South Carolina defensive coordinator Clayton White spoke Monday after the Gamecocks spring so far.
Below is a transcript of what the fifth-year Carolina coach had to say.
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Good catch — it looks like I missed the question about Nick. Let me go back through the transcript and add that in. One second!
Opening Statement
Awesome, good afternoon. Hope you guys are great. Glad to be here again, 2025, obviously our first time here, speaking with you guys. But it’s been a nice, exciting two months, just getting to know these new faces, exposing these guys to the Carolina football way, the Beamer way. And obviously, making sure they understand the defense, how we want to do things, how we want to communicate, how we want to get things going. But besides that, it’s been a great two weeks. Obviously, spring ball last week, practice one and two. Like what we’ve seen, guys are hungry and eager to keep growing.
What he’s seen through the first two practices
Yeah, I mean, obviously, you want to be excited about your new faces. And it’s a lot of new faces, so that always makes things brand new and exciting. Anytime you get something new like that, it makes you kinda excited a little bit. But I think what I’ve seen is a lot of guys being eager to learn our defense and trying to expose them to enough things where they can learn and grow fast, but also make mistakes and learn from their mistakes.
The most important thing is how they’re communicating. Day one running to the ball versus day two is night and day. Just teaching them the way that we have to be doing here in the SEC, especially the way we play.
What Fred JayR Johnson needs to do to reach his potential
I think most of our players are at that point where they want to continue reaching their potential, and it’s a process — it’s a day-to-day process. It was nice to see, I pulled in a little early today, and our guys have to be in the building at 7:30. I realized that he was already in his locker by 7:05. I think it’s little things like that. It’s really not on-the-field stuff for a guy like him, as athletic as he is.
It’s really my job and his job to meet each other halfway to make sure he can maximize his potential. But it’s going to be the day-to-day process, how he carries himself on and off the field. Really, mainly off the field as a person — going to class and doing everything right. Those are just building those habits to make you maximize everything that you have. I think if he just continues doing that, the other stuff will naturally come. Defense, you eventually get it over a long period of time — that’s kinda what I tell him. Just keep grinding every day, and then you’ll be great.
Replacing snaps at defensive tackle
Yes, I think one, get the players here, first and foremost. We got some players here, we have some guys that we recruited. We have some guys that we recruited out of the portal, and just keep exposing them to what we do.
