South Carolina football: what will the offense look like under Marcus Satterfield?

South Carolina football will have a new play caller on the sidelines in 2021, with offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield joining the staff under head coach Shane Beamer. Satterfield has held a variety of different roles on the offensive side of the ball, having been a coordinator, offensive line coach, tight end coach, running back coach, and quarterback coach at both the collegiate and professional level.

Satterfield spent his most recent time with Temple, Baylor, and the Carolina Panthers, where he’s worked alongside Panthers’ head coach Matt Rhule. He intends to bring that experience to Columbia as he looks to improve an offense that finished 99th in the country last season in scoring.

Following a charity golf tournament earlier in the week, Satterfield was asked about what the Gamecocks’ group will look like in 2021. His reply was a combination of many different schemes and concepts.

"“You’d have to watch LSU 2019. You’d have to watch when I had PJ Walker at Temple in 2015. You’d have to watch a little of what we did with the Panthers last year. You’d have to watch a little bit of Oklahoma.”"

Satterfield will try to implement the things he’s learned while working with his most successful offenses, while also taking note of what Shane Beamer’s unit was able to do under Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma over the last few seasons.

He went further to say emphasize that this is a pro-style offense, with quarterbacks needing to push the ball down the field successfully. He holds off on calling the scheme West Coast, which relies more on dinking and dunking, and getting the ball out of the quarterback’s hand fast. Rather, he expects Luke Doty to be able to throw the ball 10 yards or more consistently.

That should excite Gamecock fans, who’ve seen pedestrian performances from the offensive group over the last six seasons. The best output during that time was a 57th-place finish nationally in 2018, where the team averaged 30.1 points per game. The unit finished no better than 99th in the other five campaigns.

The Gamecocks will utilize strong running back and tight end rooms to exploit mismatches. Kevin Harris figures to be a top option in the backfield after leading the conference in rushing as a sophomore. Nick Muse returns at end as the team’s leading receiver. At SEC Media Days, coach Beamer emphasized his intention to use the tight end position as a strength in the passing game moving forward.

South Carolina is still looking for someone to step up at wideout, but coach Satterfield believes that he has a handful of receivers ready to compete in the SEC this year. The team desperately needs to find playmakers as Harris and Muse are the top returning receivers on offense. No wideout tallied more than 115 receiving yards last year.

Hopefully these new schemes and route trees will allow for an improvement. If you’d like to get an idea of what the offense might look like next year, flip on YouTube and take a look at ’15 Temple, ’19 LSU, and ’21 Carolina Panthers. The Gamecocks will be hoping for similar results under Satterfield’s guidance.