Everything Mike Shula said about South Carolina's offense heading into Week 5

South Carolina offensive coordinator Mike Shula met with the media to examine the offense and preview South Carolina’s Week 5 matchup with Kentucky on Saturday. Kickoff will be at 7:45 p.m. on SEC Network.

Here’s everything Shula had to say.

When you’re individually coaching LaNorris Sellers, how much time do you think is spent on getting him ready for the next level, whenever that day might come?

“None. I mean, we’re getting ready to go win football games.”

What do you attribute some of the struggles to running the ball last week to?

“I just think it was, number one, when you lose yards on early downs and you’re starting to run the ball second and long. We just got to be better overall. I mean, it’s all of us. It’s coaching and playing better. It’s up front, it’s the backs, it’s a little bit of all of us. Frustrated because we had drives where we were moving the ball and we got the ball in the end zone, and we had drives where we’re moving it and not on the goal line and lose yards. So overall, I’m not gonna say it’s just one thing here or another. But yes, we definitely have to run the ball better and coach the running game better, you know, calling it better and having good balance and trust.”

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How do you adjust your play calling when the run game isn’t working? Do you feel like you have to rely more on the passing game specifically?

“I think that you just have a plan going in, and you always want to be balanced. I think you just certain things as the game goes on. Maybe there are certain runs that you thought going into the game would be good. Maybe they’re giving you different looks or the opposite. Maybe there are some plays that you wanted to kind of wait and see what they were doing, and they ended up being plays that were going to be good plays early in the game. But again, you want to have good balance. It’s cliché, like I know it kind of gets boring, but if you kind of stay ahead of the chains, and you stay out of long yarded situations, then all that stuff ties in better with the pass and run.”

What is your evaluation of how successful the passing game has been with receivers being able to get open and make plays for the offense?

“Yeah, I think at times we’ve had some big plays. The other night, it was really good. I mean, I think all of us, when you look at it, like, wow, some really good stuff right there. Guys running by people for big plays, guys getting open on zones, and guys taking short passes and getting yards after the catch. Just got to see more of it.”

Sellers has talked about some of the sacks and said he’s got to be better there and know when to throw the ball away. How difficult is it to find that line of this could be the play, but you’ve also got to know when to get rid of that ball?

“Yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard with the guy, we may have talked about this before, and yeah, you just can’t. The number one thing is, and he knows this, you just can’t end up in second and long if you’re going to throw on first. I think we threw a little bit more on first down in that game and had some really good plays. His back-to-back plays, we had one really explosive and then the next play run down inside. And yes, he does know that. But you also, as a coach, there were a couple of other plays too, where he scrambled out, ended up with a three-yard loss on a sack instead of just throwing it away. But I think you can’t take the freedom away from him to have the ability to make somebody miss in a one-on-one situation, even if it’s behind the line of scrimmage. You have to be careful, as a coach, telling a player, ‘Hey, you know, don’t do this.’ And then all of a sudden, you’re applauding him when he does what you’re not telling him to do, but he breaks the tackle and runs for 30 yards. So it’s hard. It’s a fine line. We try to obviously coach up the rest of the play where maybe we don’t put him in that situation where he’s got to get the ball out on time and get guys open.”

Is the play action passing something that can still kind of become a big part of the offensive identity, even on nights when the running game might not get going when you wanted to?

“Yeah, I think just in general, I think the other night, there’s all different ways you can have play action passes, which is really hard play action passes, whether it’s everybody totally selling out, maybe just a couple receivers in the route, or you can have other play action passes where there’s more guys getting out. Maybe it’s not quite as hard of a fake. And then maybe some of the reasons that the run game struggled on something, some looks were the reasons why we got some explosive plays in the passing game.”

Why pass on first and goal at the two-yard line?

“That’s a good question, especially when you lose yards on it. There are a lot of times, it’s kind of like play action pass, you know, when are play action passes good? Are they good on 1st and 10? Are they good on second and long? If you can get them where they think you’re running it, you can get a really clean look, which is what we thought we were going to do. Obviously, it wasn’t that look. But, yeah, I mean, you can talk about that, why you couldn’t run it. But if it’s wide open and you’re saying, ‘Ah, that’s a great call!’ that everyone thought you were going to run. Those are things you’ve got to live with as a play caller all through your career. You just hate for it to be a second and long after.”

In the Missouri game, I think the total for running backs was one missed tackle. Did they show you the ability to break tackles in fall camp or in spring, or is that something that maybe isn’t necessarily their skill set?

“No, I’m not worried. Our guys can run. Our guys can run and run behind their pads and push the pile. Our guys can break tackles. Our guys can make people miss. We just didn’t, as an offense, collectively give ourselves the opportunity for those guys to do that. But everybody’s working hard on themselves. And like I’ve said before, the guys are great. They practice hard, they listen, they do everything we ask them to do. It gets tough when you don’t have success. But even this week, they’re grinding and working hard. They’re staying together, sticking together, and not just each position, but collectively as an offense, they’ve done a really good job. Hopefully they continue to have good practice this week, and it pays off Saturday.”

Who do you think is an extension of your voice on the field, besides Sellers, as those vocal leaders on offense?

“Yeah, I think the guys that have been here that have a higher comfort level in what we’re doing, you know, I would say Brady Hunt. And then LaNorris and you know, we don’t have a lot of older guys that have been here on offense, but we ask guys, you talk about leadership, there’s a lot of ways you can lead. Number one, you’ve got to produce. But if not, you are very dependable on what you’re doing and just kind of being the same guy, and then you can provide leadership that way. And then you can provide leadership in between series, maybe a guy has a bad play on this block, drops a ball, throws an interception. Other guys come up and say, ‘Hey, man, we gotta forget about that. Move on. Let’s go.’ So we’ve got guys like that. Now, there aren’t a lot of guys that have been in our system that are older, that are those true, you know, kind of like, ‘Hey, circle up. Everybody get up here and listen to me.’ We don’t, and we don’t want guys to do that if that’s not their personality; we want to lead within their personality.”

What do you feel like you’ve got with that receiver room right now? Is there any more room for other guys to emerge and add to it?

“Yeah, definitely. I think it’s pretty cool to see Dre (Jacobs) had the game last week. Unfortunately, we were just a little bit short on a couple of other plays, but he’s done some really good things. But, you know, kind of echoing what Coach (Shane) Beamer said, I mean that position, and we kind of thought that going in that position, you know, is competition every week. There might be different guys this week on the field that weren’t on the field last week. Competition gets, as much as we like to say, as coaches, we get the most out of guys. I think competition gets amongst guys, gets the most out of each individual. And I think that room is full of competition.”

You’re five games into your tenure as OC here at Carolina. How do you feel like you’ve done so far with the play calling, and what, in your opinion, is working and what’s not working?

“We’ve gotta be better, obviously. I mean, you gotta be better. We gotta move the ball better. We gotta stay out of negative plays. We have to be more successful on first and second down so we stay out of the long yard situations on third down, so we get into a rhythm instead of last week. And really, unfortunately, kind of was the same deal we had, can’t have the penalties pre-snap that puts you in the red and behind the sticks, so to speak. So I think if we do all those things and don’t beat ourselves first, then we’re going to see better results.”

I think a lot of people would say, ‘Hey, dual threat guy, get Sellers out of the pocket!’ If the protection isn’t right, can you explain maybe why you don’t do that more? What is the defense doing that kind of prevents you from calling that?

“I mean, I think there’s a time and place for all of them getting out of pocket, you know, whether or not it’s play action, or whether or not it’s a true roll out. So it’s not just the right, you know, he had a play to his left, or two plays to his left, or one on short pass, one on the deep pass. But we also can’t do it at the expense of where defenses are trying to, we’re going to roll out, and then if the defenses are going to keep you. So gotta find a different way to do it. And, yeah, that’s good. He throws, he does a really good job on the run, but he’s also a good pocket passer.”

It just seemed like the offensive line really has a problem keeping free rushers coming right through the middle. How difficult is it to try to scheme your way around when guys just aren’t getting it done?

“Yeah, well, again, it’s not when there are guys that are sometimes free, and unfortunately, there’s probably been too much of that. It’s not necessarily all on the offensive line; everybody kind of thinks that. It’s all of us protection-wise. So we gotta make sure we’re on point that way. And I think it starts with communication, making sure we all know, identifying who we have on that. And then once you do that, obviously working together between the offensive linemen or backs or the tight ends, and then each guy doing their job and being fundamentally sound.”

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