Everything Mike Shula said about South Carolina football spring practice on Monday

South Carolina OC Mike Shula addressed the media on Monday for the first time since the Gamecocks began spring practice.

Below is an edited transcript of his remarks.

General impressions of spring so far…

Yeah, so it’s number one, it’s always good getting back on the field and being with the players and doing things we love doing.

And I think the number one, the energy’s been great. We’ve had a lot of guys that, the whole mix, the guys that have been here, the guys that have come in from other schools and then the freshmen. I think there’s a really good urgency for guys to do their job right, to finish on every play.

One of the main reasons, I think we’ve gotten the right guys here, the mentality of the guys. Look, it’s two practices, self-starters, and then competition. There’s a lot of competition throughout, and I think that kind of brings out the best in everybody. So, still got a long way to go, but the first two days, I think that’s been the first thing that stood out.

What he’s seen from freshman WRs so far…

Yeah, same thing, energy. I think these guys are, they understand that they have a potential opportunity to play early, but they also, for young guys, at least early, they understand that it’s gonna take a lot of work.

They’re very conscientious, they study hard, they’re asking questions. I think the learning curve, there’s gonna be a learning curve, especially when you get into the SEC. So it’s just a matter of who can, not just the mental part of it, but learn the fastest, and understand how defensive backs are gonna play you, and have to get off the line of scrimmage and bump and run situations. But they can run, they have good quickness, they’ve shown that. And the ability to catch the ball, and all that stuff will hopefully continue on what we’ve seen the first couple of days.

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Changes on the OL, specifically at center…

Yeah, I think, again, those guys that were brought in, Boaz and RJ, I think they’re guys that are very conscientious. I think the same thing, they’re working hard to put their best foot forward. And just in all aspects of the game, that center, obviously, other than the quarterback, he’s touching the ball every play, and he’s gotta be the quarterback, so to speak, of the guys up front. So the communication’s gotta be at a premium, and I think both guys do a really good job of that.

And I think that everybody is, it’s crazy the amount of, at least from my recollection, the amount of new guys that you have compared to last year. I remember the guys, when I got here last year, the guys, the coaches saying the same thing: there’s a lot of new guys.

So you have to be really good at communicating and get everyone on the same page as quick as you can, and I think both those guys have done that. And we’ve got other guys in the fold as well, too.

On LaNorris Sellers’ offseason improvement checklist…

Well, I think, number one, our goal is to pick up where we left off at the end of the year, not at the start of the year. We looked at some things in the off season that mentally and physically, kind of looking at defenses and getting your eyes in the right place a little bit quicker, and making decisions, sound decisions quicker, and things like that.

And then also now, because of the newness of the young receivers and the guys up front, whether or not they’re rising freshmen or underclassmen, or guys coming from the portal, there’s just getting a feel for how everybody communicates, reacts, plays.

And in the meantime, I do think that he has done a good job, and yet he still has a lot to learn, too. Especially quarterback, there’s so many different situations and outcomes and different looks that you can’t practice them all.

You try to present them all to him in meetings and things like that, but they still come up different than practice, so you can’t get enough of that.

On balancing LaNorris running versus throwing…

Yeah, so I just think, getting back to the last question as well, that the processing that every quarterback has to do every single play, the faster you can process and make good decisions with the football, the less you may have to run with the football.

Now he’s, as we’ve seen last year, he’s really, he’s a pretty good runner. So we don’t wanna take that ability away from him, and we wanna enhance that. And we wanna do it on our own terms, not because, well, maybe I didn’t quite understand the read, or I didn’t see this, or I’m late on doing that, now I have to run. We want him to run because he wants to, not because he has to.

I think there were some times where we did both last year, and he did a great job of that. But obviously, we want to have him upright in throwing the football, so he’s not gonna be a running back where he’s carrying it 25 times a game. That’s part of his growing process.

How do you rep becoming a better processor?

Yeah, so you just talk about it constantly. You show looks in the meeting rooms of other quarterbacks doing it, maybe on other teams. You talk about looks of yourself doing it, and maybe you’re having LaNorris watch himself on this play and just say, hey, well, now, if we had this play and that same exact look, what are you doing?

Have as many type of things that you can put him through, walk through stuff out there without the defense and just talk through it. And so all those different meeting rooms, get them on the blackboard, talk about it, ask questions, watch tape doing it, walk throughs out on the field, practicing out on the field.

I think as many times as you can do and say that. Now, we want to have a set of rules for, obviously, for every play. And because you can’t go through all the situations, those rules are set up basically to respond in a positive way when things aren’t the way the coach said or they aren’t the way it was drawn up. And so you want him reacting positively along those guidelines. And then you throw in the fact that you have a guy like him who can create on his own, and that becomes like icing on the cake, so to speak.

Tree Babalade and if he could factor in at multiple spots…

Could be, yeah. He’s gotten on to a good couple days. He’s very talented, he’s smart, he’s got a fast mind. And hopefully, we’ll continue to see that, whether or not he’s playing out of tackle, or if we decide to move him around a little bit in other positions.

That’s kind of what’s neat, just in general, not just with Tree, but with all these young guys, and you forget about that maybe when you’re away from college football, but just how you go back to those years, and you guys are still young in your life, and you’re saying, these guys haven’t quite figured things out.

Now, Tree has, been around, but just to kind of see him in a whole new year after an off season, all of a sudden, it’s a fresh start with a guy, and he’s been here. And all of a sudden, he’s maybe on the older side of the curve than he was last year and you hate to say it like, well, the light’s going on, but you can kind of see that he’s seeing things around him. Like, hey, I got a chance, I got an opportunity here, I’m gonna make the most of it.

That’s kind of fun to watch as a coach, where you’re seeing guys are even more, not that they weren’t last year, because it sounds negative, but guys are even more dialed in because of the opportunity presented, without the opportunity in front of them.

How much of spring is about installing the playbook…

Well, you know, I think I’ve said this from earlier in the year, and maybe even towards the end of the bowl game, is, we did a lot of really, really good things last year, and we wanna continue to build on those.

Now, whether or not it’s the same terminology, the same thing,those are the little things that we’ll continue to coach. It’s gonna be a little bit of a combination of a little bit of what maybe what my background, what we’ve done, and as well as keeping a lot of the good things that we did last year.

Each and every year, regardless, you wanna kinda take a look at what you did well, build on it, keep it rolling, find different ways to do it. The stuff that you didn’t do well, you wanna ask yourself, why? What can we do to make it better, tweak it, or do we wanna get rid of it and spend our time on the other things? So, we’re right in the middle of all of that right now.

Anyone similar to Tree in terms of the “light coming on?”

Yeah, I think it’s hard to say. There’s just a lot of guys right now that are, I don’t know, if I named one, I’d have to name probably 10 or 15 of them.

I just think that the competition basically is kind of across the board, on the offensive line, really at the tackle positions and providing depth. We know that Josiah and Cason, obviously, are back as returning starters, but they still gotta compete. The guys coming in are competing with the guys inside at the guards and the center position.

And then you talk about the, even our wide receivers, the guys that were here, JB and Nyck last year compared to, or this year now, compared to where they were last year, and the opportunity of even more playing time. And the running backs with Oscar and Juwan and Matt, all of a sudden, they were watching Rocket last year. Now, all of a sudden, they’re presented with an opportunity to compete against each other and play, and then you got Rahsul coming in. So all that’s been very refreshing, and I think we’re seeing a lot of guys respond to the competition in a good way.

On the tight end competition and that position’s role in his offense…

Yeah, I think it’s, first of all, that role is probably flexible, depending on, it’s our job as coaches to figure out what our guys do well, put them in positions to do that.

So we’re still early in that process with, like you said, Jordan coming in. We’ve got Brady, we’ve got Mike Smith, who’s obviously not working right now. We’ve got guys coming in. So I think we’re, as coaches, more so than anything, we’re trying to give them as much as they can take mentally and physically. And then figuring out, hey, this guy does this pretty good, this guy does that pretty well. How can we fit that in with our scheme?

That’s the beauty of spring ball. You got time to do that each and every day, kinda push the envelope a little bit, give them a little bit of, a few more things to think about, to look at, to perform, and then go from there. So that is another position, too, where the competition is gonna be good. And it’s gonna get better when those other guys come in and get help.

Was there anything specific he wanted to see in the offense before spring started?

No, I mean, there’s things that we’re gonna look at over the course of spring ball, but nothing major. Like I said, we wanna build on the good and add and enhance to what we did last year, to what LaNorris provides. And then a lot of it is, after that, it’s just finding out what all these new guys, whether or not they’re young guys that did get a lot of reps last year, or the new guys coming in, see what they can do well.

I think we have to be a little careful. Again, this is probably just my opinion based on being back to college football for basically just a little over two years. We have to be careful because of all the newness and the guys coming in, of trying to do too many different things early, like schematically, and then wasting time doing them. And then all of a sudden you get to the fall, and you don’t do it at all. Do stuff that we know is kind of gonna be our bread and butter for next year, things that we can feel like we can hang our hat on, even though that still can change.

But stuff that they’ve done well, and just really build a foundation in spring ball of the things that we know we’re gonna carry into the fall. And then that other stuff can get added later on in practice, we’re not wasting time kind of looking at a bunch of stuff, and then not getting good at the stuff we know we’re gonna be doing in the fall.

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