Aug. 11, 2014

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After spending a day away from the practice fields, the South Carolina Gamecock football team returned to the Bluff Road “Proving Grounds” on Monday morning.

“It was a good practice for the defense,” said head coach Steve Spurrier. “The offense struggled a bit. If you watched us practice, you would think we’ve got the all-conference players on defense and not many on offense. Hopefully none of our first (team) linemen get hurt. We’re thin in the backups on the O-line.”

This early in camp, both the offense and defense are rotating several players into the drills. “Maybe we’re just practicing a whole bunch of guys and we don’t look very sharp,” continued the Head Ball Coach on the play of his offense after today’s practice. “Hopefully myself and all of us offensive guys can get them going a little bit better. I thought we’d be a little better off, but we’re practicing a bunch of guys. They’re just rotating in. That’s probably a big part of it right now.”

Coach Spurrier indicated that later this week the reps would start to go to the primary players. “Probably Thursday or Friday we’ll have a scout team ready and start coaching the guys who are going to play in the games,” said Coach Spurrier. “Right now we’re coaching everybody and it’s sort of helter-skelter for the offense. But the defense is coaching everybody too. Their guys seem to know what they’re doing. They’re probably a little ahead of the offensive guys right now.”

Defensive line coach Deke Adams said it’s too early to consider who would be starting the season opener. “We haven’t started focusing in on exactly what we’re doing with Texas A&M yet,” said Adams. “We’re just trying to get better – better technique, better in our assignments and all that. Here in the next week or so we’ll starting looking down and focusing on that.”

Coach Adams was pleased overall with the play of the defensive line in Saturday’s scrimmage. “They all did some good things. There were times where we needed to be more aggressive and be better in our technique and there were times where we did things really good. It was a great measuring stick for us right now.”

Adams believes the interior of the defensive line will only improve due to the competition for playing time. “The competition is pretty good right now. noted Adams. “J.T. (Surratt) is doing really well. (Gerald) Dixon Jr. is doing really good. (Phillip) Dukes is doing well. The biggest surprise right now is Deon Green. He’s doing great. He’s had a great camp up to this point. Hopefully he’ll continue to get better and stay healthy and be a help to us this year.”

David Williams, Terry Googer and D.J. Smith all practiced on Monday, while Brendan Nosovitch (shoulder) and Darius English (hamstring) were new to the injury report.

The Gamecocks will return to the practice fields on Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. All practices from this point forward are closed.