South Carolina looking to keep playing to 'strengths as an offense' as new month begins

Some coaches love to use statistics and numbers to help their team. Dowell Loggains clearly isn’t one of them. Quite frankly, he could care less.

“I’m not a stats guy. I don’t care about stats. I don’t know anything other than that,” South Carolina’s second-year offensive coordinator said.

The only stat that matters to him is putting up more points than the team on the other sideline. The Gamecocks have been good at doing that this year, jumping out to a 3-1 start. They’ve averaged 34.3 points per game, more than good enough to be right in every game they’ve played so far.

But despite Loggains’ distaste for stats, South Carolina has been better in other ways than just scoring more points. And yes, it’s only a four-game sample size, but progress is progress.

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Last year’s offense was notably abysmal at effectively running the football. The Gamecocks were dead-last in the SEC with only 85.1 rushing yards per game. One year later, they’ve amassed close to 200 yards on the ground per game. A substantial improvement to say the least.

“There’s been areas where I think we’ve played to our strengths as an offense,” Loggains said. “We’re running the ball better than we did in the past here. And it’s because of the players we have. I also think it helps when you have two athletic quarterbacks.”

On the flip side, South Carolina hasn’t been nearly as good throwing the ball, but that’s part of the territory that can come with being more run heavy. With 100 less pass attempts than runs, the quarterbacks have combined to go 51-for-85 passing for 179.5 yards per game with just five touchdowns. The good news is they’ve only thrown two interceptions.

Comparatively, though, they were averaging nearly 280 yards with Spencer Rattler under center in 2023. But obviously, there are clear differences in the skillsets of Rattler and this year’s starter, LaNorris Sellers.

As the season has moved along, it seems the offense has steadily improved each week. After a lackluster Week 1 outing, things picked up in a 25-point win over Kentucky followed by a 33-point showing against LSU, which included putting up 24 points in the first half alone. Then before the bye week, the Gamecocks scored 50 points in Week 4, albeit against Akron.

“I feel like we’ve done a good job of getting better every single week. If you look at where we were Week 1 against ODU to how we got better against Kentucky, LSU and then against Akron, I think we’re definitely in a good spot right now,” Luke Doty said.

“I think we’re starting to figure out what we’re good at. Obviously, there’s a lot we need to improve on. But there’s a lot of good in that and we’ve done a lot of good up to now. Just gotta keep it rolling and keep getting better.”

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If there’s one word to describe how the offense has looked thus far, it would be compatible, at least from Juju McDowell’s perspective. He feels the unit hasn’t been coming along, rather they’ve been playing well since preseason camp started back in August.

“The offense has been moving like this for quite a while,” McDowell said. “Even in the preseason, we just had the opportunity to expose what we’ve been doing to the rest of the nation. So, I’d say compatibility. We move off of each other and it’s been working.”

Coming out of the bye week, South Carolina will have a big challenge on hand when No. 12 Ole Miss comes into town on Saturday (3:30 p.m., ESPN). As October begins, it was a month of horrors for the Gamecocks in 2023. With progress continuing to be made, the key is to keep the momentum rolling.

“There’s definitely areas of improvement but all of our focus right now is on Ole Miss and making sure that we continue to play to our players’ strengths,” Loggains said.

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