When asked about the offensive performance in Saturday’s scrimmage, South Carolina offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield was bluntly honest about what he thought about the offensive production.
Coming out of the Gamecocks’ first scrimmage of training camp, Satterfield said it was a performance players probably didn’t want to happen and there were plenty of areas for improvement entering this weekend’s scrimmage.
“Other than a third down segment in the scrimmage it was probably not one we would like to revisit and live through again. It was not great,” he said. “I think it was a bunch of guys coming off finding out Luke wasn’t there that day, emotionally trying to figure out where everyone was, what we were going to do. I think we struggled a little bit.”
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Saturday was the first time South Carolina practiced, let alone scrimmaged, after Luke Doty injured his foot, something likely taking at least somewhat of an emotional toll on the team.
The performance Saturday makes the Gamecocks’ second scrimmage of camp—scheduled for Saturday night at Williams-Brice—even bigger with this being the biggest judge of growth since the initial scrimmage.
Satterfield mentioned seeing a few bad offensive scrimmages early on in camp through his career and it isn’t always an indicator for how good an offense can be in the regular season.
“I’ve been on a lot of really good offenses that the first scrimmage in the fall they got their butts kicked by the defense and they came back the second scrimmage and see if they can get a little bit better,” Satterfield said. “That’s where we are right now.”
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It’s up to Satterfield now to coordinate the offense to be productive no matter who is starting at quarterback, and at a micro-level navigate a currently Doty-less quarterback room.
He said the four guys currently healthy—Jason Brown, Colten Gauthier, Connor Jordan, Zeb Noland—aren’t shying away from the challenge but need to protect the ball better than they did last weekend.
“We have to value the ball and take care of the ball. In the first scrimmage everyone’s playing and everyone is getting quality reps so you get the evaluation of each young man,” Satterfield said. “Moving on after the first one, we have to improve on executing our assignments and take care of the football. In short, don’t beat ourselves.”
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With no healthy quarterback having taken a snap in a game at South Carolina, Satterfield and the Gamecocks are now relying on their offensive line to, as Satterfield said, to set the tone for the entire unit.
That’s something Doty handles and now falls to the line, something the offensive line group had to grow into but has gotten better at entering this weekend’s scrimmage.
With a young offense at certain positions, especially the quarterback position, we rely heavily on our offensive line right now to control the mindset of our offense and attitude of our offense. They’re doing a really nice job. That’s something they’ve never had to do so they’re learning how to do it,” Satterfield said.
“From Saturday to today at this very moment they’ve taken a huge step in owning the offense. Not from a mental standpoint but the attitude and the implementation of what our standard is when we’re out there playing.”
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