‘Extremely impactful for me’: Shane Beamer shares lessons learned from Kirby Smart
Shane Beamer has worked for a host of elite college football coaches.
Hall of Famers Frank Beamer (Virginia Tech), Steve Spurrier (South Carolina), Phillip Fulmer (Tennessee) and Sylvester Croom (Mississippi State). George O’Leary (Georgia Tech), Lincoln Riley (Oklahoma) and Kirby Smart.
Among those stops, Beamer picked out his time at Georgia with Smart as a particularly remarkable experience.
“Those two years were just extremely impactful for me growing as a coach,“ Beamer said. “... Being around him really helped me here when I became a first-time head coach.”
Beamer is now in his third year as head coach of the South Carolina Gamecocks. He and Smart face off this weekend in Athens for the first SEC contest of Georgia’s (2-0) and USC’s (1-1) seasons. The game provides an opportunity for Beamer to reflect on his time working between UGA’s hedges.
Smart hired Beamer as tight ends coach and special teams coordinator to his first UGA staff in 2016. Beamer’s father had just retired from Virginia Tech, so he was looking for a job. Along came Smart wanting an interview.
The two have known each other since the early 2000s when they were still graduate assistants — Beamer at Tennessee and Smart at Florida State. They both landed their first full-time SEC coaching jobs in 2004 — Beamer at Mississippi State and Smart at LSU. Years of similar trajectories had finally brought them to the same place.
Prior to the Georgia job, Smart spent nine years (seven as defensive coordinator) under coach Nick Saban at Alabama. Smart used Saban’s methodology to establish a new era of UGA football. In Beamer, Smart sought an advanced special teams mind to collaborate with.
“A lot of head coaches are kind of like, ‘You go do what you want. Just tell me what you’re doing. And I’ll see you on the practice field,’ ” Beamer said. “But not Kirby. He’s got his hands in every aspect of that program, offense, defense and special teams.”
Smart allowed Beamer to draw up his own initial special teams gameplan, and then they’d meet on Monday mornings for an hour-plus to fine tune the final approach.
Trusting your personnel. Hearing what they have to say. Being receptive to outside ideas while trusting your own knowledge and gut instinct. Being attentive to all three phases of your football team.
These are a few of many lessons Beamer brought from Georgia to South Carolina — his first head coaching gig.
“There’s a certain urgency that you have to have every single day in coaching and recruiting, and when you stepped in that building (at Georgia), there wasn’t going to be a wasted moment,” Beamer said. “The way they do things in practice, we’re very similar in a lot of ways of how we practice here.”
There are several special teams plays from Beamer’s Georgia period that stick with him. Chief among them is UGA’s blocked punt from the 2018 College Football Playoff Championship. The offsides call on Tyler Simmons still haunts Beamer — and countless Bulldog fans — to this day.
“If you ask anybody in Athens what ‘Tyler Simmons was onside’ means, they know,” Beamer said. “... I don’t want to say it cost us a national championship, but that was a significant play in the game that potentially cost us a national championship game that night.”
“... I’ve gotten past it as you can tell,” he added.
But there are good plays, too. Having Nick Chubb, Sony Michel, Roquan Smith on his punt team and Mecole Hardman as a returner sure was fun. There was Isaiah McKenzie’s punt return for a touchdown against Louisiana Lafayette in 2016; some long returns against Tennessee in 2017; a blocked field goal in the Rose Bowl against Oklahoma in 2018.
Beamer is 0-2 against Smart since coming back to South Carolina. This weekend Beamer and his squad will do their best to make him 1-2. It won’t be easy.
“This will be the best offense we’ve faced this season coming up on Saturday without a doubt just because they’re weapons everywhere. So we got a big challenge this week, but I know they’re excited to get out there and perform.”
Game info
Who: South Carolina (1-1) at No. 1 Georgia (2-0)
Where: Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia
When: 3:30 p.m. Saturday
Watch: CBS
