Jamyest Williams’s situation is a unique one.

It’s not often a player goes from making the All-SEC Freshman team and starting half of his team’s games to not being in the starting lineup in his sophomore season, but that’s the spot Williams has found himself in.

But, Will Muschamp said, the sophomore is handling it the right way.

“He’s upset about it. I’m glad he is,” Muschamp said. “He’s a competitor. You don’t want a guy to be happy he’s not starting. I want all of them to want to be starters.”

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Williams, who started a handful of games as the Gamecocks’ starting nickel back, made the transition to safety this offseason and has been almost exclusively working there his second season in Columbia.

But just because Williams isn’t taking the field with the first team defense when the game starts doesn’t mean he hasn’t seen his fair share of action.

Williams is one of the first options off the bench and has been more of a go-to guy than some of the starters at the safety spot.

Of the five players that have seen time at safety, only one player has had more snaps than Williams; he’s played 74 of the Gamecocks’ 128 defensive plays and Steven Montac’s had 83 snaps.

He has five tackles on the year, the same as starter J.T. Ibe and one more than Montac.

“He’s played as much or more than the guys in front of him,” Muschamp said. “That’s an evaluation that goes on week-to-week on who’s going to help us win the game. At the end of the day, be in the game as the game’s ending. That’s the most important part.”

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Williams is almost like South Carolina’s Swiss Army knife in the defensive backfield. Like most of the team’s safeties and corners, he’s able to play multiple positions and knows the defense entering his second season.

In his freshman season he racked up 32 tackles and two interceptions, playing in 11 of the team’s 13 games before a shoulder injury sidelined him at the end of the year.

This year he made the transition to one of the safety spots and, after a learning curve adjusting to playing the position at the college level, he’s been able to play his way into some game action.

“It’s been pretty smooth,” Williams said during preseason camp. “What I feel like I’ve done well is just communicating with the secondary and communicating the call with everybody. We have to play fast and we have to deal with a tempo offense…We have to get the call faster.”

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The Gamecocks travel to Vanderbilt this weekend with kick off scheduled for 4 p.m. EST on the SEC Network.

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