Satterfield confident he, offense can improve 'sooner rather than later'

Four games into the season, Marcus Satterfield wouldn’t grade himself out particularly well.

The Gamecocks’ offensive coordinator is in charge of a unit struggling at the moment to get anything going and Wednesday, during his weekly availability, said he’d give himself a below-average grade as South Carolina starts 2-2.

But, despite that, he feels confident he can get it up with eight games remaining.

“I would say right now I would give myself as a real human in this world, I’d give myself probably a C-minus,” Satterfield said. “But I would give myself the benefit of the doubt I’d get that worked up really quickly, sooner rather than later.”

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The Gamecocks are coming off their worst offensive performance of the season against Kentucky, putting up 10 points and posting season-lows for yards per play (4.2), yards per pass attempt (6.3) and yards per rush (2.2).

Despite getting short fields a handful of times, twice late in the game down a score, South Carolina’s offense couldn’t take advantage in a 16-10 loss.

South Carolina would go 3-for-15 combined on third and fourth down, failing three times to get a first down when going for it on fourth.

But Satterfield thinks the Gamecocks are close and can get to a place they need to be if they clean up some execution issues from a coaching and on-field standpoint.

“I’m usually really hard on myself. This last game, which was our worst game ironically enough, I walked out of the thing feeling like I was good with all the decisions I made and the plays that were called,” he said. “We have to everybody get on the same page and get the execution level where it needs to be.”

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South Carolina has gotten off to slow starts in its last three games, falling behind in the first quarter and failing to have a lead in a game during regulation; the only time the Gamecocks led this season against a FBS opponent was on Parker White’s game-winner against ECU as time expired.

Satterfield said it’s human nature when things are off to slower starts to press and panic a little bit—both as players and coaches—but there needs to be a level of trust to know how to adjust and solve some of the issues plaguing South Carolina’s offense.

"You could tell our players started to press a little bit as things started to not go our way. As a play caller you catch yourself starting not to go off the reservation but starting to try A, B and C even if we may not have practiced it this week. You find yourself doing that,” Satterfield said.

“You try to stick to the plan as much as you can and understand eventually you’re going to break through and make a play and it’s going to execute it like you thought it’d work in practice that week. It takes a lot of trust and there are times you do have to trust your gut, trust your instinct and make your adjustments at halftime.”

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The next chance for the Gamecocks to try and get on track will be against Troy Saturday afternoon at Williams-Brice.

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