Gamecocks 2024 QB commitment Dante Reno will know more about his future after this weekend
SPORTSTALK / December 14, 2022
Spencer Rattler may or may not be back in 2023 to play quarterback at USC, but the Gamecocks are moving forward with their recruiting at that position. USC does not have a quarterback commitment for the 2023 class right now, and they are in pursuit of Syracuse commitment LaNorris Sellers of South Florence. But they do have a 2024 quarterback pledge in Dante Reno who is academically eligible to enroll in 2023 if he so chooses.Reno might have more clarity about enrolling next month versus the following January after this weekend.
“I’m actually going down there this weekend to visit with all them, so we’re definitely going to talk about that when I go down there this weekend,” he said. “Obviously, what Spencer decides to do is what he decides to do, but no, it’s not like strictly on Spencer.”
Gamecock head coach Shane Beamer kept Reno in the loop regarding his offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach search, which officially ended Tuesday when Dowell Loggains was hired from Arkansas.
“Obviously it’s great,” Reno said. “I talked with him last night (Monday). It was a really good conversation that we had. He’s a really good person. He’s a really good coach. Obviously, his resume shows for that. He followed me on Twitter and I kind of knew something was up and knew he was going to be hired. I talked with coach Beamer the day that he signed the papers. It’s awesome. He’s a really good person and I can’t wait to play for him.”
Loggains’ NFL background is substantial with stops in Chicago, New York (Jets), Cleveland, Tennessee and Miami. He called plays and coached quarterbacks at each stop, and Reno said that experience will be invaluable when it comes to Loggains working with the USC quarterbacks.
“I think he’s had a bunch of different quarterbacks in the NFL,” Reno said. “He’s had guys from Tony Romo to Johnny Manziel to Connor Shaw, who played at Carolina, to Joe Flacco, Brian Hoyer. He’s had them all. He knows what to do with different types of quarterbacks and what different types of quarterbacks are good at. He’s not going to force an offense. He’s going to put it to the quarterbacks best traits and go off of there. Whether that’s throwing the ball 50 times a game to win it or whatever he’s got to do to win. I think his offense is going to be really cool. It’s going to be a lot of interesting concepts they are going to run and it’s going to be more of a passing offense I would say.”
As for trying to figure out a complex NFL style offense, Reno believes he and the other quarterbacks won’t have any issues picking things up quickly.
“The verbiage might be a little like an NFL type of offense, but I don’t think it’s going to be too complicated to where it confuses everybody,” Reno said. “At the end of the day, you’re going to have all 11 people on the field knowing what they are going to do. I think he’s going to be able to do it well. He’s obviously been in college for a couple of years now, too, so he knows both sides of the story, NFL and college.”
Reno is a pro-style quarterback and said when he committed last summer that a major attraction was the pro-style offense Marcus Satterfield operated with the Gamecocks. He’ll get more of the same with Loggains, and perhaps as early as this January.