New QB, new playbook: Expect South Carolina’s offense to look different this season

Dowell Loggains thought back to an NFL draft he wasn’t even involved with.

In 2012, the then-Washington Redskins had a plan to not just draft two quarterbacks, but a pair of quarterback who looked similar and played similar. They took Robert Griffin III with the No. 2 pick and had the idea to take Russell Wilson later in the draft as Griffin’s backup. Both bigger quarterbacks with great ability to evade pressure and run if they needed.

“If you could have a guy as your first- and second-team quarterback,” former Redskins coach Mike Shanahan said then, “who both had the same type of athletic ability, you would give yourself a chance.”

Instead, Washington waited to draft a second quarterback and Wilson went to the Seattle Seahawks. With the Griffin-esque QB off the board, the Redskins pivoted and selected Kirk Cousins in the fourth round — almost the antithesis of Griffin.

Loggains, now South Carolina’s offensive coordinator, was not with Washington in 2012. But, a few years later, he worked with Kyle Shanahan — Mike’s son and Washington’s offensive coordinator from 2010-13 — and heard the story.

When Loggains began scouring the transfer portal market this offseason, he knew one thing: The Gamecocks returned redshirt freshman LaNorris Sellers, a 6-foot-3, 242-pound big-bodied, dual-threat quarterback. Loggains’ goal was to do what Washington didn’t 12 years ago.

“I was cognizant of that. Like, hey, I think I know what we have in LaNorris,” Loggains told The State. “If we’re gonna build an offense around somebody, you don’t want whoever that backup is — or the guy who wins the starting job and LaNorris is the backup — to have to change dramatically.”

Loggains used the philosophy to build up the South Carolina QB room in 2024, to be sure the Gamecocks’ playbook won’t change much no matter who the starter is.

From Spencer Rattler to a bigger QB

When Loggains took over the South Carolina offense last year, there was no need to consider any of this. The Gamecocks’ starter was Spencer Rattler and the offense would be tailored around him and his passing abilities. To do anything different would be coaching malpractice.

With Rattler off to the NFL, Loggains had to go find someone to put beside Sellers.

Initially, it looked like that guy might be Vanderbilt transfer A.J. Swann, who perhaps doesn’t have the running ability of Sellers but has a similar frame at 6-3, 228 pounds.

But after Swann signed with LSU just a week before Christmas, it would be another 29 days before Loggains would add another quarterback. In mid-January, the Gamecocks signed Auburn transfer Robby Ashford, who not only had SEC starting experience but had a Sellers-like frame (6-2, 229).

“We wanted to have a skillset that wasn’t too different,” Loggains said.

To Loggains, an offensive playbook is determined by two things — the quarterback and the offensive line.

“Everybody else has to fit in,” he said.

The offensive line — expected to have new contributors in five-star freshman Josiah Thompson, Markee Anderson (missed all of last season with an injury), N.C. Central transfer Torricelli Timpkins III — is night and day from 2023. And the quarterback, whether it’s Sellers or Ashford, will be unlike Rattler.

Which brings us to the important question: South Carolina will have a new quarterback, so what will its playbook look like?

“Different,” Loggains said. “The players, I don’t know if they feel wholesale change, but they’re just hearing certain terms being used more.”

While Loggains didn’t specifically say South Carolina was going to pound the rock 35 times a game, it’s not too crazy to expect more of an emphasis on the run game with a better offensive line and 1,200-yard receiver Xavier Legette also gone to the NFL.

Build plays around the skillsets you have

It started after spring practices, with Loggains and the Gamecocks staff ranking every single player, looking at the top of the list and saying to themselves: What is our identity?

“Let’s build our identity with our offensive line,” Loggains said. “Let’s build it with what our quarterbacks are doing. Let’s take these playmakers and figure out where we can move them around.”

The task got a little harder, too, with the Gamecocks grabbing transfer wide receivers Vandrevius Jacobs (Florida State) and Dalevon Campbell (Nevada) in late April and four-star freshman tight end Michael Smith not arriving on campus until the summer.

Loggains’ mind, like many other football coaches, revolves around comparison. In the same way his guidance for finding a transfer portal quarterback in 2024 came from a hypothetical in an NFL Draft from a dozen years ago, he’s always trying to identity the skillsets of his players then thinks: “Hey, this guy reminds me of this guy. Let’s go study that team. Let’s go study this player,” he said.

Loggains would not acknowledge what players or teams he studied, but he would concede diving down the rabbit hole got him in some hot water with his wife. Supposed to be on vacation in Hilton Head this July, Loggains was constantly on his iPad digging through random clips of random teams, making notes and trying to drum up some new principle or some new way to run the same play.

“So you sit there,” Loggains said, “and you start to build a catalog, a library of plays on the skillsets you have.”