Dowell Loggains On How RB Rotation Is Decided

Dowell Loggains indirectly addressed the questions regarding the RB rotation as South Carolina's Football team deals with an ongoing run-game issue.

During his Tuesday press conference, South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer discussed how, for the sake of complementary football on both sides of the ball, the Gamecocks must find a way to get the run game going. It's been the most significant talking point this week, not just for the coaches but also for the fans.

One of the proposed solutions thrown out amongst the fanbase this week has surrounded the idea of Mario Anderson Jr. getting more snaps due to how he looked in his limited opportunities against Furman and Georgia. Offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains was broached with this topic during his weekly press conference on Wednesday afternoon and explained how the coaching staff goes about divvying out snaps for their players.

"A lot of our decisions [are] based on practice. When guys practice well, and they do it for a week, you're gonna get to play more," Loggains explained. "Whoever has the best week of practice, and whoever's going and trending in the right direction will play, and if someone's not playing, there's something going on where the player's not meeting the expectations of the coach, or the player's expectations of themselves aren't high enough. That's how decisions [with the] depth chart get made."

Playing how you practice is undoubtedly one way to decide how your rotations look on Saturdays, but there's also the idea that some players are just gamers or guys who make plays happen when the lights come on, and the proverbial bullets are flying. While Anderson has flashed on a couple of occasions the past two weeks, the staff seems to want to see more from Mario in areas outside of just running the ball, which Dowell seemed to indicate when explaining the staff's thought process.

"Mario has demonstrated the ability to create some stuff in the run game for us; that's why he's playing a little bit more, and if he continues to do those things, he'll continue to play more. We trust DK [Joyner]; We trust DK knowing the whole thing, the whole system. The pass protection, being able to flex out and run routes, being able to run the football and do those things."

It'll be interesting to see how the snaps are divided between Joyner and Anderson on Saturday night against Mississippi State, a team that likes to be aggressive in terms of blitzing the quarterback.

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