How the last two seasons prepared Dowell Loggains for South Carolina

Dowell Loggains remembers watching Jon Gruden eviscerate young quarterbacks constantly. The South Carolina new offensive coordinator saw young passers get into the NFL and struggle to even remember the sentence-long play calls needed at the professional level. 

But, as he transitioned to college over the last few years, he saw how much the game is changing and coaches don’t need to have convoluted ways to call plays in order to have an efficient offense. 

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“Confidence comes from knowledge and confidence lets you play fast. Some of that is reducing verbiage to make it fit where it still makes sense. You don’t have to have a 17-word play call. I don’t think I would have known that if I didn’t come for two years and watched college football,” Loggains said. 

“How much can we reduce the terminology and still be efficient and streamline? The biggest thing I’ve learned in college football and the space and pace of the game and the ability to communicate with signals and as few words as possible.”

Loggains spent nearly all of his almost two decades in coaching at the NFL level. There he saw the installation of insanely complex and complicated offenses over multiple franchises. 

But, over the last two years, he’s been enveloped in college football, a two-year period he says really changed how he sees some of the game from a space perspective. 

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“I don’t know if I would have the same vision if I didn’t spend the two years at Arkansas. I think that’s where it became obvious to me. The hardest thing to do in college football is tackle in space. It’s just hard. You don’t do that as much in the NFL and the NFL DBs are really good. The (defensive backs) in this conference are really good. When you create space, it becomes very difficult to do to get people down,” he said. 

“The evolution of the game is creating space. There ar a lot of different wants to do it and a lot od different ways to change the presentation of it. ButIi would not have had the same vision if i didn’t spend time in college football.”

Loggains spent time in a similar scheme to the Baylor veer-and-shoot, which is predicated some on pushing the ball downfield but also playing in space and forcing teams to defend literally the entire field. He hopes to bring some of that to South Carolina.

There isn’t as much of that in the NFL, largely because of field dimensions. The hash marks at the pro level are separated by roughly six yards while the hashes are separated by over double (13.3 yards) in college. 

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“One thing in college football you have to attack is the 53 and a third. Everyone wants to attack vertically. But in college, space-and-pace is a real thing,” he said. “I watched for two years the offense we evolved in wasn’t Baylor or wasn’t Ole Miss. It was versions of it but with the ability to run the football. Going really, really fast isn’t always the answer but playing with tempo is. We’re really going to try and find out what our players can do.”

What South Carolina will do schematically is still being adjusted, but Loggains wants the plays to be streamlined while also melding some collegiate schemes into what the Gamecocks have already been doing. 

“What I’ve been impressed with is how fast these kids learn a signal as opposed to words. For some reason, it just hits their brain. You don’t have to say something. You can give a signal and everyone knows what to do,” Loggains said.

“There are a lot more one-word play calls in college football and that’s the biggest transition for a college quarterback. You can still run a pro-style offense but communicate a signal in a fast way.” 

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