After his 2017 season was cut short by a season-ending shoulder injury against Kentucky, linebacker Bryson Allen-Williams will be returning to the Gamecocks lineup for his fifth and final season of eligibility this fall.
With 40 games and 13 starts under his belt since 2014, he brings veteran leadership to the table and will provide support in a position otherwise staffed by young players in 2018. South Carolina will have eight underclassmen at linebacker this fall – five freshmen and three sophomores.
“Bryson Allen-Williams is probably our best edge rusher,” said head coach Will Muschamp. “It really hurt us last year when we lost Bryson. We lost a lot of speed of the edge and a guy that can really threaten a tackle with speed. He’s a guy coming back that will play the sam and the buck for us.”
Along with Allen-Williams, senior Eldridge Thompson and junior T.J. Brunson will be the sole upperclassmen on the roster this fall at linebacker. Brunson has one more season of NCAA eligibility, so Allen-Williams has worked to shift the team’s vocal leadership on defense over to him for 2018.
“T.J. is the vocal leader ... Just telling him some of the things that I see, but I let him run the show ...," he said. "Since I’ve been here, we had one of our best defenses last year with him in the middle. My job is just to come in, help, and be a boost to him and not try to step on anybody’s toes. Come back and do what I do, get back to playing the game that I know how to play while helping my team this year.”
In February, Allen-Williams was named to the SEC Leadership Council for the first time in his collegiate career alongside Louisiana State deep snapper Blake Ferguson. During the summer, he attended the SEC’s Spring Meetings and met with the conference’s top executives – including Commissioner Greg Sankey.
“As far as resume building, I feel like the Leadership Council helped me with that as well because Commissioner Sankey knows me by name," he said. "A lot of the executives over there at the SEC know me by name, just knowing me based off the conversations that I’ve had around there so they appreciated my contributions to the group, so I appreciate them for having me.”
Going into the season and reflecting on his experiences at the SEC Spring Meetings, Allen-Williams is focused on leadership, which he hopes will help him in his veteran role. He says he's more conscious of issues that face student athletes.
“There’s so much that I learned but I could say for me, personally, it’s just knowing how to judge people," Allen-Williams said. "Mental health is one of the big things that they talked about this year, which is one of the big problems that a lot of people had in the conference when they talk about mental health and I just think it’s just learning some of the techniques that they had as far as being able to address people, being approachable. A lot of the times leaders are seen as people who are bigger than life or too big to actually get to the level of the people that they’re around and I feel like that helped me out a lot. Being able to understand if you are a leader, if you are a person you’ve got to make sure you hold yourself accountable every day but you’ve also got to be open and willing to listen to people.”