How Dakereon Joyner and Jay Urich will help the Gamecocks this week

Going into South Carolina’s first game Saturday against a likely overmatched Coastal Carolina, the question looms for those outside the program.

Will either Dakereon Joyner or Jay Urich, USC’s young, mobile quarterbacks, set foot on the field?

The only thing the Gamecocks staff is concerned about is how they’re helping this week behind the scenes.

“Dakereon Joyner and Jay Urich have both been the scout team quarterbacks,” linebacker T.J. Brunson said. “They’ve done a really good job of just trying to mimic what they do. They’re doing it to the best of our abilities and just give us the looks so we can understand what the other team can do.”

The Gamecocks are set to face a squad that blends option principles with a spread attack. Some teams have to dig to find a mobile quarterback to run that offense in practice, but USC has no such issue.

“Both of those boys can run, so it’s just been a good look,” linebacker Bryson Allen-Williams said. “I feel like, just as far as our overall depth of the team, they’re giving us a better look. Dakereon can really run the ball and throw the ball off the option.”

Joyner is a four-star true freshman who enrolled last spring, while Urich spent a year redshirting. Both can move well, but coach Will Muschamp has said they have a ways to go as passers.

Last season, the Chanticleers struggled with their head coach out with illness, but still pushed Arkansas late in the year. The team has issues keeping the same quarterback on the field, but three got at least 30 carries and at least 100 positive yards (sacks put a dent in some of those numbers).

Muschamp described quarterback runs and option plays as a “huge” part of what CCU does. He also said the young quarterbacks are with the main offense at times during practice.

Coastal offensive coordinator Jamey Chadwell built a powerful program as head coach at Charleston Southern, averaging 266.5 yards per game on the ground his final season there.

“They try to run a lot of option and spread out teams,” Brunson said. “Gut them up the middle from getting people to overflow too much. The biggest thing that we focus on is everybody doing their job.”

Facing Coastal will be a welcome change for USC players, who’ve been going against each other for the past month.

Some joked about the “cylinder rule,” which means they can’t touch Jake Bentley in drills and scrimmage work. That only somewhat extended to Urich and Joyner.

“We thud them up,” Allen-Williams said, referring to the wrap-and-bump technique that approximates practice tackles. “But we don’t get to hit them too much.”