Why Spencer Rattler still has the edge on Luke Doty as USC’s QB after Georgia loss
The meat of the South Carolina football season is coming.
After being dismantled 48-7 by No. 1 Georgia on Saturday, the good vibes aren’t as prevalent in Columbia at the moment.
You’ve got questions. I’ve got answers. Let’s get to your USC musings.
—Questions have been lightly edited for clarity.—
▪ Why not start Luke Doty? He has a full year under his belt in this “offense.” Perhaps he has a better grasp of it. — Gene V.
Let me put the kibosh on this — Luke Doty doesn’t give South Carolina its highest upside at quarterback right now.
That’s no knock on Doty, who Shane Beamer said performed well during mop-up duty Saturday. However, if the Gamecocks’ offense is going to punch above its weight this fall, it’s going to do so with Spencer Rattler at its helm.
I spelled out a good chunk of this after the game, but it’s worth reiterating.
Rattler has had his moments of late. His first interception on a wheel route to Juju McDowell on Saturday was egregious. His five total interceptions are the most among the 16 Southeastern Conference quarterbacks averaging 15 or more throws per contest.
That’s the bad.
The good? South Carolina has been vastly more explosive with Rattler at the helm this fall.
The Gamecocks had just 16 passing plays of 30 or more yards a season ago. South Carolina already has seven such plays this year and, assuming it keeps on that pace, would finish with 28 on the year — a nearly 75% uptick from last fall and what would be the for a USC offense since at least 2012.
South Carolina has been a bit boom or bust offensively this year. Its 27.03% third-down conversion rate ranks last in the SEC and 123rd of 131 FBS teams. The Gamecocks, and Rattler, need to be more efficient in stringing together drives.
Doty figures to be the future at quarterback. Frankly, I’d be shocked if he’s not the starter heading into the 2023 season.
That said, Rattler has brought an explosive dynamic to this offense that it hasn’t had in a decade or more. You’ll take some of the mistakes if he continues to make the “wow” throws that tend to come with them.
▪ Defense will be fine. Offense has no identity and yes a change needs to be made. Move Freddie Kitchens to OC — Chad R.
I think it’s fair to say South Carolina hasn’t really had a true offensive identity in the last year-plus. I don’t think making a change at offensive coordinator three games into the season, though, is necessary — not yet, anyway.
Beamer and offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield have talked for months about how multiple South Carolina can be offensively. In layman’s terms, that means the Gamecocks can run similar plays in lots of different formations to make it difficult for opposing defenses to identify what they’re trying to do from play to play.
That reminds me of an old comedy sketch. The joke boiled down to a person who speaks multiple languages can’t be stupid. The punch line was simple — if someone is dumb in one language, it probably means they’re dumb in the other two as well.
To be clear, I’m not saying anyone at South Carolina is dumb. My point is, it doesn’t matter if the Gamecocks line up in all sorts of formations if they can’t run their plays effectively out of any of them.
Satterfield, to his credit, has seemed to adjust some of late, leaning more heavily on the passing game. The Gamecocks are on pace to average their third-most pass attempts per game since 2012. The 7.4 yards per throw South Carolina quarterbacks are averaging would also be the third-best mark for a USC squad in the last eight years.
I agree South Carolina’s defense should be fine in the long run. Playing Georgia without five starters was never going to be pretty. In theory, the bulk of those guys should be back in the next few weeks.
As for the second part of this thought, the Gamecocks are starting to focus on what they do well (passing). What that means for South Carolina’s on-field results against teams that aren’t superhuman — like Georgia — is still TBD.
That’s a great segue in-to the next couple questions...
▪ At the start of the year I thought we would be an 8 win team… Now, praying for 6. — Charlie B.
▪ A very long season. 6-6 will require us beating Kentucky, Florida, Tennessee or Clemson. That assumes we beat Vandy and Mizzou. We simply don’t have enough SEC caliber talent — Bob T.
There were plenty of preseason prognosticators that felt South Carolina could fight up in the SEC East this fall. The spots behind Georgia and ahead of Missouri and Vanderbilt figured to be a crapshoot.
I’m not quite sure why Saturday’s loss feels like Armageddon around Columbia, but folks need to pause, breathe and repeat said process three or four more times.
South Carolina is still in the infancy of its rebuild under Beamer. I get it, wins over Auburn, Florida and North Carolina last year were a big deal. Getting to seven wins legitimately should’ve made Beamer an SEC Coach of the Year candidate (I wrote as much last year).
The caveat here is, the Gamecocks were still one of the least-talented teams in their own division a year ago and — even in the ever-evolving transfer portal world — I truly believe it takes three or four years to completely flip a roster and build championship-level depth.
South Carolina ranked as the eighth-most-talented team in the SEC and fourth in the East, according to the 247Sports Team Talent Composite, a ranking calculated by how many five-, four- and three-star recruits on a given team. The only team slotted behind USC that projects to finish ahead of it on the field in 2022 was Kentucky, which still has five more four-star recruits on its roster.
It’s easy to forget this is a program that won a combined six games between the 2019 and 2020 seasons. It hadn’t completely bottomed out, but it wasn’t that far off and the talent development wasn’t there.
South Carolina realistically felt like a six-, seven-, maybe eight-win team if everything broke right this year. Getting annihilated by what looks like the best team in college football isn’t something to sound every alarm in town about. (Peep Oregon’s last few results for proof of concept.)
The sky isn’t falling in Columbia. The Gamecocks still have a realistic path to bowl eligibility — and a seven-win season if it can beat some combination of Kentucky, Florida and/or Tennessee.
For now? Pour something stiff to forget about the Georgia game. Let’s circle up on this again when South Carolina’s season really begins on Oct. 8 at Kentucky.
This story was originally published September 20, 2022 at 11:28 AM.
