This offseason isn’t going to be like any offseason Will Muschamp’s had at South Carolina, and likely anywhere else over his coaching career.
With Coronavirus still throwing a wrench in a lot of the team’s offseason plans, delaying the start of summer workouts until the start of June and could derail a pretty pivotal piece of offseason workouts with player run practices.
“I’ve been coaching now over 20 years and we’ve had player run practices for 20 years. You’re able to do them in your facilities with your players. Now the coaches can’t be there and the strength staff can’t be there but that’s a huge building point for your football team in the offseason,” Muschamp said.
“I understand our guys have been off and understand the concern about bringing them back too quickly with this and the situation with the virus. More than likely our guys are going to find somewhere to throw and I’d rather them do it here at our facility.”
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Player run practices are a cornerstone of a team’s offseason workout plan with players working out together away from the coaches and strength staff.
It gives the older players a chance to workout together and the younger players more opportunity to learn the playbook and the system.
Right now the Gamecocks are only allowed in the facility to do strength and conditioning work, doing all their team meetings right now virtually over Zoom.
The NCAA oversight committee did recommend Thursday to allow coaches to begin meeting with players in-person on July 13 with practices similar to OTAs in the NFL allowed to begin July 24.
That could mean there might be player run practices at some point this summer.
“There is not a July calendar yet of when we’ll be able to meet with our players. I don’t know when that’s going to happen,” Muschamp said. “Obviously we’ll work with a couple different models and prepare for those things but we don’t know when that’ll happen.”
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Right now the Gamecocks are at the end of their first week of offseason workouts where they have a handful of different clusters working out at different times every day to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
They’re taking extra precautions—the team doesn’t shower at the facility and they sanitize things after each workout—to make sure they’re being as safe as possible.
“Our team right now has four lift groups: one at 8 in the morning, one at 9:30 then one at 1 and one at 2:30. We’re entering the building in clusters of four to five guys, having their temperature taken, checking their symptoms and they’re walking from one end of the building where they normally enter and walking straight to the weight room to get their run and workout in and leaving the building on the other side.”
