How South Carolina will game plan around Ryan Hilinski in his first start

South Carolina football enters the unknown Saturday.

The Gamecocks have had Ryan Hilinski on campus for eight months. He’s gone through practices, workouts, all of that. But taking the field as the bonafide starter is a whole different beast.

With Jake Bentley sidelined for at least a month and a half, Hilinski is being handed the reins. The Gamecocks have some issues to clean up an offense, and head coach Will Muschamp has a plan to ease in his new signal-caller.

“The big thing is just doing things he feels comfortable with,” Muschamp said Wednesday. “That’s what we’re working through in practice yesterday and today. I thought Ryan had really good days. Dakereon (Joyner) as well. And again have a good practice tomorrow, walk-through Friday.”

The schedule set up ideally, with FCS Charleston Southern coming to Columbia for a noon kickoff. Bentley also started his career off against an overmatched opponent in UMass back in 2016.

The Gamecocks struggled up front in their opener, giving up sacks or hurries on seven of 33 dropbacks and pressures on several more. They have since shuffled the front, benching Hank Manos, moving Donell Stanley and looking at different options at guard.

The opener featured a good bit of inconsistency with an inability to get either Bryan Edwards or Shi Smith going and a running game that petered out after a strong first quarter.

Hilinski came to Columbia with a high level of promise, the No. 64 player in his recruiting class and one of the top pro-style passers in the country.

He made the Elite 11 after a highly accurate 3,700-yard junior season, then led his team through adversity as a senior, with games against the No. 1 and 3 teams in the final USA Today national rankings, plus a pair of games against the No. 14 team.

The key will now be supporting the young passer, lifting things up to help in other areas and not pushing far outside his comfort zone when it comes to the playbook.

“Just things he’s felt confident in, No. 1, and No. 2, got to play well around him,” Muschamp said. “Catching the football, protecting better than we have and being able to run the football. So let’s play well around him and do the things he’s comfortable with.”

This story was originally published September 4, 2019 at 1:16 PM.