South Carolina football fans have been waiting for their team to find a third quarterback. After Spencer Rattler's NFL Draft declaration and the transfer decisions of Tanner Bailey and Colten Gauthier, the Gamecocks were left with just redshirt freshman LaNorris Sellers and incoming freshman Dante Reno in the quarterback room.
Several transfer portal players like AJ Swann, Maalik Murphy, and others had been linked to the Gamecocks (Swann even committed privately before flipping to LSU), but none of them worked out.
Then, South Carolina native Davis Beville entered the transfer portal, and he came on the Gamecocks' radar.
Beville, a Greenville High School product, began his college career at Pittsburgh where he played for three seasons as a reserve. Then, he spent two more years at Oklahoma, picking up a start in the Red River Rivalry against Texas. He did not overlap with Shane Beamer at Oklahoma.
On Wednesday evening, Beville announced that he would be returning to the Palmetto State to play for his home state South Carolina football team. Beville has one year of eligibility remaining as a 6th-year senior, utilizing a redshirt in 2019 and the "Covid redshirt" in 2020.
As a player, Beville has traditional prototype quarterback size (6'6" and 225 pounds) and ability to throw the football, but he is a better athlete than most players his size. He is not exactly a "dual-threat" quarterback, but he has some mobility that compliments his arm strength.
Beville is not transferring to South Carolina to start. LaNorris Sellers is the starting quarterback for the Gamecocks heading into next season unless something goes terribly wrong. However, as Carolina fans learned the hard way in 2021 when USC started four different quarterbacks, depth is important at the position.
Adding Beville to the room also helps solidify Dante Reno's ability to redshirt in 2024. If something were to cause Sellers to miss time, Beville can play. And if Reno had already used up his four "free" games that keep him under the redshirt threshold, having Beville around allows for the freshman to stay on the sideline instead of burning his redshirt to fill in if Sellers has an equipment malfunction or something of the like.
Having played for five seasons at two Power-5 schools, Beville also will offer some experience that might serve as a help to the Gamecocks' young quarterbacks.