How good can Spencer Rattler be with help from offense

South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer is looking to take another leap in his third year at the helm following an 8-5 finish last season, but he won’t be able to do so without quarterback Spencer Rattler.

Rattler had a solid season for the Gamecocks in his first year with the team, particularly finishing the season strong with 10 touchdown passes in the teams final three games of the season. And at SEC Media Days in Nashville, On3’s JD PicKell was asked how good Rattler could be this year if he gets more help from his supporting cast.

“The ability is so evidently there for Spencer Rattler, like you don’t second guess if he has enough arm talent or if he can make the throws. Dude can make the throws,” PicKell said. “The question is can he make good decisions? And there’s been so much frustration with him making good decisions and it’s not unfair, but I think it is incomplete.”

Rattler’s talent has been present since high school, as he was ranked the  No. 1 quarterback in the nation out of high school for the 2019 recruiting class according to On3’s Industry Ranking. He lit up the scoreboard at times for Oklahoma at his previous stop in Lincoln Riley‘s offense, and PicKell believes he can do a lot of the same this season with better protection and playmakers.

“Because we didn’t protect him well for South Carolina, Juice Wells really came on towards the end of the year, really started going to him, it was a new offensive coordinator. There’s a lot of things that went into I think his lack of success early on and it kind of clicked late,” PicKell said. “But if they can protect him I think you can expect what you saw at Oklahoma from him, I think that’s fair.”

South Carolina got off to a rough 1-2 start to the season last year in a stretch where Rattler wasn’t playing too well. He’d thrown just two touchdowns and five interceptions during those three games, but he was also sacked nine times and the offense failed to rush for over 100 yards in any of their matchups.

“My issue with expecting and blaming Spencer Rattler for the issues for South Carolina, it’s hard to blame a guy when he doesn’t have tools for success,” PicKell said. “If you’re not protecting him and you’re not giving him a run game to take some pressure off of him, if that’s the case, I don’t know how you expect him to then go out and just put the team on his shoulders.”

Rattler and the South Carolina offense began to turn things around following that, winning four straight games after Week 3 and capping off their regular season with back-to-back upset wins over top 10 ranked opponents.

In all of those wins, Rattler got some help from his supporting cast, which will be a major factor this season in determining the success of not just Rattler individually, but the entire South Carolina team.

“Shane Beamer was at SEC Media Days last year and very very explicitly said we are not going to ask Spencer Rattler to be Superman and then throughout the course of the season they asked him to be Superman. So I think for Spencer Rattler he can be as good as the help around him and has all the ability in the world to be really really explosive like we saw at the end of last year,” PicKell concluded.