It would have been easy for Jason Brown to take the events of this week negatively.

The St. Francis transfer having gone through spring practice, summer workouts and training camp with the team was named the backup after a two-week competition with graduate assistant turned active quarterback Zeb Noland.

Losing any potential starting job is tough for someone as competitive as Brown is by all indications, but negativity was not the theme of his weekly press conference Tuesday.

“I want to be as positive as I can be. I want to see him succeed. That means the team’s going to succeed and I want to win games,” he said. “I want to win a national championship. I’m not going to sit here and be negative towards anybody.”

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Brown was in a similar situation his sophomore year at St. Francis, losing out on the starting job then, and admitted he didn’t take it well and easily could have handled his situation better.

Two years later he finds himself in the same boat with a wealth more maturity as he tries to break into the starting lineup behind center.

What makes the pill a little easier to stomach is the fact there is a strong likelihood Brown will see some action in the Gamecocks’ season opener against Eastern Illinois.

“It wasn’t an indictment on him. It’s just where Zeb is right now and we need to make sure the guy out there gives us the best chance to win. For a lot of different reason we felt like Zeb was that guy right now,” Shane Beamer said.

“I told Jason—and I think he told you guys as well—I’d love to be able to get him in the game and get him going on Saturday night. That’ll depend on how he practices.”

The Gamecocks have one more true practice Thursday and a walk-through Friday for Brown to cement himself as someone who could get snaps Saturday.

He’s coming off what he and the coaching staff consider his best two weeks of practice since arriving this winter, and offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield would like to at least get him in the game at some point.

“It’s not like we have huge gaps between the guys in our quarterback room. Jason’s the ultimate competitor and a great teammate. He didn’t flinch. He’s had a good week of practice this week and we told him we want to get him in the game early on but he has to earn it,” he said. “He’s earned the right to earn a chance to get in the game on Saturday.”

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The Gamecocks are favored by 43.5 points and ESPN’s SP+ metric projects a 38-point win to start the Beamer era, which lends itself to giving as many players as possible snaps.

Brown knows he has a chance to see the field against the Panthers and thinks if he can continue to show progress in executing the offense there’s a chance his snap count could continue rising.

“I’d say one thing I have to do is communicate. That’s what it’s been the whole time I’m here: just knowing what I have to do,” he said. “Coming off the last two weeks I think I’m getting a lot better with that, and it’s shown in how our scrimmage went and how the past two weeks of practice went. I’m definitely going in the right direction. I’m going to keep doing that and I believe it’ll work out at some point.”

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