South Carolina quarterbacks impress, show promise for future

Coming into the spring, South Carolina had its definitive quarterback for this season in Spencer Rattler. The only question would be who would fill the void in the years to come.

Those answers came in the team’s annual Garnet and Black spring game Saturday night.

Between the two teams, six quarterbacks saw playing time on the field, with all making some big plays.

“The guys looked good,” Rattler said. “Tanner (Bailey) played well, got a touchdown pass and had some nice completions. I thought Luke (Doty) did what he could with his group. And then, LaNorris, good young player that’s still learning. Definitely athletic, can run around and make plays.”

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The night started with a duel between Rattler and Doty, with Rattler representing the Black team while Doty played for the Garnet. Both donned their non-contact green jerseys.

Rattler did his thing, completing 12-of-20 passes for 120 yards and a touchdown. He led his team down the field on the opening drive of the game, capping it off with a three-yard scoring play to Trey Knox.

Doty, meanwhile, didn’t find the same success. He threw for 41 yards on 7-for-14 passing without any touchdowns to show for it. Both seemed to have some struggles hitting their targets, especially on downfield throws.

To their credit, all the quarterbacks were faced with a lot of pressure from the defense, which racked up 12 sacks on the night. Doty was hit the most, being sacked four times.

Shane Beamer clarified that the team’s offensive lines were a “mix and match of guys” since they were picked in a draft format prior to the game.

“It was a lot of guys on that offensive line that hadn’t been playing necessarily alongside each other. So the protection wasn’t great at times,” Beamer said. “I saw some pressures we were running that were pretty exotic. And at one point that I had to tell Clayton (White), he let some of the other guys call it on defense. So I had to tell these young GA’s to slow down a little bit with what they were doing.”

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As for the rest of the game, the quarterbacks coming in after Rattler and Doty made it work.

It started with Bailey, who backed up Rattler on the Black team. He came in during the second quarter and made an immediate impact, firing a 34-yard strike to Juice Wells for a touchdown. Besides Rattler, Bailey arguably had the best night amongst his teammates, finishing 6-for-11 with 88 yards and the one touchdown.

“I never really got any reps from Tanner before, so it was new,” Wells said. “On that play, they busted the coverage and I was like, ‘Throw it up.’ And he threw it up and I was wide open enough to score.”

On the Garnet side, Sellers came in to play after Doty’s night was over and showed some flashes. He completed 3-of-8 passes for 66 yards. His best play was a 50-yard pass to DJ Black to get his team into the red zone in the third quarter.

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That wasn’t all he did, though. From the moment he committed to South Carolina, there was talk was about how special he could be when running with the football. And he gave fans a glimpse into what that could look like moving forward.

Sellers ran for a game-high 42 yards on eight carries. There was even a play where the ball was snapped a few feet over his head, and he picked the ball up with one hand and made a deep throw that was caught by Kylic Horton one-handed but out of bounds.

“LaNorris came in as a true freshman, very poised and obviously did some really good things out there as a quarterback,” Beamer said.

Rounding out the crew were Colten Gauthier and Braden Davis, who played sparingly in the second half. Gauthier completed 2-of-4 passes for 19 yards, while Davis went 1-for-3 for 13 yards and a pick-six.

All in all, it was a successful night for the quarterbacks in the eyes of their head coach.

“I thought all quarterbacks did some good things and got a lot of work to do,” Beamer said. “But they all flashed and excited about the potential of that group.”

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