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‘We all have a hand in it.’ Beamer sounds off on criticism of offensive play calling

Shane Beamer says he doesn’t know what’s written on message boards and doesn’t always inspect his Twitter mentions, but he can figure a portion of it all has criticized South Carolina’s offensive play calling.

He set out to defend the calls in his Tuesday press conference.

“Every game is different, but I’ll look back at Saturday, I don’t think there was a play calling issue,” Beamer said. “Now it may not always look pretty, and I don’t know what the message boards are saying right now, but I’m sure they’re like nuclear now about bad play calls.

“Well, I don’t know what play calls were necessarily bad. Help me out, which ones were bad on Saturday?”

Beamer was swift to retract that call-out for feedback once he finished his answer. He laughed, and said the question he posed was a figure of speech.

“I don’t need fans now hitting me up on Twitter giving me a list of all the bad play calls from Saturday,” Beamer said. “That was a figure of speech, so please. I try not to look at the mentions, but as soon as I said that, I can see it coming right now.”

Still, Beamer said he was aware there are people who want him to stand at the lectern and say the Gamecocks’ play calling “stinks,” but that isn’t the primary issue he’s tackling this week.

When he looked back at the tape from South Carolina’s 21-20 win over Vanderbilt, Beamer said play calling didn’t cause two fumbles and two interceptions. Nor did play calling cause critical holding penalties, like one in the third quarter that brought back a 36-yard Jaheim Bell reception.

“We all have a hand in it,” Beamer said. “That’s not me blaming players. We’ve got to coach better. ... You can look at blame and why we haven’t operated at a high level, and it’s all of us. Myself, down the offensive staff, down to the offensive players. Every game is different, but I’ll look back at Saturday, I don’t think there was a play calling issue.”

Beamer said the focus ahead of this week’s road matchup with Texas A&M will be fundamentals, ball security and technique.

“Forget about schemes. We’ve got to be better fundamentally, which is coaching,” Beamer said. “And that’s what we’re trying to do. But we’ve got to be better everywhere — offense, defense and special teams.”

South Carolina plays Texas A&M in College Station, Texas, at 7:30 p.m. on SEC Network this Saturday.