‘This is what the expectation is.’ Can CCU sustain its football successes of 2020-21?
Following three consecutive losing seasons to begin its FBS existence, Coastal Carolina has gone 22-3 over the past two seasons.
The Chanticleers won 11 games for the second consecutive season in 2021 and were ranked for 22 consecutive releases of both The Associated Press and USA Today Coaches polls over the past two seasons, ascending as high as No. 9.
They’ve been accumulating rings and trophies, as well, adding the program’s first bowl victory Friday in the Tailgreeter Cure Bowl to the Sun Belt Conference Championship they shared with Louisiana last season.
Is the success sustainable?
It will be a year of transition in 2022 for the Chants with the exit of a large senior class that includes 13 sixth-year super seniors, and the expected loss of at least 17 starters on offense and defense in addition to all special teams specialists.
Add to that speculation that head coach Jamey Chadwell and/or some of his assistant coaches could be receiving offers from larger programs in the coming years, and the likelihood that quarterback Grayson McCall will leave following his upcoming redshirt junior season, and there are some uncertainties looking at the future.
“I think we’ve put ourselves in a good position,” Chadwell said. “I think because of COVID everybody’s going to be losing a decent amount of their roster. So we have to do a good job of reloading. It won’t be a rebuild; I think we’ll reload. We might have to do things differently because we don’t have the experience.
“But this is what the expectation is and we’re not going to go backwards.”
Season of change
Coastal’s senior class is nearly 30 players. It was expanded this year by the NCAA’s granting of an extra year of eligibility to all fall athletes because of the impact of the coronavirus on the 2020 season.
Thirteen players competed this year in a final season they wouldn’t have normally had, and nearly all of them were starters.
So 14 of those seniors combined for a remarkable 505 starts at CCU. That number does not include the 141 combined games played by outgoing starting punter Charles Ouverson, kicker Massimo Biscardi and long snapper C.J. Schrimpf.
Among players leaving the program, offensive lineman Trey Carter led the team with 61 starts, and fellow linemen Steven Bedosky, Sam Thompson and Antwine Loper had 44, 35 and 29, respectively. Linebackers Silas Kelly and Teddy Gallagher had 46 and 40 starts, respectively, defensive lineman C.J. Brewer had 43 and outside linebacker Jeffrey Gunter had 37.
The extra year of eligibility expended for all those players means CCU won’t return many starters, but players who would have moved into starting positions this past season had an extra year of development before taking over those positions, and they had experienced leaders to learn from.
“The young guys will carry on the tradition,” Kelly said. “I’m proud of the work they’ve put in, and Coastal is set up for success in the future.”
CCU will have a ton of production to replace from fourth-year seniors Jaivon Heiligh and Isaiah Likely.
Heiligh leaves with CCU records for career receptions (191) and receiving yards (2,825) and single-season receiving yards (1,127), and Likely was easily the most prolific tight end in school history with 133 receptions for 2,048 yards and 27 TDs in his career. Likely is extremely athletic at 6-foot-4, 240 pounds and is expected to be selected in the early rounds of the NFL Draft in April.
The cupboard isn’t bare
Despite the loss of so many starters and leaders, the Chants are returning some bonafide stars.
After contemplating a transfer, and with NFL eligibility, McCall announced Tuesday that he is returning to Conway in 2022 to run CCU’s dynamic spread-option offense. The Chants rank sixth in scoring offense and eighth in total offense in FBS in 2021.
“I think he knows how much he cares about his teammates and how much his teammates care about him. He’s a special player,” Chadwell said of McCall. “. . . There’s not enough I can say about him personally about the way he’s developed this year, and I’m thankful he’s part of us.”
McCall is the two-time reigning Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year and 2021 Cure Bowl MVP. He set an NCAA FBS record for passing efficiency at 207.7, shattering the single-season record of 203.1 set by Mac Jones at Alabama in 2020. He also leads all of FBS in yards per pass attempt by nearly 2 yards at 11.92 yards, and is second in passing yards per completion at 16.32 yards.
He is fifth in the nation in completion percentage at 73% and threw for 2,873 yards in 11 games with 27 touchdowns and just three interceptions in 2021. For his CCU career, McCall has completed 71% of his passes with 54 touchdowns and six interceptions, and has rushed for 870 yards and 11 scores. He is 20-2 as a starter, including 10-1 in 2021.
“I think people in this league and I think people probably nationally don’t realize how good he is and how good he makes us,” Chadwell said of McCall.
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He’s expected to share the backfield in 2022 with Braydon Bennett, the 6-2, 190-pound speedster and son of former South Carolina star Brandon Bennett.
Bennett rushed for 636 yards and seven TDs while averaging a sensational 8.6 yards per carry, and was also fourth on the team with 24 receptions for an average of more than 12 yards per catch as a redshirt freshman in 2021. He received more touches after junior running back Reese White, who is also expected to return, was injured in the eighth game of the season.
Bennett had 155 all-purpose yards, three touchdowns and 108 rushing yards on just six carries in the Cure Bowl.
“He’s worked hard for it all year. He finally got his chance when Reese went down and we knew what we had in him,” McCall said of Bennett. “This summer we saw what he could do. He’s going to be the Player of the Year in this conference in the years to come. He’s definitely a great weapon. Obviously, the speed, but he’s developing into a full running back, being able to pick up blitzes and run downfield and catch the ball. So a great weapon in Braydon and I’m excited to play with him in the years to come.”
Added Kelly: “Braydon’s probably the fastest dude I’ve ever played against. He’s a menace.”
Josaiah Stewart is a menace to opposing offenses. CCU’s true freshman defensive end was named to multiple freshman All-America teams and First Team All-Sun Belt, and is tied for fourth in the nation with 12.5 sacks in 2021 while also recording 43 total tackles and three forced fumbles.
Stewart is 6-2, 245 and will likely get bigger, faster and stronger in his first offseason in the CCU strength program. “He’s just an unbelievable young man and he’s just scratching the surface,” Chadwell said.
The Chants also have an anchor for an offensive line that otherwise loses four starters in rising junior guard Willie Lampkin (6-1, 285), who was named a 2020 freshman or true freshman All-American by ESPN, 247Sports and The Athletic.
Two-time First Team All-Sun Belt cornerback D’Jordan Strong announced he’ll return for a fifth season of eligibility to anchor what will likely be an inexperienced secondary. Strong’s five interceptions in 2020 were tied for fifth nationally.
Recruiting grades
Propelled by its on-field success, Coastal’s recruiting classes have improved in each of the past two years, according to 247Sports and Rivals.
So CCU’s incoming 2022 class is good but not great. After signing 15 players in the three-day early signing period last week, the Chants’ class is ranked 72nd by 247Sports and 78th by Rivals. Both recruiting analysis services have CCU’s class ranked second in the Sun Belt Conference behind Arkansas State.
247Sports had Coastal’s recruiting classes ranked 100th in 2020 and 81st this year.
“We’ve recruited pretty well,” Chadwell said. “I think we’re going to have good talent coming up. It’s just going to be inexperienced because we’ve had so many guys playing. It’s going to be hard to replace . . . We’ve got no one like Isaiah on our team. But we do feel like we’ve recruited pretty well and we’ve got some very young talent. So I think we’ve got a chance to be talented, way more talented, but less experienced.”
The CCU brand has been elevated over the past couple years with the team’s success, the media and social media attention it has received, and the amount of times it has been featured on national television. That includes numerous non-Saturday games when there were few or no other college games being played to compete for the TV audience.
The improved national profile should help the Chants continue to land recruiting classes that are ranked near the top among teams in Group of Five conferences.
“That’s a brand nationally now,” Chadwell said following the bowl win while holding up a visor with a Chanticleer logo. “Everybody knows what a Chanticleer is. Three years ago, four years ago, maybe not as much, but now everybody knows what it is. The senior class and our football program has been a big part of why this is recognized and I am thankful to be a part of it.”
Transfer portal gains and losses
CCU has pulled one player thus far from the NCAA Transfer Portal: linebacker Adrian Hope from Furman, who was named a 2019 HERO Sports FCS Freshman First Team All-American.
Chadwell has at least 20 scholarships to give to the class of 2022, according to CCU assistant AD for media relations Kevin Davis. With 15 signees in the early period, he has more to give, and some could go to transfers.
“We’re going to have to fill some immediate needs that we have,” Chadwell said.
The Chants will lose a number of players to the portal, according to individual player social media accounts and recruiting analysis services 247Sports and Rivals.
They include a pair of safeties in redshirt sophomore Mateo Sudipo and redshirt junior Tre Douglas, who transferred to CCU prior to this season from Vanderbilt. Sudipo started one game and had 14 tackles and two pass breakups this season, and Douglas did not record any statistics.
Biscardi is seeking another opportunity as a graduate, as is Australian kicker Kieran Colahan, CCU’s kickoff specialist who this season made his only field-goal attempt from 38 yards and kicked seven extra points.
Redshirt junior running back Fred Jackson, fifth-year senior linebacker EJ Porter and sophomore linebacker Isaiah Stephens are all backup players who have entered the portal.
Chadwell’s future
How long will Coastal be able to hold onto Chadwell, and how long will Chadwell be able to keep the bulk and key members of his staff intact?
With CCU’s quick ascension to a Top 25 program, Chadwell’s name has been mentioned for Power Five head coach openings over the past two years.
South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner interviewed Chadwell prior to hiring Shane Beamer as the Gamecocks coach last year, and Chadwell was established as the betting favorite for the Virginia Tech vacancy in November by the sports betting site Sportsline before the Hokies hired Penn State defensive coordinator Brent Pry.
Chadwell is the creator and orchestrator of CCU’s spread option offense, and is a hot name at the age of 44.
But he also has just four years of FBS head coaching experience and no coaching experience in any capacity at a Power Five school, which may have some larger programs tepid — for now — on handing him the reins of a program.
Chadwell and Billy Napier, who was Sun Belt rival Louisiana’s coach for four years, were both mentioned for coaching vacancies in the past two years. Napier, although two years younger at 42, was an assistant at Power Five programs for 11 years between 2006-17, including under Clemson’s Dabo Swinney and Alabama’s Nick Saban, and he was hired to be Florida’s head coach earlier this month.
The offers will likely come as Chadwell gains experience, especially if CCU can maintain its prosperity.
Chadwell has not hired assistants with a lot of FBS experience. He’s built the CCU program with assistants who were with him at his previous stops at smaller schools North Greenville, Delta State and Charleston Southern.
Only two of Chadwell’s 10 assistants — offensive line coach Bill Durkin, who is the lone holdover from Joe Moglia’s staff prior to Chadwell’s arrival in Conway in 2017, and receivers coach Tony Washington — did not coach at one of Chadwell’s previous stops. Defensive coordinator Chad Staggs, co-offensive coordinator/running backs coach Newland Isaac and defensive line coach Skylor Magee have been with Chadwell at all four of his stops.
Only offensive line coach Bill Durkin, an experienced coach in his seventh season at Coastal, and Washington, who is early in his coaching career after playing in the NFL, are unaffiliated with Charleston Southern or Chadwell’s other locations.
“The coaches that are part of it; we’ve been together a long time in a lot of different ways,” Chadwell said. “And for us to be able to build a program and take it to the level that it is together, that means a lot to me. Because we were nobodies. ‘You’ve never been at this level, you can’t win, you can’t do all these things,’ we hear those things all the time. The thing about the coaches is they believe in each other, they believe in what we do. . . . And I’m thankful for Coastal for believing in us, because not a lot of people did.”
So there’s a loyalty within the program, but offers could be coming for some of his assistants, particularly co-offensive coordinators Isaac and Willy Korn considering CCU’s offensive success. Coastal has been an FBS top-20 program in both scoring and total offense in each of the past two years.
Isaac was named the 2021 American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) FBS Assistant Coach of the Year and was a finalist for the Broyles Award, another national assistant COY honor whose selection process includes the Football Writers Association of America (FWAA), broadcasters, a college football Hall of Fame selection committee, and current college head coaches.
Change is coming in some ways at CCU, as is customary in Group of Five college football programs. Will it impact the winning?
This story was originally published December 23, 2021 at 6:55 AM.
