How, why South Carolina builds its own triple option for The Citadel

You’ll find some coaches that shudder at the idea of switching to a triple-option offense. There’s feel and rhythm that’s hard to pinpoint. It has to be developed and honed and, for many coaches, represents a large scale undertaking.

For this singular week in the season, South Carolina has to build one on the fly and do it with spare parts.

To practice and prepare for The Citadel’s triple option, the Gamecocks need someone to run one. That falls to the scout team, and while most modern offenses are not too far of a departure from what the Gamecocks do, the Bulldogs’ scheme certainly is.

So the coaches must sift through players not trained in that system for a few that might work. And they look for specific archetypes.

“The fastest guy we can have to play quarterback, the toughest hardest runner we have to play B-back, their fullback, and then their two edge guys can be anything from a wide receiver to other tailbacks right there,” USC coach Shawn Elliott said.

He said multiple players are sharing the quarterback role, splitting between some of the better athletes available and someone who can throw the ball. Fullback Rivers Bedenbaugh is at B-back, the up-the-middle power anchor of the scheme, and redshirting freshman tailback Mon Denson is among the wings.

In some spots, the staff looks to use players who were in option systems in their high school days. Those are growing less common, but sometimes a player slots in.

“There’s always a thought in the back of your mind, who did this?” Elliott said. “Rivers Bedenbaugh was at Georgia Southern before he came here. So he had a little bit of that in his system.”

These option systems can be so particular, Elliott found himself getting on a graduate assistant who was moonlighting as scout quarterback. The would-be running quarterback was slipping on the grass on South Carolina's practice field and Elliott delivered the edict the coach needed to wear cleats to practice because his decisions had to be “split-second” with movement to match.

Arguably the greatest challenge of this sort of offense is that a team can’t truly prepare for it. Few of the scout linemen are well-versed in the veer blocking that often has them launching into the second level and it’s never easy to prepare a defensive line for cut blocking that trips them up.

Elliott said the team had periods in each of the past five weeks’ practices to prepare for that.

“Our scout team is going to do a good job, trying to resemble an offense, certainly, like the one they run,” Elliott said. “But no scout team ever does this system justice.”