doesn’t know, and knows he’s got some work to do. But for us, it was in last year’s recruiting class. We wanted to sign five offensive linemen, and we signed three with Darius (Gray), (Anthony Baxter), and Zyon (Guiles). And from our standpoint, we didn’t sign five offensive linemen in high school, but here’s an opportunity to bring one in that kind of just goes along with this year’s freshman class. And you know, know he’s got some work to do, but if y’all watch the videos, he’s got the skill set and the talent. More importantly, I think he’s get the temperament, the competitive spirit, and the character to really work his rear end off and get in here and become a great player.”

Does Emily make you chocolate chip cookies for your birthday, or do you get a cake?

“I don’t get anything, so she may be watching online. I love you, if you are. She’s not even in town. My oldest daughter is on a school class trip right now out of the country. And then Emily, Hunter, and Olivia, it’s their spring break. So it was, ‘We love you, but we’re going on spring break.’ So I got a FaceTime from them this morning at their hotel they’re at, and then they’ll be back tomorrow, so maybe there’s a celebration then.”

And Coach (Stan) Drayton yesterday was telling us about his running back grade chart. I wanted to know your thoughts on that and how the running backs have graded out so far.

“I think that’s one of the many things I love about Stan, is just, you know, how detailed and demanding he is. You know, the running backs have already told me about the impact that he’s had on them. You know, just he was what they needed, how hard he’s coaching them. He’s on them, he’s intense, he’s into it on the field, and then off the field too, with the expectation level that he’s holding those guys to and the way that he’s holding them accountable. I like that room. I think they’ve, you know, really made a lot of progress. There’s a lot of competition in that room. You got three really good ones returning, in my opinion, in Matthew (Fuller), Jawarn (Howell), and Isaiah (Augustave) that we were excited about coming into the year ’26, and the the three guys that we’ve added too, in Christian (Clark), Jabree (Coleman), and Sam (Dixon), so it’s a solid group to go along with Neil Salvage. And they’re competing, they’re working, you know. I’m really pleased with that group, really please with how Stan is coaching them and holding them accountable, and he’s made them better already and will continue to.”

I want to revisit the topic of Neff too. I mean, getting somebody in here who clearly has a lot of physical tools to be great at the position you want to get them into. They don’t have that experience. What do you kind of begin in terms of trying to get them ready to eventually be able to play that position at the SEC level?

“Yeah, in a situation like this, I mean, it’s literally going to be Day 1, like, ‘Here’s how you put on a helmet and here’s how you buckle a chin strap and here’s how you put on shoulder pads.’ I mean, it’s literally Day 1 stuff. But when you’re evaluating him, you got to be a tough dude to play rugby. I met with out rugby club last week before their competition this weekend. Did they win it, do we know? I didn’t get a chance to get out there, but we got a rugby team here at Carolina. It’s awesome, just listening to them and talking to them, and that’s what I told them when I met them last Friday, is like you got to be a tough freaking dude to play rugby. I’ve watched enough of it on television to see that, so you know that he’s got that. This isn’t some guy that, you know, a lot of times, what’s the guy… Mo Alie-Cox, that plays tight end in the NFL. I remember watching him play basketball for VCU. Well, you’re judging basketball to football, what can he do? Well, he made the transition to football.

“It’s a little bit similar, different, but in a lot of ways probably better for us, because you’re able to watch Neff play rugby, and you can see some of the skill set and the toughness and the athleticism for sure. So that gives you hope to being around him and see what kind of person he is. He’s just, he’s engaging, and he’s awesome, just a really impressive young man, just talking to him. And then thank God, you know, the NCAA, we are now as coaches allowed to do more in the summer time than we’ve ever been able to with the player. So if this had been however many years ago, he would come, we’d throw him in the weight room with Luke Day and we wouldn’t be able to do anything football-wise until practice started. Well now, once he gets here, we can go out on the field with him a certain number of hours a week and do positional specific things to where, you know, the first time he’s doing football, it’s not in practice in August against Dylan Stewart and Gabriel Brownlow-Dindy and those guys and he’s like, ‘What just happened?’ So there’s some build up to that, so it’ll be this summer will be really, really. key for everybody on our team to develop, but it’ll be really critical for his development in the months of you know, whenever he gets here. Let’s say May, June, July, as we lead into August.”

Do you know when Giwa is supposed to get here?

“No, as soon I said that, I’m like, ‘You know what? I need to find out the exact date he’s coming.” So I hope May, because a lot of guys will be around here in May, but certainly in the summertime, when summer school starts, which is the day after Memorial Day, is when summer school starts.”

Yesterday, Coach (Mike) Furrey was in here kind of talking about the conversations he had with Mazeo (Bennett), and how they learned a lot from last year. I’m curious what conversations you had with Mazeo after the season and what the goals were for him coming into 2026?

“Yeah, and I would say it would be even before the end of the season, the conversations that I had with Mazeo during the season last year. You know, Mazeo is a dawg, and that’s a compliment when you say that. Like he is a dawg and he is competitive, and he loves to play the game of football. He loves Carolina, he loves to compete, and it was hard for him last year because he had all those qualities, but for whatever reason, he wasn’t getting the opportunity as much as he wanted to probably, on Saturdays. And, you know, he had some questions and concerns, so we had those conversations, me, him, Mike, throughout the season. And then at the end of the year, you know, I got tons of respect for him, because obviously at the end of the year, you’re Mr. Everything as a freshman, the solve the second year doesn’t go the way you want it to. It’s easy to say, ‘I’m going to pick up my ball and go somewhere else, because, you know, y’all don’t believe in me.” But that wasn’t the case at all. It was, you know, this is where I want to be, and let’s get back to work. And that’s what I love about him, is what you’re going to get with Mazeo, day in, day out.

“And our conversations were, ‘Here’s what we want to see more of. Here’s why. Maybe it didn’t go the way you wanted it to go in ’25. We’ve got to be better as coaches, here’s some things you’ve got to be better at as a player, and let’s get ready to attack this thing in 2026.’ And he’s been awesome. He’s been very, I think Mike talked about it yesterday, he’s been very consistent, very steady throughout the spring. It’s his third year in the program, but in my mind, he’s very much a leader on this team and has the respect of his teammates. And he just needs to continue to work and continue to get better, and he will. There’s great competition in that room. Talked about it in our team meeting this morning with our players, and I think I’ve mentioned it to y’all, but you know, with everyone that has come back at that receiver position, all those freshman that came in a year ago, they’ve now a year older, they’re better. Nyck (Harbor’s) back, Mazeo’s back, we’ve brought in some portal guys, Sequel Patterson’s coming. So, I mean, there’s a really…there’s a lot of competition in that wide receiver room, and everything that they do matters, blocking, how they’ve doing things outside the building, knowing the offense, catching the ball, running routes, making plays, like everything matters. And there’s a lot of urgency in that room to compete, as there should be.”

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Going back to Neff, was the decision to have him play offensive tackle or offensive line something that he and Brandon agreed on? Because I’ve gotten the question a lot as like, ‘Why not tight end? Why not defensive end? Why not anything else?’

“Yeah, you know, that’s probably a better question for him once he gets here. I think it was very much, and I talked to Brandon a little bit about it, just his workout with him and what he saw. But you look at the body type, you look at the growth potential. I think you look at it and say, you know, I think early on they maybe looked at it and said, ‘Man, this guy could play defensive line, tight end, anything.” But the more he was around him, I think Brandon felt like he was going to become an offensive tackle, which I don’t disagree. But we’ve played, who knows what will happen, and we’ve played in that past where, in certain situations and in certain games, we’ve put an extra offensive lineman on the field as a tight end, and we did it in my first or second year with Wyatt Campbell, who’s hard at work across the street with Greg Hughes and contract construction, building the stadium, or renovating it. Wyatt’s over there doing that, appreciate his work. We’ve done it with Tavey when he was here, (Jatavius) Shivers, we used him as an extra tight end at times as an offensive lineman. So who knows. I say that to say you want to get your best people on the field, and when you turn on the rugby tape, you look at it and say, ‘Holy smokes.’ Like, instead of carrying this rugby ball, let’s just toss the football in his hands and let somebody try to tackle him. Once we get him here, we’ll see. But that’s the plan right now, and we’ll see how the development goes over the summer.”

A lot of the players or assistant coaches that have been here have mentioned how impressed they’ve been with the true freshman class so far in spring practice. What have kind of been your impressions of those guys so far?

“I think just that they don’t look and act like freshmen. And you know, this is my 27th year that I’ve been coaching now, or 27th year in coaching, and sometimes there’s that freshman class, and it’s just young, dumb freshmen, like all of us were I’m sure when we were 18 years old and we went to college. There’s just a maturity about that group and it’s been that way since January when they got here. They’re just very business-like, they’re very purposeful, very driven, very intentional about what they want to do day-in, day-out. They’re doing great in school, and then on the field, you know, a lot of times you see freshman, they’re kind of at the back of the line, and they’re feeling their way through. There’s a lot of alphas in this group where if there’s a line to do a drill or whatever, you got freshman that are trying to throw older guys out of the way to get up there and get a rap. And then they’re making players, you know, you see a lot of guys making plays. You say it on Saturday, you saw, I could name everybody, but just things that come to mind, J’Zavien Currence on a one-on-one tackle he made in the open field, where he had to put his face in there and showed some toughness. Or Noah Clark, or Aiden Harris, or on and on and on. I mean, there’s a lot of guys that just continue to just show up and make plays. Zyon on the offensive line, Anthony Baxter with his effort to the ball, there’s just a lot of stuff like that. And I’m really excited about that group, and then excited about getting the rest of them here this summer when they get here, the remaining…what is it, four, I think, to get here this summer.”

You talked about turnovers being a positive, or lack of turnovers I guess, being a positive in the scrimmage. What was something that jumped out to you as very encouraging from that scrimmage, and then the opposite to what jumped out to you in that scrimmage of, ‘We’ve got to do this a lot better going forward?’

“I would say effort to the ball, particularly. Going back that was the point of the conversation this morning, with the receivers and the team, but was we’ve got to be better when I’m a receiver and I’m away from the ball, my effort to the ball, my perimeter blocking, things like that. Not just the receivers, but a couple examples that I pointed out where we’ve got to be better away from the ball, you know, straining. So we’ve got to be better, not just there, but everybody, and every coach in America is saying this, just finishing plays, the effort to the ball. We hadn’t put in red zone, so to speak, but football is football. You’re still calling the same players for the most part when you get down there. And we had a couple long drives on offense. We had a 15-play drive and we had a 12-play drive that in a game, I probably would have kicked the field goal when fourth down came up, but I wanted to see if we could get a touchdown. And credit to the defense, they gave up a 12-play drive and a 15-play drive, but they were able to get a stop at the end and hold the offense to zero points on consecutive drives, whereas, from an offensive standpoint, we’re down there in the red zone, we got to go finish, and finish that for touchdowns. But those are a couple things that stand out, but a lot of good, the way we ran the ball, the way the young guys showed up. There weren’t a ton of mistakes from an offensive standpoint mentally, so I think, I feel like we’re farther along that what we were after, what was today, 10, after 10 practices last year, just the protection on offense, the protecting the ball, the way we’re operating. I like where we are offensively and it’s been great for our defense. And then, you know, special teams-wise too. I think we’re doing some ready good things with the effort and with Coach (Matthew) Smiley and what he’s doing.”

Excluding the scrimmages, how do you balance in spring, the physicality of what you want to see in developing a physical football team, versus working on the finer points of the game and the little things that will make a difference to you? Do you really want to be physical in spring, in the individual drills, or do you try to protect the guy?

“I’d say it’s a combination of both, it’s certainly a yes, you want to be. I don’t think you can just say that, you know, we’re going to be a physical team, and then all of a sudden on whatever, September 5th, we go out there and we just say, ‘Okay, play physical and start tackling’, and all that stuff, if you haven’t done it in practice. I mean, we’ll do some physicality, we’ll do some tackling and all that in August, leading up to the first game, but certainly during the spring time too. That’s one thing I love about this team, is they love that aspect of it. Like, if I went out there and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to tackle and just scrimmage 15 practices this spring’, they’d be like, ‘Let’s freaking go.’ Like, they get made when we don’t let them do that sometimes. They’re always, ‘Hey, can we go live? Can we go live and tackle?’ And so I love that aspect of them, but we balance it and it kind of happens more systematically this year with how we’re doing things, just because of the practice model that we’ve talked about. 5 of the 15 practices were not even going against … it’s not even offense-defense. It’s like today was, where it was strictly just technique and fundamentals.

“Now, you all saw some stuff in that bonus five minutes, where we were doing some drill work, O-Line versus D-Line, but that was the extended of what we did offense versus defense today. So that really only leaves you 10 practices where you’re competing against one another. But yeah, we’ve had, I guess, two or three days where we’ve done some live tackling to the ground. We’ll do some of that tomorrow, we’ll do a little bit of it in a goal-line period that we’re going to have tomorrow in practice. But I just think if you’re going to say you’re physical, and you’re going to play tough and play physical, you got to practice that way. But we, our guys, do a good job, knock on wood, of practicing physical, even if we’re not always tackling to the ground and you’re thudding up and, you know, some of those physical plays I’ve talked about with J’Zavien Currence for plays where he wasn’t tackling to the ground, but he came in there with a physical mindset and thudded up a running back in the open field, which allows you to build that physicality and toughness that you wants as a team.”

How do you feel like the placekicker competition is going so far?

“It’s good. I think Upton (Bellenfant) and Max (Kelley), they’re both doing a good job. They’re the main two working right now at that. Mason (Love’s) focusing primarily on punting, but Upton and Max are both doing a good job. We didn’t get a ton of kicks on Saturday. Part of it was the situation and just trying to finish some drives and get touchdowns, like I said. But we kicked six field goals today, and we usually get, in most practices, around 10 kicks total of field goals during practice. But I think all of those guys, I feel like, just, not the little bit, but the bit that I’ve watched, they’ve taken a step. I feel like in the last week or so, we’re just consistency, ball flight, getting more and more comfortable. You know, Upton is used to kicking in Lubbock, so he was right up his alley Saturday with the wind and everything whipping around out there. But I think both those guys are doing a good job. Shoutout to Upton, my teammate last night in bowling, in case y’all didn’t see on social media. That was the championship bowling team of our bowling tournament last night. So shoutout to Upton, being on of my teammates. And then he carried that over today into kicking pretty good in practice today, I thought too.”

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