South Carolina football is looking for an offensive coordinator.
A familiar name is starting to resurface when the South Carolina team starts looking for an offensive coordinator. It seemed that the offensive team was almost complete, as Shame Beamer chose to keep Mike Bobo in charge of the Gamecocks play, ending the initial search for OC.
The shot backfired as Bobo accepted a position on Auburn’s football team, with new coach Bryan Harsin taking him off the sidelines at Columbia.
Now that the position of offensive coordinator is back on the market, many participants in the program are returning to a name that gained some initial momentum during the first survey. That name is Garrett Riley.
Riley was the player who called the SMU in 2019, where he helped lead the Mustangs to an overall 7-3 record. The attack ranked 11th in the country, averaging almost 500 yards per game. He also finished in the top 15, scoring 38.6 points per contest. Both totals came in second at the American Athletic Conference, behind Central Florida.
Riley started to gain momentum in Columbia due to his connection with Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley, Garrett’s older brother. The older brother, Lincoln, was Shane Beamer’s head coach while he was with the Sooners.
Beamer said throughout the hiring process that he would like to bring elements of Oklahoma crime to South Carolina, and hiring Garrett Riley could be the best option available for that.
Riley could also bring with him offensive line coach AJ Ricker, who was offensive co-coordinator with the Mustangs last season. Ricker was one of the Broyles Award finalists after the 2020 season, a tribute to the country’s top assistant coach.
He was a member of some high-powered offensive units before his passage through Dallas, including Missouri (’14 -’15), Houston (’16) and the State of Oklahoma (’17). The time he spent in Missouri is his only SEC experience, but he helped the Tigers achieve their SEC title in 2014.
A Riley / Ricker combination could be a homerun hired in Columbia. The two are not as experienced as Bobo and Friend, but they are two young and innovative minds on the offensive side of the ball.
They may be Beamer’s next target as he seeks to assemble the South Carolina technical team.