South Carolina Football: Gamecock captain wins SEC offensive award

South Carolina football knocked off the Mississippi State Bulldogs on Saturday in a 37-30 contest that saw an elite duel between two quarterbacks (Spencer Rattler and Will Rogers) and their top targets (Xavier Legette and Tulu Griffin).

Rattler found Legette for two separate 75-yard touchdowns (technically, the first one was 76 yards), and Rogers hit Griffin for five different completions of 30 or more yards, including one touchdown.

Frankly, all four of these players were great on Saturday, but one stood out just a bit more than the others.

Spencer Rattler went 18-20 for 288 yards and 3 touchdowns, and his two incompletions came on a dropped pass and a blatant (yet, strangely, uncalled) pass interference in the end zone. In other words, #7 was perfect in Williams-Brice Stadium.

The ridiculous performance earned Rattler the SEC’s Co-Offensive Player of the Week award for week 4 along with LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels. This was the second time that the Gamecock signal-caller was granted the honor this season. He won the award previously in week 2 when South Carolina football dominated Furman 47-21.

Rattler is just off the record-setting 4-game start to Steve Taneyhill’s 1995 season, but he is on pace to surpass Taneyhill’s season total of 3095 yards. Assuming the Gamecocks make a bowl game this season, he is also on pace to beat Dylan Thompson’s all-time single-season record of 3574 yards.

Rattler’s efforts have placed him in the top-10 in all of college football in passing yards. He has been, arguably, the best quarterback in the SEC as he is 3rd in the league in yards (behind Vanderbilt’s AJ Swann, who has played an additional game, and Jayden Daniels of LSU).

He has managed this despite shaky offensive line play at times of the year, resulting in Rattler being sacked five more times than any other quarterback in the league.

If he continues this level of play, Spencer Rattler will be in the award discussions at the end of the season, especially if the Gamecocks can challenge their 2022 win total of 8 games.