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When Florida takes on South Carolina on October 10, it has the chance to legitimately be the final game Shane Beamer coaches as the head coach for the Gamecocks. After a bit of a Cinderella 2024 campaign, South Carolina regressed to their mean and had a season arguably worse than the one Florida endured in 2025.
Beamer enters 2026 on a scorching hot seat, and while he acknowledges the failure that was 2025, he seems to believe he has pinpointed the issues that sank their season last year.
Florida can test whether South Carolina truly learned from one of the SEC’s worst collapses
Here is a fun fact:
Shane Beamer is the only coach who faced Billy Napier at least twice during Napier’s time at Florida and failed to beat Napier at least once.
So maybe it isn’t that shocking that six of South Carolina’s eight losses last year came in games that were a one-score game at some point in the fourth quarter, three of which were games where South Carolina entered the fourth quarter with the lead.
It also isn’t that shocking that South Carolina blew a 30-3 halftime lead against Texas A&M.
Beamer tried his best to place the blame on himself and went through all normal “I need to be better” tropes, but the one area he kept coming back to during his SEC Media Days apperance as to why South Carolina will be better in 2026 is the fact they will be more of a veteran group compared to 2025:
“Yeah, we needed to get older. If you look back at that '24 team, we had a lot of older guys on that team. We had a lot of seniors that had played a lot of football for us.
If you look back at last year's team, I think we only had four seniors that started for us total on last year's team. So for me, as the head coach, it was making sure that we got older. We brought in some transfers that have played a lot of football at a lot of places, so we increased the experience. That was one thing that I, as a head coach, can control.
We tweaked some things with how we do things in the offseason, practice, things like that. But you do that after every season. You're introspective and look at how you can be better. But we've been very intentional about getting better.
We've gotten older, like I said. Certainly when you have the season that we had, that's on me. I did not do a good enough job last year to say the least. You're always looking at every game, how can you be better the next week, every season how can you be better the next year. Last year to this year was no different.”
Florida could catch South Carolina before the Gamecocks traditionally hit their stride
The problem for Beamer, and something he acknowledged in his press conference, is that even that 2024 team started 3-3 before rattling off six straight wins to finish the regular season 9-3.
If he starts 2026 3-3 and loses to Florida heading into their own bye week, he might not get to see the other side of the bye week to face Tennessee.
In terms of X’s and O’s, the main talking point for Florida fans as it stands right now is whether or not South Carolina QB LaNorris Sellers is going to be much of a runner in 2026. And as will be the case with any Beamer, special teams will have fans on high alert.
But even if South Carolina is a better team in 2026 than they were in 2025, there is no getting around the fact that this will be a must-win game for Florida and Jon Sumrall, because it takes place right before the gauntlet of Texas, Georgia, and Oklahoma.
Lose to South Carolina and the door for a Florida freefall could be alive and well.
Today's best reads
- Mike Norvell is starting to sound a lot like Billy Napier before the collapse
- Five coaches Florida could push closer to the exit door in 2026
- Florida being named an offseason winner would have sounded impossible in November
- Florida commit Ja’Bois Smith is exactly the kind of player summer rankings overlook
- Greg Sankey wants credit for SEC schedules, but Florida still cannot count on sympathy
This article was originally published on hailfloridahail.com as Florida will face a South Carolina team desperate to prove last season was an exception.
