How the Gamecocks are managing QBs for bowl week and beyond

The call is out for South Carolina football players: If you can sling it, you best be ready.

Gamecocks coach Shane Beamer has said several times that the South Carolina offense in Thursday’s Duke’s Mayo Bowl belongs to elder starter Zeb Noland, following the transfer out of starter Jason Brown. But the USC staff isn’t going into the game against North Carolina with everything riding on the Iowa State and North Dakota State transfer.

“It’s adventurous right now, with Jason gone,” Beamer said Sunday after USC’s bowl practice held at Charlotte Christian School. “Obviously Zeb has been back there, Colton (Gauthier) we have high hopes for. Jake Helfrich is a walk-on from here in Charlotte that is a good player that is obviously getting a lot of work as well. We’ve got a lot of guys on our team that were high school quarterbacks. So particularly with COVID and challenges of that right now, you hate to, but you’ve always got to think about worst-case scenario.”

The most prominent former quarterback is wide receiver Dakereon Joyner, who spent more than a year and a half on campus as a full-time passer and later stepped in and led the team to finish a 2019 upset of No. 3 Georgia. Starting safety R.J. Roderick and oft-injured wide receiver Xavier Legette also played behind center as run-first quarterbacks in high school.

Joyner has rotated in as a Wildcat passer this season, mostly running the ball. But that package has not been wholly effective.

The Gamecocks have also deployed some pure Wildcat, with tailback Kevin Harris getting some snaps.

The quarterback spot was in flux for most of the season. Luke Doty was projected to start until a preseason foot injury changed those plans. Noland was uneven for the first two games and a bit of the third before he got hurt.

Doty stepped in but was clearly hobbled — foot surgery ended his season a few weeks later. After Noland struggled, Brown came in for the final four games of the regular season. The St. Francis University transfer was uneven, but he threw for 721 yards with eight touchdowns and led the Gamecocks to upsets of Auburn and Florida.

When the team added quarterback Spencer Rattler as a transfer, Brown departed to get a jump on finding a next school, leaving the Gamecocks in this predicament.

“You want to make sure you’ve got enough quarterbacks to play the game,” Beamer. “So I’m not gonna say we’ve had open tryouts but you’ve kind of got a ‘break glass in case of emergency’ type thing as well.”

Another new face at QB

This scarcity of quarterbacks doesn’t project to be a long-term problem.

Doty, a former four-star recruit, will be back. Rattler, who entered the 2021 season as a Heisman candidate at Oklahoma, is coming in. Along with Gauthier, who redshirted this season, the staff is adding a pair of blue-chip freshmen, Tanner Bailey and Braden Davis.

Bailey joined USC’s class in the late going after a coaching change at Oregon.

“Tanner’s one that when I first got here, we liked early,” Beamer said.

Bailey, the No. 218 player overall in the 2022 recruiting class, built a relationship with Gamecocks offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield, but was also being recruited by Joe Moorhead, who was fired from Mississippi State and landed at Oregon.

“He was a little bit farther along in that relationship with Oregon,” Beamer said. “And, you know, quarterback recruiting, it’s like dominoes. Once you see one commit, it’s kind of like the ball gets rolling, the next guy, next guy, next guy, and Tanner went ahead and jumped on that offer.”

When things changed at Oregon, Bailey reached out to USC. He and Beamer had barely had a conversation before the school was sending over scholarship players.

That leaves the team with a projected five scholarship passers, an unusually high number. Beamer seemed fine with the message it sends to his passers.

“From from a depth standpoint, my job is always to increase the depth and the competition at every single position,” Beamer said. “Competition makes makes everyone better, and that’s what I saw is an opportunity to do that. Particularly, not that we’re worried about Luke next year, but you know Luke will be probably limited in spring practice. And then Colton is still young. And it is still scary in a lot of ways because you got next year, you’re looking at Spencer, Luke and then a whole bunch of freshmen, you know, and just really just trying to constantly improve the depth at every position.”

A young face in the building

Beamer brought Gauthier up several times while speaking Sunday, and the freshman has been working in the wings all season. The Georgia product came to Columbia a bit on the raw side, having played on the small-school level in that state. He’s expected to be the backup in Thursday’s bowl game.

“He’s still in all the quarterback meetings with coach Satt and all the quarterbacks,” Beamer said. “So mentally, he’s made a lot of progress and then being able to just communicate things and then the throws he’s made, he’s gotten better.”

Gauthier threw one pass for 19 yards this season, getting a little playing time late in an opening-game blowout of Eastern Illinois. He had 2,052 yards as a high school senior and boasts a rocket arm.

In-season, it’s rare to even get three quarterbacks much practice work, so Gauthier had to find another avenue to show his skills.

“On Sunday nights … we keep the young guys out there,” Beamer said. “And he’s like a madman during that because we only have 10 minutes to work. So as soon as practice ends, he’s screaming and yelling at receivers to get out there because he’s trying to get as many reps and throws in 10 minutes as he can. So he’s a competitor and he’s a winner. And I’m excited about his future here at Carolina as well.”

This story was originally published December 27, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "How the Gamecocks are managing QBs for bowl week and beyond."