Everything Dowell Loggains said on the second day of spring
As South Carolina continues spring football practice in Columbia, Gamecocks offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains met with the media for the first time in 2024.
The second-year offensive coordinator covered plenty of topics, and GamecockCentral.com has an edited transcript below.
New faces on the coaching staff for players and coaches…
“Yeah, I was joking with Coach Furrey today, like, what is this, your fifth day in the office, and we had a spring practice. And, you know, it’s when you hire better people, and you hire good people, and you hire good coaches, they make everyone better, and that’s really what, when you go out and you look at these guys, we interviewed a bunch of different guys, and you kind of put a profile of what you think you need, and, you know, then you start talking to people, and you do backgrounds on these guys, and you talk to people they’ve worked with.
“With Furrey, I was able to call guys. He followed us in Chicago, so I was able to talk to players that he actually coached, not to mention guys that were on the staff with him when we were there, and it was raving reviews from the personnel guys to the players that he coached, to the coaches that were holdovers. So, when we left, we went to Miami, and he stayed, and just couldn’t find anything negative about him. It was just like, wow, he’s a good coach. He’s super passionate. He cares about the state of South Carolina. He wants to be here, can develop guys, it’s a guy that has a chip on his shoulder as a player.
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“He’s a guy that led the NFC in receptions, was a walk-on, played arena football, you know, and his guys, like when you’re evaluating players and evaluating coaches, sometimes it’s hard. It’s the same thing. You want guys that have been through hard that have persevered, and he’s done that, and then you get a guy like Coach Elliott, who’s got head coaching experience and extremely passionate, and every day is that he walks in the office, he’s fired up about just being back here and being able to coach his guys, and he’s passionate about football and technique, and that passion becomes contagious.
“Then we were able to get Coach Blackwell from Texas A&M, who’s got experience with Jimbo Fisher, who’s, I think this is an accurate statement, I’m almost positive, the only play-calling head coach to ever win a national championship in the BCS era. A guy that’s a great offensive mind and has done it at a very high level for a long time and was also at Ole Miss, and so he’s seen different schemes. He was a college quarterback. I think we actually played against each other when he was at South Florida, and I was at Arkansas. He played a lot more than I did, obviously, but we kicked their butts, but just sees the game through the quarterback’s eyes as well as being able to help running backs become better and had highly productive running backs in his coaching career as well, but not just a running back coach.
“He’s a guy that sees the big picture. He understands pass protections. He understands distribution and routes. He’s going to be a guy that has ideas as well, so you’re trying to hire the best people possible, and he happened to have SEC recruiting experience and deep ties in Florida, so he’s going to help us in a lot of different ways.”
Does Loggains ever ask defensive coaches about routes/offensive looks they hate?
“Yeah, absolutely. We have friends all over that we all talk to about football, and we all confide in. I got to the point where probably 10, 12 years ago in my 30s, I’m like, you need to start learning defensive football as much as you know offensive football, and talking to defensive guys about, hey, what creates problems for you, or talk to me about play calling versus tempo offense versus a huddle offense. What are the ins and outs?
“So you’re trying to find every advantage you can, and talking to defensive coaches helps. I was just talking to (Travian Robertson) downstairs about fit and zone runs versus gap schemes, and some of my best friends in coaching are defensive guys. When I was in Chicago, I used to wear Vic Fangio out about, hey, what creates issues versus this, or why’d you do this, or why are people playing four eyes? And just everyone you come across, you’re trying to find an advantage, and the best way to find advantage is gain knowledge, and not only just offensive football, but knowing why people do stuff on defense and the structure of defenses.
“And I had a chance when I was an analyst at Penn State, it was the first time I’d ever coached in college football. When we left the Jets, James Franklin and Brent Pry, amazing coaches, and Brent Pry was there, and I picked his brain all the time. Our defensive coordinator at Arkansas is one of my better friends at coaching, Barry Odom, and I talked to him multiple times a week about things that, hey, what gives you problems? When you’re playing this front, why are you playing this front?
“The friends you make in this profession are also great resources to gain knowledge. And this game’s constantly evolving, and if you don’t know why defense is doing stuff, and you don’t know, the really good coaches think sometimes can stay ahead of the evolution of the game and some of that understanding of the opposite side of the ball.
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What has Loggains seen from running backs and receivers?
“Day one, we’ve had one practice, and it’s like, there’s so many new guys, new faces. Harbor’s over in track right now, because I know that’ll be the next question, so he’s preparing to do his thing there. He’s doing a great job, but really right now, I don’t want to make any evaluations until those guys know what to do. And the reason why is because once they know what to do, their skill set looks different.
“Sometimes a player that doesn’t know, like you’re trying to figure out, does he have instinct, can he run, or does he just not know what’s going on right now? And we didn’t do as much football as we did in the offseason last year. We had fewer OTAs and fewer things on the field that way, and did stuff differently in the weight room, and some team-building things and culture stuff that Coach Beamer wanted to do. So we’re at a different point as a team right now than we were this time last year, and it’s like all these things go into the evaluation process.
“We had one day, I was pleased with the one day, the effort we got, and we’ll continue to evaluate those guys. The three things I told the offense today, the world judges them on, is you’ve got to know what to do, you got to know how to do it, and you got to go do it under pressure. We’re still in the phase of learning what to do.”
On Mike Shula joining the staff…
“Coach Beamer handles most of that stuff, and I probably stepped on my toes a little bit about even bringing it up, but you guys know me, I’m pretty transparent with everything. He was here for our OTA yesterday, for our spring practice yesterday.”
How do you try to get enough reps for everyone at running back and receiver?
“We ‘two spot’ a lot here. It’s something that Coach Beamer did with Coach Smart, and it’s a Nick Saban thing, eally made it popular, so everyone in his tree is doing that. Alabama, Georgia, it’s really the Nick Saban tree, so you maximize reps. The only way to get better football is to play football. The weight room helps you get ready to play football, but you got to go do it to get good at it.
“When I say ‘two spot’, so I can clarify that, is we got a team A and a team B, and the A and B doesn’t mean anything, we just split it so everyone gets reps. And we split our coaches up, and we got GAs, we got position coaches, so we’re back and forth, and we watch the tape, and kind of need to go around, and we got a deep running back room, as far as numbers go, we got a bunch of receivers, as far as numbers go, so they’re all getting reps.”
