New addition couldn’t even watch practice, but he was having an impact on USC QB room
This spring, Collin Hill could barely pop his head out of South Carolina’s training room.
To a degree, he probably didn’t need the mental reps of watching a Gamecocks football practice. After all, the grad transfer likely knows the offense better than any of the returning players.
Still, his position coach, Mike Bobo, wouldn’t mind seeing him out there.
“I know Collin’s frustrated,” Bobo said when he spoke with the media in early March. “They don’t even let him come out of the training room. He’s in there rehabbing the whole time. I asked him, are you ever going to watch practice? He said, They don’t let me out.’”
The Gamecocks completed five spring practices before the coronavirus outbreak mostly shut down the campus.
Hill was around but not around this spring, owing to the torn ACL he suffered playing for Bobo at Colorado State last season. The quarterback from Dorman High School went out to Fort Collins, Colorado to play for a head coach from the South and followed him back to Columbia.
Hill’s presence on the team also looms for a simple reason: He’ll likely have a say in how things go with South Carolina’s quarterback battle.
Players don’t usually don’t graduate and transfer to not compete for a job, and Hill will have an edge in knowledge of the offense and raw experience when he gets fully healthy just before summer. He’ll battle incumbent sophomore starter Ryan Hilinski, a former four-star recruit. If Hill can’t win there, he’ll likely slot in as the backup so freshman Luke Doty can redshirt.
And in the early going, he was already helping out the younger players.
“In the meeting room, listening to him talk to guys,” Bobo said. “If I have a question about something that, you know, I might have forgotten a little bit of something, I ask Collin (and he‘ll say), ‘No, we did it this way, coach.’ He’s been really good about explaining things to those guys, obviously in the meeting room and away from the meeting room.”
Hilinski credited both Hill and Bobo for what they’ve added in the quarterback meeting room and the guidance they’ve given him.
“Collin’s the first guy that stepped up and was like, ‘Hey, I’ll help you with that,’” Hilinski said. “So he’s been really helpful in that regard.”
Hilinski threw for 2,357 yards last season and completed 58.1% of his passes. But the offense was not particularly efficient through the air, and he finished at 5.8 yards per pass attempt, a number Bobo wants to improve.
Hill had an up-and-down run in Fort Collins, constantly battling injuries, including a trio of torn ACLs.
He broke into the starting lineup early in his freshman year throwing for 1,096 yards before a knee injury ended his season. He redshirted as a sophomore following another knee injury, and then started the final four games of the next season, throwing for 1,387 yards.
Hill started 2019 as a starter and posted 840 yards, eight touchdowns and two interceptions in the first three games, but then came the third torn ACL.
With the transition in coaches and a chance to return to his home state, Hill made the move this offseason.
When he committed to the Gamecocks, he said his plan was to compete for the starting job. He’s got a while before he can start doing that, and for the moment he’s helping where he can.
“We’ll see and when Collin gets healthy and gets out there, what’s going to happen with him,” Bobo said. “But you know, right now, I’m good (with the) quarterback play and the guys are going to get opportunity to compete.”
