Shane Beamer addresses where South Carolina stands with their quarterback room
South Carolina has remained busy this offseason in the transfer portal. With the addition of 18 players via the portal, the Gamecocks are currently ranked No.5 in On3’s portal rankings.
“We’ve increased the competition,” said Shane Beamer. “When I look, and we haven’t been out, we haven’t practiced, but just looking at everything from an overhead view right now, hell, I feel like every position on our team, we are better than what we were when we played Clemson in the last game. When you just look at talent level, the depth, and the experience. You name it.”
But that’s been especially true with South Carolina’s thin quarterback room. With Spencer Rattler declaring for the NFL Draft combined with Colten Gauthier and Tanner Bailey entering the transfer portal this offseason, the Gamecocks have added Auburn transfer Robby Ashford and Oklahoma transfer Davis Beville.
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“That was a major problem when we started in January. It’s gotten better here in the last couple of weeks, being able to bring in Davis and Robby both as well to increase the competition. I said that the last time I was in here, you’ve got all these quarterbacks or anybody that want to be guaranteed starting jobs and we weren’t willing to do that because two core values in this program are trust and competition, and if I tell somebody something that’s not true, I violated one of our core values and if I tell somebody that they’re guaranteed a starting job, then I violated the core values of competition.”
According to Beamer, he could recall roughly more than half a dozen quarterbacks that he spoke with this offseason who wanted to be guaranteed that they would be the starting quarterback.
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“My number would probably be lower than what Dowell (Loggains) could give you because he was the one actively reaching out to quarterbacks. At least ones that got on my radar that this guy might have an interest in coming to South Carolina as a quarterback, probably five to seven.”
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The two join redshirt freshman LaNorris Sellers and true freshman Dante Reno, to give USC a total of four quarterbacks heading into spring practices. Luke Doty, who has the most experience playing QB for the Gamecocks is expected to focus more on wide receiver this season. While he returns as South Carolina’s most productive wide out from last season, he also served at USC’s backup quarterback.
“We’ve increased the competition. We’ve increased the depth. Every team has, in college football, a target number of guys that you want to have on scholarship at each position, and if you say Luke Doty is a receiver primarily right now, we started the month of January with two, LaNorris and Dante Reno. We knew we got to increase the depth in here because most teams want to have at least four, sometimes five, quarterbacks on scholarship.”
