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Mike Furrey Looks To Change The Standard & Mindset Of South Carolina's WR Room

The new wide receivers coach for South Carolina's football team is looking to reshape how the Gamecocks room is viewed.

Mike Furrey's path to South Carolina, like other assistant hires in college football this offseason, was a bit unconventional, getting the job after the Gamecocks moved their WR coach from last season, Justin Stepp, to tight ends, and then lost James Coley to Georgia after he was only on the job for a little over a month. However, Furrey's entire football life has been unconventional in a sense. His coaching career started at a high school in Kentucky, and as a player, through hard work and dedication, he made it to the NFL and spent nine years in the league. His best season came in 2006 with the Detroit Lions, where he led the NFC in catches (98) and racked up over 1,000 receiving yards; he was supposed to serve as a player-coach for the younger players that Fall.

Now leaving the head coaching job at D-II Limestone to come work for Shane Beamer, Furrey believes South Carolina's wide receiver room has the potential to be one of the best the sport has to offer.

"I don't see why USC doesn't have the best wide receiver core in the country. We recruit the best players in the country year in and year out, and that should be our standard, and it will be our standard."

Fans, however, shouldn't mistake the new wide receivers coach as all talk. As Mike continued to lay out his vision, he went over his methods in how he molds a group and gave specifics when asked what fans can expect when his guys take the field.

"There's three things - the first thing that's guaranteed is effort. When you go out there and you watch us run around, it's not gonna be shy of effort. It's not gonna be shy of exhausting ourselves for a better purpose and that's our team, and we'll practice like that; we'll play like that," Furrey explained. "Then [being] goal-oriented, and I call that 'level up'... To me when you become goal-oriented well then that's gonna make sure you're locked in on your goal which to me becomes your discipline," Mike continued. "Through all those things, what evolves then is a great teammate, and I think when you become a great teammate then you become a great group, and when you become a great group, now you become pretty lethal."

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