Florida Football: Special team has one job, don’t get beat by Beamer Ball

When it comes the special teams unit for Florida football, it has been a painstaking journey for the first six games of the 2023 season. While Trey Smack has emerged as a bright spot, and Jeremy Crawshaw is starting to get back to his top-tier status, the myriad of issues from the unit has been a full-fledged liability.

Now on the road against a desperate opponent, Florida is about to take a coach whose family legacy hangs on exploiting special team liabilities.

Florida Football: Beamer Dynasty

From 1987 through 2015, Frank Beamer was the head coach for Virginia Tech. During Beamer’s tenure with the Hokies, 35 different players scored a touchdown from the special teams unit. Tech was so proficient and scoring touchdowns while not on offense that the term Beamer Ball was coined.

Shane Beamer is, of course, Frank’s son and the head coach of South Carolina. Things haven’t gone great this season in Columbia, SC, and the Gamecocks are sitting at 2-3, coming off their bye week, and are in desperate need of a win to prevent their own season from going south.

Last season, Florida beat South Carolina 38-6. Do you remember where the six points the Gamecocks scored came from?

We’ll give you a hint: someone on Florida’s staff spent too much time sitting on their elongated piece of furniture designed to seat three or more people rather than having the punt return unit prepared for a fake punt that resulted in a touchdown.

Pro Football Focus grades out the Gamecocks special team unit as 46th in the country. But Carolina hasn’t dug much into their bag of special team tricks this season, perhaps saving them for the perfect opponent.

Do you think the team prone to put two guys on the field with the same number, the team that doesn’t like to send 11 guys out on returns, and the team that likes to leap over guys you are not supposed to leap over might be the perfect opponent?

We assume Billy Napier and crew are going to be paranoid all game long, probably so much so that every punt return turns into a punt safe, which negates any return ability for the Gators.

Game previews don’t talk about special teams nine times out of ten.

This game is that one out of ten and could swing the fate on Saturday.