How defenses try to confuse Hilinski

When the Gamecocks take the field Saturday against Texas A&M, it’ll mark Ryan Hilinski’s tenth game as the team’s starting quarterback, a stretch that’s shown some promise but also has come with ups and downs.

He’s 4-5 under center and, as he’s put more film out there throughout the season, the Gamecocks are sensing a pattern of how other teams are defending him.

“Defenses have been trying to mix looks up and confuse him. There are a lot of run-throughs and blitzes have been what we’re seeing. They’re trying to get him rattled and his feet to force bad balls,” Bryan Edwards said. “We’ve seen a good bit of it.”

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There has been a lot of good to go with Hilinski this season.

He was quarterback for over a half in the Gamecocks’ upset win over Georgia and is one of just of just four quarterbacks since 2000 to throw for 300 yards three times in a single season. Stephen Garcia, Jake Bentley and Dylan Thompson were the others.

Against FBS teams, the freshman is also completing 58.4 percent of his passes, averaging 5.8 yards per completion and has a 3-to-1 touchdown to interception ratio.

But with it there has been some bad. He, like the rest of the Gamecock offense, struggled against Missouri and he’s had three games this year where he’s had at least 25 attempts and less than 200 yards passing; granted some of that hasn’t been his fault with receivers dropping passes as well.

The biggest struggle this year has been against pressure, where he’s completing just 39.1 percent of his passes (5.5 yards per attempt) and thrown two of his four interceptions. When facing pressure, he has a 55.1 NFL passer rating compared to 90.3 when not pressured.

Because of that, teams are stacking the box and bringing extra rushers to try and get him out of rhythm and doing a lot of movement pre-snap as well.

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“It was a lot of movement. A lot of what I would call three down odd structure movement whether it's creating the fourth rusher or the fifth rusher with a linebacker, whether it's an inside or outside linebacker, spinning an extra safety down in the box whether you're in middle field or you're in some sort of what we would call a quarters cheat where you're playing quarters with an overhang and a safety down to the back side and zeroing out the X receivers,” Will Muschamp said. “So, those are some things we've seen with some people and the frustrating part is we run the ball well against some of those people and we didn't Saturday night and that's the frustrating part for us.”

A run game usually helps Hilinski out—his best performances usually come when the Gamecocks are doing well on the ground—but some of the struggles are just freshmen growing pains.

Seasoned defensive coordinators, knowing they’re facing a freshman quarterback, usually try to draw up things that will confuse him a little. Hilinski’s gotten caught like that a few times, but he’s grown exponentially in being able to read defenses since taking over after Week 1.

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“They try to confuse Ryan. He’s a smart guy,” Ernest Jones said. “He sees those things. Over the year, I’ve seen a complete difference in him since he stepped on the field the first time. He’s definitely improving. He’s going to be a great quarterback.”

He’s fallen victim to the delayed corner blitz and been sacked 17 teams. Those unique blitzes are to be expected when a team is facing a first-year starter, and it’s something the Gamecocks do when they’re facing an inexperienced guy.

“You go in there and try to make them think,” he said. “If you make them think about everything they’re having to do, it slows them down.”