McClendon wants to be aggressive, take plenty of scoring shots

Bryan McClendon’s still in a wait-and-see mode for what his offense can be this season still about a month away from the Gamecocks’ season opener, but he does know a few things.

Those things are mostly philosophical and they deal a lot with wanting to move fast, score a lot of points and, maybe most important, being aggressive maybe to the point where he says he has to get “reeled back.”

“I feel like in order to score points, you have to try to score points. I think that’s going to be my mindset as far as going out there and calling it,” McClendon said. “Sometimes I have to get reeled back and I’m OK with that. I want to make sure we’re going out there and we want to be aggressive in everything we do.”

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This is McClendon’s first full season as the team’s offensive coordinator after taking over play-calling duties for the Outback Bowl after Kurt Roper’s dismissal.

Fans were able to get a glimpse into what his up-tempo, aggressive style looked like as the Gamecocks scored 23 points in the second half en route to a 26-19 win over Michigan.

He’s had all offseason to work on implementing his brand of football, which could mean more vertical shots down the field exploiting defensive mismatches in the secondary to try and put as many touchdowns on the board as possible.

The players have totally bought in, quarterback Jake Bentley said, and are really optimistic about what this offense can do.

“I think they understand that any play can be a touchdown. I think the biggest change I’ve seen is maybe if a guy just has a vertical that he thinks he’s just trying to clear out the defense that he can be a play to go score. if he sees one-on-one he wants me to throw it.”

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South Carolina averaged just 24.23 points per game last season, 12th-best in the SEC ahead of just Florida (22.09) and Tennessee (19.83).

McClendon said there’s no target for how many points he wants to score in a game, but that number has to get better. That’s where the up-tempo style of offense comes into play, giving the Gamecocks as many chances as possible to score.

There’s no set number of plays the team wants to run but it’ll likely be more than the 63.4 they ran per game last year, 125th out of 130 teams in the country.

“I would like to run as many as possible, so whatever set number that might be,” McClendon said. “I’d like to run as many as possible.”

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The players McClendon’s now coaching love the new philosophies he’s installing as the Gamecocks start preseason camp Friday.

They want to score and be able to do that at will, something they think is a lot more feasible this year under McClendon.

“I feel like a lot of plays in our offense are designed to score points,” running back A.J. Turner said. “That’s what we want to do: score points, run it up on teams. That’s the name of the game.”