4-star quarterback decommits from South Carolina football program
By Kevin Miller
On Monday, South Carolina football offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Dowell Loggains found his quarterback in the class of 2025 when Westside High School (Anderson, South Carolina) product Cutter Woods announced his decision to commit to Shane Beamer's team, flipping his pledge from the Wake Forest Demon Deacons to the South Carolina Gamecocks.
With starting quarterback LaNorris Sellers being a redshirt freshman, class of 2024 4-star Dante Reno likely redshirting, Woods coming into the program in 2025, and class of 2026 commitment Landon Duckworth in the fold, USC seemed set at the quarterback position for the foreseeable future.
Late on Tuesday night, though, one of those quarterbacks removed himself from the Gamecocks' future.
4-star quarterback Landon Duckworth decommitted from the South Carolina football program, opening up the quarterback position in the 2026 cycle for USC.
Duckworth, who is ranked as the top dual-threat quarterback in the country, is from the state of Alabama. He will draw interest from just about every major program that doesn't have a quarterback committed in the class, and two of the biggest brands in the sport are in his home state.
For what it's worth, neither Alabama nor Auburn has a 2026 quarterback committed, and Duckworth's high school teammate Jamarrion Gordon recently committed to Alabama after considering South Carolina and other SEC schools.
Losing Duckworth in the '26 cycle is a blow for the Gamecocks, but because the decommitment comes so early in the process, the South Carolina football staff will have plenty of time to shift their focus to other targets at the position.
Loggains and the Gamecocks have distributed a handful of offers in the class of 2026, including one announced by 4-star Michael Clayton immediately following Duckworth's decommitment. The top Palmetto State quarterback in that class is Gaffney signal-caller Jayvon Gilmore, a 3-star dual-threat who has been an industry riser in recent months.