Film breakdown: further examination of spring game offense
South Carolina's spring game, and spring practice, is over and now comes the time where analysis and a statistical breakdown of what fans and media saw from the almost two-hour scrimmage Sunday.
GamecockCentral took some time to breakdown where the Gamecocks were most successful and the strengths offensively in terms of the best places to run and which passers were the most efficient when operating the offense.
Run game
South Carolina heavily featured its run game with ZaQuandre White, Jaheim Bell and Nathan Harris-Waynick with plenty of success on runs not up the middle (although there was success at times in runs up the middle).
The Gamecocks had seven runs that were to the right side of the formation, rushing for 46 yards and 6.6 yards per pop with two rushes of 10 or more yards. Compare that to six rushes to the left with 49 yards yards—8.2 yards per attempt—with two rushes of at least 10 yards along with the longest rush of the day, a 22-yard sprint by White.
Up the middle the Gamecocks had a few big rushes—one for 16 from White and another 12-yarder by Harris-Waynick, but had a few others to go for five yards or fewer. The offense rushed 22 times up the middle for 58 yards, an average of 2.6 yards per attempt.
Of those 22, two were sacks for minus-14 yards. Take those away and the run game up the middle had 20 carries for 72 yards (3.6 yards per carry) with both touchdowns run coming on rushes up the middle.
Luke Doty
Doty finished his day with the most passing yards of any quarterback, throwing for 54 yards on 5-for-7 passing that would give him an NFL passer rating of 93.8.
His best area of the field came on throws at or behind the line of scrimmage, completing both of his pass attempts there for 28 yards, 19 of which came on a screen pass to white. Doty was a perfect 2-for-2 on throws between the line of scrimmage and 10 yards down field for 12 yards.
He was 1-for-3 on throws further than 10 yards downfield, the lone completion a 14-yard completion to Dakereon Joyner.
Doty was the starting quarterback on two different touchdown drives going up against the first-team defense.
Jason Brown
Brown was the team's second-leading passer with all of his snaps coming against the non-first team defense. Brown had the most explosive plays in the pass game and the lone passing touchdown of the stat portion of the scrimmage.
He'd go 3-for-3 for 47 yards and a score, giving him a NFL passer rating of 130.83.
Brown had two drops while in the game and finished going 0-for-1 behind the line of scrimmage, 1-for-1 for nine yards from zero to 10 yards downfield and 2-for-3 for 38 yards from 10-to-20 yards downfield, including a 27 yard completion to Keveon Mullins.
Brown's only drive during the first half of the spring game ended with a touchdown, an 11-yard completion to high school and St. Francis teammate EJ Jenkins.
Colten Gauthier and Connor Jordan
Gauthier and Jordan only combined for three pass attempts, completing one for three yards. The lone completion came from Gauthier, who hit Ger-Cari Caldwell for a three-yard gain.
