He’s rooted for the NFL’s top fullback. How the Gamecocks might use him in similar way
South Carolina’s Adam Prentice grew up around three hours from a place where the fullback position changed dramatically decades ago and then more recently revived it in a big way.
Bill Walsh’s West Coast offense for the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers in the 1980s made fullbacks, traditionally the more powerful option in older two-back sets, into high-usage receivers in precision passing games.
The NFL had started to phase them out over the years, but current 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan handed an uncommonly large deal to former Harvard and Baltimore fullback Kyle Juszczyk and proceeded to deploy him all over in one of the NFL’s more innovative offenses.
Prentice grew up in Fresno, California, and the former walk-on linebacker-turned-fullback kept an eye on how the nearby team was using his position.
“I’m a San Francisco 49er fan, so I watched a lot of Juszczyk,” Prentice said, “Watch how he plays, and I think some of his plays and some of the plays that 49ers run are similar to our offense and, you know, a lot of the motions and stuff that he has, similar to how we move around.”
The four-time Pro Bowler averaged nearly 300 receiving yards a year since arriving in San Francisco.
Prentice’s arrival as a graduate transfer is part of a larger offensive change for South Carolina. The Gamecocks became an extremely pass-heavy, run-pass option offense that struggled with a freshman quarterback and thin receiving group last season.
That forced a change at coordinator with Mike Bobo, Prentice’s coach at Colorado State, coming in and starting to install an offense with some more downhill running and hard play-action elements.
Prentice won’t necessarily be a full-time fullback and will split time as a tight end. He said he was split evenly between the two roles early in spring practice, before the coronavirus outbreak postponed the final two thirds of it.
“We have a little bit,” Bobo said. “We haven’t gotten much into the true I-formation, the insert, the lead zones type of stuff that we did at Georgia. He’s been playing more as a H-back right here, right now.”
The 6-foot, 245-pounder caught seven passes last season and was used a bit as a runner the year before.
Like Juszczyk, he has moved all over, sometimes even split out, and can sneak into the flat or a little farther downfield (in a running back drill during an early practice, he was working on short routes as others worked on handoffs). With his skills, he can also do some things as a blocker both in the run and pass games.
Coming to Columbia was a bit of an adventure for him, a chance to try something new in his sixth college season. He joked he’d been wearing flip-flops in late February, hearing about it from teammates but just glad he could without getting snow between his toes.
The value of his knowledge in many ways complements the value of his on-field skills. Outside of quarterback transfer Collin Hill, who also spent a long time in Fort Collins, arguably no Gamecock has a better feel for the new offense.
That, paired with the interrupted spring practice, makes him valuable as a resource for them, getting everything in place for him to be used in those Juszczyk-like ways.
“We’re teaching a lot,” Prentice said. “Kind of teaching on the fly.
“I’m kind of just that coach on the field and a little bit on the sideline too, just correcting and helping as I see.”
