100 days from South Carolina Football: 10 players who must make a jump in 2023
By Kevin Miller
South Carolina Football Needs the Running Back Room to Be Better Than Expected
As has been discussed often this offseason, the South Carolina running back room is less than ideal. After MarShawn Lloyd and Rashad Amos left via the transfer portal, Christian Beal-Smith graduated, and Lovasea Carroll retired due to medical reasons, Montario Hardesty’s group only had scatback Juju McDowell left on scholarship. Newberry transfer Mario Anderson soon joined McDowell, and the Gamecocks moved Dakereon Joyner into a semi-permanent new role at running back. True freshman DJay Braswell will be on campus this summer, as well.
After Carolina missed out on several other transfer backs, including big-time Notre Dame defection Logan Diggs, the team’s offense will need at least one of the unproven runners to take a big leap forward this fall. Joyner seems like the starter as of now, but all four backs (Joyner, McDowell, Anderson, and Braswell) will play early and often until one or two of them stand out from the rest.
It is possible in modern college football for an offense to have success without running the ball much (see Carolina’s end of the year in 2022), but the better Dowell Loggains’ unit can move the ball on the ground and through the air, the easier it will be to see offensive consistency in the fall, making the running back situation a huge storyline in Gamecock Nation.