New SEC East coaches playing catch-up with SEC West powers

“My role with the offense is to philosophically be on the same page and from week-to-week understand what we need to do to win the game”, Muschamp said Thursday.

Then South Carolina came calling. SC is his second head coaching job, and he follows Steve Spurrier, who is also a two-timer, coaching at Florida and SC. “We played well on special teams”. Academically, our guys did extremely well.

“Really, it comes back to offense”.

Fair or not, the comparisons to the Ol’ Ball Coach will remain for Muschamp.

“Whether it’s staff, scheme, decision-making … that falls on my shoulders”, he said. Past year he led the Rebels, who were ranked as high as No. 3 in the nation, to a win over eventual national champion Alabama. Muschamp also kept up a link to the Spurrier era by hiring his son, Scott, as an offensive “analyst”. The lone non-conference matchup in the first half of the season is a September 17 game against East Carolina.

SC will be taking on the Vanderbilt Commodores, picked to finish 5th in the East, and the Mississippi State Bulldogs, picked to finish last in the West, in the first two games of the season. Mississippi was picked to finish in third, followed by Texas A&M, Arkansas, Auburn and Mississippi State.

“Gus and I have a great relationship and I really appreciate him giving me an opportunity”, Muschamp said. At the end of the day, I met with every player on the team when I got into Columbia.

Hurst intrigues Muschamp on several levels. “Both of those guys did a good job for us”, Muschamp said. “That’s what I want them to do”.

A common theme among many SEC teams is a lack of proven experience at the quarterback position, a situation SC is also familiar with. The Gamecocks were last in total defense and scoring defense last season and but they’re getting a coach who developed three UF defensive players who were drafted by National Football League teams in the first round in the last two seasons, Dante Fowler (Jaguars), Vernon Hargreaves (Bucs) and Keanu Neal (Falcons).

Muschamp has clearly moved on.

“I met with him the first night and said let’s work through a week or so, and we’ll see if this works for me and you and Kurt Roper, our offensive coordinator, which I thought was the most important marriage – to make sure the play-caller or the quarterback coach and offensive line coach are on the same page”. I play for SC, and at the time he coached for Florida, so it wasn’t a personal thing. “I wear my emotions on my sleeve a little more than I should, so, I don’t remember that situation”, he deadpanned.

He doesn’t deliver iconic Spurrier one-liners, though he did joke a bit from the podium at SEC Media Days on Thursday.

“We do think about that”, he said.

“I don’t get into the negative part of how it ended”.

Sophomore wide receiver Deebo Samuel said sometimes it’s not enough to run a play correctly.

Q: Did you feel somewhat a little badly, since the end result was costing a guy like Muschamp a job?