Beamer Wants Urgency From Gamecock Secondary

Shane Beamer sent a subtle message to some of South Carolina's younger defensive backs, with Clayton White emphasizing the development process.

With the number of injuries recently piled up for South Carolina's defense, multiple backups have had to play a significant amount of snaps, especially in a defensive backfield littered with true freshmen. Based on some recent comments, however, there seems to be a sense that this freshmen group in the secondary could handle being thrown into the fire early in their careers.

At his Tuesday press conference, Shane Beamer spoke about the recent emphasis on communication from some more experienced defensive players. With his answer, Shane Beamer utilized this question as a chance to send a call to action to the young Gamecock defensive backs.

"There was a time out there [against Georgia], I think we had DQ Smith, Nick Emmanwori, Kajuan Banks, and Emory Floyd all on the field at the same time. I mean, that's four true freshmen… they're not freshmen anymore, but it wasn't that long ago that they were playing at Irmo High School and Spring Valley High School, and it's a little bit different than what they faced on Saturday," Beamer explained. "We've talked to our guys about [this], we don't have time to wait, we gotta go now, guys. We wanna grow up, we wanna get better, we wanna do all of these things, well the time is now, so we've gotta really improve quickly because time is running out if you will because this season will be over before you know it."

This quote can be interpreted as a mixture of Shane Beamer believing he can press certain buttons with these players due to their high ceilings while also sending the message that they need them to step up due to the team's circumstances.

Defensive coordinator Clayton White was asked about these comments from Beamer at his Wednesday presser, and he took it as a chance to emphasize how you must alter your process to meet the desired results.

"So I think the most important thing is you have to get their attention on the urgency, and just because you have time does not mean you're going to improve... So during that time of improvement, we have to do things that are going to affect the long-term. So every single day, we're just [trying to] chop wood and just make sure that we are doing something that's going to affect the end result, and that's us playing better defense, team defense, and then if our team [needs us] in the fourth quarter, we have to be able to step up."

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