It evidently didn’t take long for South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer to find his new special teams coordinator. Just days after losing Joe Decamillis to the Las Vegas Raiders, Beamer is reportedly bringing an NFL coach back to college.
ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported on Friday that the Gamecocks are expected to hire former Buffalo Bills STC Matthew Smiley to replace Decamillis. Smiley, who was fired by the Bills earlier this month, has worked special teams in the NFL for more than a decade and was Buffalo’s STC from 2022 to 2024. He’s been STC at Dartmouth, Eastern Illinois, and Charleston Southern.
Smiley joined the Bills in 2017 as assistant special teams coordinator when Sean McDermott was hired as head coach in 2017 and held that position for five years. During that time, he worked with former Dutch Fork High School placekicker Tyler Bass, who scored 141 points in 2020 and 135 in 2021. In ’21, Bass was named AFC Special Teams Player of the Month for October, converting 51 of his extra point attempts and 28 of 32 field goal attempts.