How South Carolina’s staff is managing Zeb Noland’s switch from coach to QB
South Carolina offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield slipped his hands into his pockets as he stood at the front of South Carolina’s team room Wednesday. Glaring into the fluorescent lights illuminating the podium, he cracked an ear-to-ear grin.
“I got after (quarterback Zeb Noland) a little bit today and that was fun for me just to take it out on him (a bit),” Satterfield said through a smirk. “He responds well to tough coaching.”
With Noland flipping from graduate assistant to quarterback over the past 10 days, Satterfield, head coach Shane Beamer and the rest of USC’s coaching staff are having to retrain their brains.
Two weeks ago, Noland was sitting in staff meetings with the rest of Beamer’s assistants. Now he’s watching film in the quarterback room with Satterfield and South Carolina’s other signal-callers, locked into a battle to start in the wake of Luke Doty’s foot injury.
“I just want to leave a legacy in this program and put it in a better place,” Noland said Tuesday. “Set wins and losses aside, (I want to) set the culture in a better place and that’s really why I wanted to (come back and play).”
Quarterbacks, to one degree or another, are their own breed. They’re scrutinized persistently. There’s only one who can play at a given time. There’s a confidence and swagger that comes with each.
Finding harmony among a group of the alpha-est alphas that exist in sports is a tall task in itself. Take, for example, how 50 percent of the quarterbacks South Carolina has signed out of high school since 2010 have left.
But Noland’s arrival has been met with largely positive vibes among South Carolina’s other quarterbacks.
Beamer told reporters Tuesday Brown had his best week of practice the week prior. It came, at least in part, as Brown was pushed by Noland for the starting role vacated by Doty.
Freshman Colten Gauthier, too, maintained a cool and calm demeanor when asked about South Carolina’s newly boiling quarterback competition the same day Noland was first spotted at practice.
“Nothing is set until Coach Beamer stands up here and he’s like, ‘This is our starting quarterback on September 4,” Gauthier said last week. “So that’s how I would look at it from that standpoint.”
That Noland has handled his transition with maturity and poise derives from his background. He’s backed up Brock Purdy at Iowa State and Trey Lance at North Dakota State, but remained dogged in his preparation week-to-week.
Noland, like Beamer and Satterfield, is also a coach’s kid. Travis Noland, Zeb’s father, has spent nearly 30 years coaching high school football in Georgia. He has won more than two games for every loss in his career. Travis has also twice been a state runner-up and owns three region titles.
“You have a pretty good understanding of stuff because you’ve grown up around the game,” Beamer said. “And when you leave high school or wherever, you go home and then your dad’s still there and probably still talking football at night. You’re kind of wise beyond your years.”
“When you’re a coach’s son you have to hear about how good or bad your father is in the stands and in the city, in the town,” Satterfield added. “And I think you just develop a toughness about you both mentally and physically.”
During Wednesday’s practice, Noland raced around the field, often side-by-side with Brown. They tossed short passes into the flats. They traded off firing post patterns to receivers running on air during the final few minutes of the open portion of the session.
Noland, for all intents and purposes, looked comfortable.
Satterfield has remained adamant about the timeline on deciding a quarterback. Last week he said “sooner than later.” He doubled down again on Wednesday adding, “I think that we’re doing our due diligence right now just to make sure that we’re getting as much information on these guys as we possibly can.”
Beamer, too, noted Tuesday it would behoove South Carolina to make a decision under center quickly as the Gamecocks are now just nine days out from their season opener against Eastern Illinois.
Noland might be the guy. Brown could also earn that role. Even Gauthier is theoretically in the mix.
However it happens, Satterfield and Beamer are continuing to re-work their thinking. Noland isn’t making copies, grabbing coffee or charting offensive plays. He’s smack dab in the middle of a quarterback competition and the end seems to be in sight.
This story was originally published August 26, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
