South Carolina Secondary Believes In Itself, Even If There Are Doubters

The South Carolina Gamecocks' secondary is slightly sparse.

When defensive backs spoke to the media last week, 247Sports reports, there were only about half the available scholarship position players that assistant coaches Clayton White and Torrian Gray have available to them.

"The secondary is very much a work in progress, as the defensive staff waits for a couple of players to return from injury and others to report to campus from high school, junior college and the transfer portal," The Big Spur's Hale McGranahan reports.

Redshirt senior Jaylan Foster, a former walk-on defensive back turned safety, has taken most of the first-team reps at free safety this spring.

“It’s been great,” he said, per The Big Spur. "Being aggressive, not sitting back, going after the offense. It’s been very easy. The coaches are making it easy for us, but yeah, it’s been great.”

Foster said there are differences between White’s system and the one Will Muschamp and Travaris Robinson used to run.

“This defense, there’s a lot of free play, a lot of roaming, freedom to make plays,” Foster said. “A lot of it is just reading the quarterback and reading the offensive line, doing things like that, reacting and making plays.”

Dominick Hill played both cornerback and safety during his only year with Muschamp and Robinson, and the article states Hill wants to be versatile enough to play multiple positions under his new coaches.

“I’m basically working at corner, but I have gotten some nickel reps,” Hill said. “Basically, just trying to be in the back end. We need depth, so I’m just trying to work both positions really.”

Hill said he's enjoyed the transition from one system to the next.

“It’s great, because you get more options, how you do stuff, working with the safety,” he said. “It’s a 4-2-5, so there’s a lot of DBs out there, which is good. A lot of coverages, that’s what we’ve been working on, good technique, really.”

The Gamecocks will host their annual spring game on Saturday and announced that 15,000 can attend, thanks to COVID-19 vaccine rollouts.

The 2021 Garnet and Black Spring Game will be held on Saturday at 2 p.m. and will be televised on SEC Network+. Tickets to the Garnet and Black Spring Game are free for Gamecock Club members and $5 for the general public, a change that has been implemented to manage attendance and address capacity restrictions, according to a news release.

South Carolina opens its season at home on Sept. 4 against Eastern Illinois.

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Megan graduated from the University of Central Florida and writes and tweets about anything related to sports. She replies to comments she shouldn't reply to online and thinks the CFP Rankings are absolutely rigged. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.