Shane Beamer is stressing WR development. That’s why he brought in coach Mike Furrey

The game of football can be confusing. There’s a playbook the size of “Moby Dick” on disguised coverages, audibles, option routes, motions, shifts and on and on and on. It is like deciphering a foreign language — complex until it isn’t.

South Carolina new wide receivers coach Mike Furrey has seen this at every level. He played college football — walking on at Ohio State before transferring to Northern Iowa — spent time in the Arena Football League then spent seven years in the NFL. Then as a coach, he’d seemingly coached at every level past high school in a short span.

From NAIA (Kentucky Christian) to Division II (Limestone College) to FBS (Marshall) to the NFL (Chicago Bears) back to Limestone before taking over the South Carolina wide receivers room this week.

As guys move up, football becomes tougher to process.

The job of a coach is to make it simpler. Furrey speaks of that part of the gig like it sits atop the job description. He talks about development with oomph, as if it is your duty as a human to develop every day, to put in the effort to grow every time the sun rises.

But Furrey is a teacher, not a preacher. He motivates by making you think more than hyping you up to sprint through a brick wall. When asked how he develops his players, how he makes the game of football simpler for young guys, he does not even talk about football.

“I literally think the entire thing is about presentation,” Furrey said. “You can give too much information instead of just the simplicity of what you can get done. You can sit there all day and talk about the little things you need to fix when, really, there’s only a couple big things you need to master.”

Shane Beamer did not expect to hire Furrey. Just over six weeks ago, he tabbed James Coley to be the Gamecocks wide receivers coach, moving Justin Stepp from that position to tight ends coach. In less than a month, Stepp left for Illinois and, last weekend, Coley took a job as Georgia’s wide receivers coach after just 43 days in Columbia.

To be expected: Beamer was still ticked off about Coley’s decision as he introduced Furrey on Friday, saying: ““We collected the $450,000 and then some that we were owed for violating or leaving his contract. And then it allowed us to go out and hire an even better wide receivers coach in my mind.”

The surprise: Beamer was very critical of the job Stepp did in recruiting and developing the Gamecocks wide receivers over the past three years.

“I had been a little disappointed with the freshman that we’ve brought into our program, that we recruited, and their development,” Beamer said. “If you look at who we were playing receiver with last year, it’s guys we inherited … or transfers we brought in.”

Beamer is not the only one who believes Furrey can develop talent at a greater level than Stepp. Just ask DJ Black. The Inman native walked on to the Gamecocks football team in 2022 as a wide receiver while running indoor track in the spring. After a year in Columbia, Black transferred thinking his football career was over.

Until Furrey reached out, convincing the 6-foot-1, 195-pound pass catcher to come to Limestone and learn from him and wide receivers coach Jerricho Cotchery.

There was no one better to learn from. Furrey, who was also once a DI walk-on, worked his way onto an NFL roster and once led the NFC with 98 catches. Meanwhile Cotchery, now the Limestone head coach, enjoyed a 12-year NFL career and played in a Super Bowl.

“As soon as I got in, (Furrey) was already teaching me stuff I didn’t know,” Black told The State. “The ins and outs of the offense, concepts of plays, reading defenses. Just getting my football IQ up because I really didn’t learn much of that coming up through high school and my first year (at USC).”

It gets back to Furrey presenting things in a digestible way.

When Black was first learning the playbook, he was overwhelmed. He was trying to remember every route on every play, complicating matters every time he stepped to the line trying to think back to the correct route.

Furrey told him to think of a route tree like a triangle. You’ll have someone running a high route, somebody coming underneath and then someone running across the field. The quarterback, Furrey told Black, is seeing it like a triangle.

“Just knowing what routes go with what, knowing the concept of the play,” Black said. “Knowing that just makes it so much easier so you can move faster around the field.”

Furrey is not trying to get everyone to the NFL. “That’s between you and the man upstairs,” he said. What he’s trying to do for others is what he did for himself: Maximize potential.

That is what he has always thrived at, so much so that Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Mike Martz brought Furrey to the Motor City not to play much, but to teach the Lions’ inexperienced wide receivers about the NFL. By the end of the season, he caught more passes than any of those young guys.

“Work ethic can allow you to accomplish things that you probably never dreamed of,” Furrey said.