Why South Carolina hasn’t returned a single kickoff this season
Look on the stat sheet for South Carolina’s football team and one will find a single kickoff return listed for Shi Smith going for zero yards. This is a misnomer.
The only recorded kickoff return for the Gamecocks this season was actually a dropped fair catch, a ball Smith mishandled against Florida and had to fall on at his own three-yard line. The other 12 opponent kickoffs this season have all been fair caught.
This is a long way from the approach Will Muschamp used to take.
In 2018, when the NCAA further changed the rules to take any fair catch made inside the 25 to the 25, the coach said that wasn’t going to happen often. He had all-conference player Deebo Samuel, who scored once on a return, averaged 24.8 yards per return and gave the Gamecocks one of the more productive return games in the country.
Last year, Smith started with a bang, posting a 60-yard return in the opener against UNC. But then things stalled.
He returned nine kicks after that game. Two went for 25 yards, one for 21, the rest for less than 20. Outside the one long play, the average starting field position off a Smith return was just short of halfway between the 21- and 22-yard line.
So it’s little wonder the Gamecocks fair-caught everything that’s gone up across the first two games.
“Inside the 5-yard line, in our analytics through the offseason, you’re better off fair-catching and unless it’s on the 5 and you’re rocking into the catch,” Muschamp said. “He needs to square the ball up. That’s why you’ve seen us fair catch more than we have before.”
The Gamecocks also tried some angled kickoffs themselves from Mitch Jeter this weekend, but those left the UF offense starting at their 33 and 38.
South Carolina’s special teams saw a wave of turnover this offseason. They replaced coordinator Coleman Hutzler, now at Texas, with Kyle Kranz. They lost punt returner Bryan Edwards and punter Joseph Charlton to the NFL — freshman Kai Kroger is now handling punting duties. They also lost kickoff specialist Will Tommie and replaced him with the freshman Jeter.
This story was originally published October 7, 2020 at 9:35 AM with the headline "Why South Carolina hasn’t returned a single kickoff this season."
