Dowell Loggains shares thoughts on South Carolina Pro Day

Second-year Gamecocks offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains has watched countless pro days from the other perspective throughout his over a decade and a half coaching in the NFL but on Tuesday morning he watched as his guys were put through the paces at South Carolina’s annual pro day.

Loggains joined the Gamecock Central Takeover Hour on 107.5 The Game Tuesday as he watched quarterback Spencer Rattler deliver passes to wide receivers Xavier Legette, Ahmarean Brown, and Eddie Lewis, tight end Trey Knox, and running backs Dakereon Joyner, Dante Miller, and D.J. Twitty.

Legette and Rattler were the two headliners as 65 coaches and scouts representing all 32 NFL organizations and four CFL teams convened at the South Carolina indoor facility.

“I get a lot of the calls about how their games are going to translate in the NFL,” Loggains said of the scouting process. “How do they learn? What are they like away from the field? What kind of teammate are they?”

NFL scouts lean on college coaches to help them fill in the gaps of information that can’t be gleaned from just the film alone.

That’s where phone calls to contacts come into play and where a pro-day performance can cause a player to move up or down a team’s draft board.

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“We’ll have three guys that definitely have a great chance to get drafted with Spencer, Legette, and Trey Knox,” Loggains said. “… There’s been a lot of intrigue, which means a lot of phone calls, which means our guys did what they were supposed to do at the combine, and the tape impressed, but more importantly, the people impressed, which you got three outstanding guys that were there at the combine offensively, and talking about Nick Gargiulo as well, having the fourth guy. So it was a successful week for us at the combine, and now those phone calls are calling because of what they did.”

Both Rattler and Legette spent time in a pro-style offense at South Carolina under Marcus Satterfield last year and then Loggains this year while Knox and Gargiulo transferred in to play for Loggains last offseason.

Loggains believes that’s another potential edge for his players as they try to make the jump to the next level.

“The advantage you have when you play in a pro-style offense is these guys were prepared when they went in the combine,” he said. “And all of a sudden, like, Spencer’s in a draft meeting with Sean Payton, and he’s on the board drawing something, and Coach Payton’s saying, ‘Hey, we call it that. And it’s like, Yeah, I learned it from him in 2005. So, you know, there’s some advantage of playing in a pro-style offense that definitely helps prepare you for this thing as well.”

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Tuesday, as Loggains looked on, Rattler threw strike after strike showing off the natural arm talent that made him the No. 1 quarterback coming out of high school in the 2019 class.

As Loggain’s attention swayed, rightfully so, from the interview at hand back to his star signal-caller, we asked what an NFL team would be looking for as they watched Rattler’s workout.

“They’ve seen the tape,” Loggains said. “They know what he can do, but they want to see what kind of command he has. That’s not on tape. So, like, they’re watching right now. How is he running the show? Is his script well organized? When there is an incompletion, if there’s going to be one today, how does he interact with that receiver, that running back, that tight end? What’s that dialect like? Like, they’re looking for all those things. They’re trying to find out the makeup, the competitive spirit on those things. And that turns into why these pro days, why there’s so many people here right now, because we’ve got some good players, and they want to see all this.”

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