When Marcus Satterfield sat down last week with Carolina Panthers’ head coach Matt Rhule, he said something that shocked his former boss.

While Rhule in town for South Carolina’s pro day, the two sat down and Satterfield was talking about how much he’s installed through three practices and it blew Rhule away.

Satterfield said Rhule’s response was, “Holy cow,” but Satterfield is throwing a lot at his players early on purpose.

"We’ve implemented a ton, and on purpose: one, to teach the coaches what we’re doing and two to see how much our guys can do. It’s been really nice to see what our guys can do,” he said. “’ We did that as a plan, and it’s good to see our guys out there and able to execute: throw and catch, line up, all the different things we ask them to do.”

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The Gamecocks’ offensive coordinator is just three practices on the job this spring with his main goal over the next month to figure out what this offense is good at heading into the summer.

To do that, Satterfield is throwing a lot at not only his quarterbacks but also the entirety of the offense to see the different strengths and weaknesses.

Satterfield is intentionally installing different schematic elements at his players to see how they handle it.

“I think going into times like this with a new staff in spring practice you can overhaul things mentally and ask them to do some things you probably won’t do during the season just to see what they can do and what they do well. I would hate to go in to the spring saying we’re just going to do A, B and C and that’s it and we take pride in not do a lot in the spring,” he said.

“We’re experimenting with everything: under center, shotgun, huddle, no huddle, tempo, no tempo, play action pass, drop back. Everything is on the table right now to see what we can do.”

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The plan coming out of spring practice will be to evaluate the good and the bad before trimming the playbook down to further tailor it to the players’ skill sets then shrink it even further before the season starts depending on weekly game plans.

Satterfield mentioned wanting to carry a game plan into a particular week of what he thinks a team can do on Saturdays and “most of the time that should not be a lot.”

He said there’s no “magic number” of the number of plays a coach should carry into a particular game but said the plan should be around 50.

“I know with coach Rhule when we were in college he’d try to get us to be somewhere around 50 or slightly under and that’s in all situations. Sometimes you go a little overboard and you’ll look up on Wednesday morning with 100 plays up there and there’s no way you’re going to execute,” Satterfield said. “You just keep fighting and working as a staff to trim it down.”

Satterfield is only three practices into his time at South Carolina and is still evaluating what the offense will exactly look like.

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“I mean I would love it too look like the Green Bay Packers or something like that but you have no idea,” Satterfield said. “You have to see what you have on the field through more than three practices with the new guys coming in. when it comes time to hit our regular season schedule, who do we have available? We’re going to mold it around the talent we have. We do want to be able to run the football. That’s how you win championships: you run the football,”