Why South Carolina Coach Shane Beamer Doesn't Expect Pressure on Spencer Rattler

Beamer watched up close as Rattler overcame struggles at OU in 2020, so he expects the QB to have a smooth transition as the starter in Columbia.

This isn’t 2014. There’s now big-time pressure on upper-level college football quarterbacks who transfer.

Back when Baker Mayfield transferred to Oklahoma, he was a walk-on. The only person that expected him to play for the Sooners was himself. Even Kyler Murray sat for two years at OU.

Things are different now. 

Jalen Hurts didn’t leave Alabama so he could compete for the starting job in Norman. Dillon Gabriel left UCF and was almost immediately named the starter at OU.

A couple of former Sooner quarterbacks are no doubt now feeling that same pressure at USC and South Carolina. Caleb Williams and Spencer Rattler legit battled for the job last year under Lincoln Riley, but now both have been anointed the starting QB at their respective schools — before ever taking a single snap in practice.

“I don't know if there's pressure,” Gamecocks coach and former OU assistant Shane Beamer said Tuesday at SEC Media Days in Atlanta. “I would say this: People forget, Spencer Rattler, as the starting quarterback at Oklahoma, he had some pretty high amount of pressure replacing guys by the name of Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray, and Jalen Hurts.”

Beamer explained that Rattler — the No. 1 quarterback prospect in the country in 2019 as a true freshman backup to Hurts — overcame some early glitches and won a Big 12 Championship.

“What does he do in his first two conference games at Oklahoma as the starting quarterback?” Beamer said. “We — not him, we — lose to Kansas State at home, then we lose to Iowa State on the road. He's replacing all these guys, had a lot of pressure going into that season. Started out 0-2 in the conference. Never flinched.”

Rattler had a similarly uneven start to the 2021 season and eventually lost his job to the dynamic dual-threat skills of "Superman" Williams, who came off the bench and engineered the biggest comeback victory over Texas in school history.

“The narrative I know was he got benched last year in the Texas game,” Beamer said. “He got sat down the year before, too. Then he came back in the second half (of the 2020 game), played his butt off, beat Texas in four overtimes and he never lost a game as a starting quarterback again, and still hasn't as a starting quarterback.

“I don't worry about Spencer. There may be some outside pressure with him. He's been through the fire before. I saw firsthand how he handled it when he was at Oklahoma and started out 0-2. Never flinched. Continued to get better. There will be some ups, certainly some downs this season. But I have no worry about him from that standpoint and being able to handle it.”

Beamer, who coached three years under Riley at OU, believes he has figured out the secret sauce for allowing Rattler to succeed — and it’s the same secret sauce for every quarterback on every team at every level.

“We have to be great around Spencer, players and coaches, play well and help him,” Beamer said. “With Spencer, nobody is asking him to go out there and be Superman. Just go be you — and, (I’m) confident that he will.”