Look, South Carolina fans are organizing chants mid-game to fire offensive coordinator Mike Shula… So, uhh…. things are going swimmingly in Columbia.
Last year, Dowell Loggains came into USC after being an NFL OC from 2012-2020 and brought a level of professionalism with a fairly standard pro-spread offense that saw a breakout season from QB LaNorris Sellers. Unfortunately, Loggains took a head coaching job at Appalachian State, and the inevitable Mike Shula promoted up from “offensive analyst” to be the Gamecock’s offensive coordinator.
And, well, they’re now averaging 20 points per game, good for 115th in the country… And if you take out their 35 points against Kentucky and only look at the SEC teams with a pulse that they’ve played, then they’ve scored 7, 20, 10, and 7 against Vandy, Missouri, LSU, and Oklahoma. Yeah, things are bad.
Sellers did get injured against Vandy, but he’s still played the full season so far. He’s completing 64.7% of his passes for 1134 yards and 5 TDs to only 2 interceptions. Couple that with a respectable 8.2 yards per attempt, and his passing numbers would be perfectly acceptable until you realize that it’s over 7 games, and he’s actually dropped back 190 times and been sacked an absurd 23 times with another 35 scrambles. He’s been pressured on roughly 50% of his dropbacks, and 25% of those pressures have turned into sacks. Between the poor blocking and the amount of time that Sellers holds the ball and scrambles, it’s just a totally broken offense right now.
Still, when Sellers does run and isn’t sacked, he’s averaging 4.9 yards per rush with 311 rushing yards, so that scrambling ability, and his ad-lib passing while scrambling, is pretty much what does make the offense go. Running back Rahsul Faison has one of the coolest names in football and was a 1000 yard rusher for Utah State last year before transferring. He’s a plus player and a solid addition for the Gamecocks, and has 281 yards with 4.4 yards per carry despite playing in pretty adverse circumstances.
As far as pass catchers, Nyck Harbor was a preseason darling back in the summer of 2024 for being one of the largest, fastest people in all of college football. He wound up not being ready to be a full time wide receiver last season, but has now emerged as Sellers’ #2 target. Of course, 17 catches for 278 yards isn’t particularly world beating — he’s essentially equal in stats to Alabama’s #5 receiving option, Lotzier Brooks.
Harbor is flanked by Vandrevius Jacobs, who has 21 catches for 343 yards. Both guys are at least making the most of their meager catches, averaging over 16 yards per catch.
Past those two…. TE Brady Hunt has 13 catches, and a handful of other guys have a couple of catches scattered between them, but that’s about it. Freshman Brian Rowe is a speedy guy who’s mostly been used as more of a gadget player to this point.
With all of that, USC can still be an explosive offense. Sellers hits his fair share of deep balls, and his scrambling often leads to guys getting open on broken plays way down the field. And they run a lot of play action and plenty of screen passes, so there’s plenty of opportunity for a defense to get torched if they aren’t disciplined. The problem(s) for the Gamecocks have been, first and foremost, that their offensive line is allowing a mind-boggling amount of pressure to the QB. Sellers is under siege on what feels like nearly every play, and even when he’s not, he struggles with bouts of inaccuracy when trying to operate a passing game in the mid range.
In short…. They feel a lot like a worse version of Alabama’s offense last year. All boom or bust, and totally reliant on the QB’s legs or downfield passing plays.
By all accounts, I think Alabama’s defense should feast on this offense. They’re by far the worst rushing attack that the Tide has seen from anyone outside of Wisconsin and Louisiana Monroe this year, and Kane Wommack’s zone defense has been excellent at taking away pretty much anything deep for two seasons. Sellers will get some scrambles, sure, but the Tide will have plenty of opportunity to pick off some passes and get plenty of shots at sacks.
While some broken plays here and there may give them a few points, I just don’t see where the Gamecocks come up with more than about 10-13 points in this one.
