Advertisement

Why Shane Beamer won’t reveal who’s calling plays for South Carolina’s bowl game

South Carolina’s play-caller for the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl remains TBD.

Head coach Shane Beamer told reporters on Sunday night he hasn’t made a decision on who might call plays for the bowl game against Notre Dame on Dec. 30.

“If I say that ‘so-and-so’ is the play-caller, then Notre Dame is going to go back and look at that guy’s background when maybe that guy has called plays other places he’s been,” Beamer said. “Or if you tell you the running backs coach is going to be the play-caller, does that mean that they’re going to call 95% running plays in the bowl game? If you say the receivers coach is going to be the play-caller, does that mean we throw it 95% of the time?”

USC is in need of someone new to call the plays after offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield left the program to join Matt Rhule’s staff at Nebraska.

Beamer said he’s unlikely to show his hand publicly on who is calling plays before meeting Notre Dame later this month, but did say he’d consider calling them himself if he felt it was best for the team.

“I’ve talked to all those guys (the offensive staff) about where we are,” he said. “Certainly it’s a group effort to put the plan together and then once we get to game day we’ll kind of see where we are.”

South Carolina had two of the best offensive days of the Beamer era in season-ending upsets of No. 5 Tennessee and No. 8 Clemson. The Gamecocks racked up over 1,000 yards of offense between the two contests and scored 94 points.

USC’s success coincided with the best two games of quarterback Spencer Rattler’s short South Carolina career. Rattler connected on 54 of his 75 passes (72%) for 792 yards, eight touchdowns and just two interceptions.

Beamer also noted that he’s not rushing the Gamecocks’ offensive coordinator search, but that he’s had conversations related to South Carolina’s staff opening.

“There’s a lot more interest in it now than there was two years ago when I was trying to hire an offensive coordinator,” he said. “The amount of people that have reached out to me from sitting head coaches to NFL coaches to current coordinators has been pretty impressive. I certainly have had some conversations, but nothing imminent. We can’t wait forever and we’re not going to either.”