Gamecock QBs for bowl week and beyond
The Gamecock staff isn’t going into the game against North Carolina with everything riding on the Iowa State and North Dakota State transfer.
“It’s adventurous right now, with Jason gone,” Beamer said Sunday after the Gamecocks bowl practice held at Charlotte Christian School. “Obviously Zeb has been back there, Colton (Gauthier) we have high hopes for. Jake Helfrich is a walk-on from here in Charlotte that is a good player that is obviously getting a lot of work as well. We’ve got a lot of guys on our team that were high school quarterbacks. So particularly with COVID and challenges of that right now, you hate to, but you’ve always got to think about worst-case scenario
The most prominent former quarterback is wide receiver Dakereon Joyner, who spent more than a year and a half on campus as a full-time passer and later stepped in and led the team to finish a 2019 upset of No. 3 Georgia. Starting safety R.J. Roderick and oft-injured wide receiver Xavier Legette also played behind center as run-first quarterbacks in high school. Joyner has rotated in as a Wildcat passer this season, mostly running the ball. But that package has not been wholly effective.
Future beyond the Mayo bowl
This scarcity of quarterbacks doesn’t project to be a long-term problem. Doty, a former four-star recruit, will be back. Rattler, who entered the 2021 season as a Heisman candidate at Oklahoma, is coming in. Along with Gauthier, who redshirted this season, the staff is adding a pair of blue-chip freshmen, Tanner Bailey and Braden Davis. Bailey joined USC’s class in the late going after a coaching change at Oregon. “Tanner’s one that when I first got here, we liked early,” Beamer said.
Bailey, the No. 218 player overall in the 2022 recruiting class, built a relationship with Gamecocks offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield, but was also being recruited by Joe Moorhead, who was fired from Mississippi State and landed at Oregon. “He was a little bit farther along in that relationship with Oregon,” Beamer said. “And, you know, quarterback recruiting, it’s like dominoes.
Once you see one commit, it’s kind of like the ball gets rolling, the next guy, next guy, next guy, and Tanner went ahead and jumped on that offer.” When things changed at Oregon, Bailey reached out to USC. He and Beamer had barely had a conversation before the school was sending over scholarship players. That leaves the team with a projected five scholarship passers, an unusually high number. Beamer seemed fine with the message it sends to his passers.
“From from a depth standpoint, my job is always to increase the depth and the competition at every single position,” Beamer said. “Competition makes makes everyone better, and that’s what I saw is an opportunity to do that. Particularly, not that we’re worried about Luke next year, but you know Luke will be probably limited in spring practice. And then Colton is still young. And it is still scary in a lot of ways because you got next year, you’re looking at Spencer, Luke and then a whole bunch of freshmen, you know, and just really just trying to constantly improve the depth at every position.”
The Gamecock staff isn’t going into the game against North Carolina with everything riding on the Iowa State and North Dakota State transfer.
“It’s adventurous right now, with Jason gone,” Beamer said Sunday after the Gamecocks bowl practice held at Charlotte Christian School. “Obviously Zeb has been back there, Colton (Gauthier) we have high hopes for. Jake Helfrich is a walk-on from here in Charlotte that is a good player that is obviously getting a lot of work as well. We’ve got a lot of guys on our team that were high school quarterbacks. So particularly with COVID and challenges of that right now, you hate to, but you’ve always got to think about worst-case scenario
The most prominent former quarterback is wide receiver Dakereon Joyner, who spent more than a year and a half on campus as a full-time passer and later stepped in and led the team to finish a 2019 upset of No. 3 Georgia. Starting safety R.J. Roderick and oft-injured wide receiver Xavier Legette also played behind center as run-first quarterbacks in high school. Joyner has rotated in as a Wildcat passer this season, mostly running the ball. But that package has not been wholly effective.
Future beyond the Mayo bowl
This scarcity of quarterbacks doesn’t project to be a long-term problem. Doty, a former four-star recruit, will be back. Rattler, who entered the 2021 season as a Heisman candidate at Oklahoma, is coming in. Along with Gauthier, who redshirted this season, the staff is adding a pair of blue-chip freshmen, Tanner Bailey and Braden Davis. Bailey joined USC’s class in the late going after a coaching change at Oregon. “Tanner’s one that when I first got here, we liked early,” Beamer said.
Bailey, the No. 218 player overall in the 2022 recruiting class, built a relationship with Gamecocks offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield, but was also being recruited by Joe Moorhead, who was fired from Mississippi State and landed at Oregon. “He was a little bit farther along in that relationship with Oregon,” Beamer said. “And, you know, quarterback recruiting, it’s like dominoes.
Once you see one commit, it’s kind of like the ball gets rolling, the next guy, next guy, next guy, and Tanner went ahead and jumped on that offer.” When things changed at Oregon, Bailey reached out to USC. He and Beamer had barely had a conversation before the school was sending over scholarship players. That leaves the team with a projected five scholarship passers, an unusually high number. Beamer seemed fine with the message it sends to his passers.
“From from a depth standpoint, my job is always to increase the depth and the competition at every single position,” Beamer said. “Competition makes makes everyone better, and that’s what I saw is an opportunity to do that. Particularly, not that we’re worried about Luke next year, but you know Luke will be probably limited in spring practice. And then Colton is still young. And it is still scary in a lot of ways because you got next year, you’re looking at Spencer, Luke and then a whole bunch of freshmen, you know, and just really just trying to constantly improve the depth at every position.”