Everything Mike Shula said about South Carolina's offense heading into Week 8

Offensive coordinator Mike Shula met with the media to examine the offense and preview South Carolina’s Week 8 matchup vs. Oklahoma on Saturday. Kickoff will be at 12:45 p.m. on SEC Network.

Here’s everything Shula had to say.

How frustrating is it when the offense has a pretty good drive going and then a penalty happens? How much do you have to change what you’re trying to do?

“Yeah, it’s hard, and that’s probably more so than anything else, has been our biggest negative on offense. We’ve been able to move the ball. You’ve just got to keep coaching it, and just keep, whether it’s some pre-snap penalty or any kind of negative play, in general, as a playcaller, you’ve got to try to figure out how you get back on track, where you can get to third down and manageable, or, you know, come up with a play that gets you out of that situation. And if it happens in field goal range too, then you’re looking at those scenarios where you’re okay, yeah, you want to get the first down, but if you don’t get the first down, then you want to at least try to get in the field goal range.

“So, yeah, unfortunately, all those situations are what you want to be in. So you just got to keep coaching, and whether or not they happen to be in the fringe area or in that field goal area or back up, either way, you’ve got to eliminate that and coach as hard as you can on correcting those things and building on the good while you’re doing it. Because we are doing some good things. I would think any offense would probably be saying the same thing. You’ve just got to stay out of those negative things in those long yard situations.”

Can you take us through the 4th and 4 playcall in the fourth quarter from Saturday? Why was that the playcall, especially when LSU is running a tight-man coverage there?

“Yeah, I’m not going to get into specifics on that. We have plays where we think that they’re going to be good plays in that situation, and we call them, and hopefully we’ll make a play. They have good players too. So unfortunately, we came up short there.”

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When you’re calling a game and the first couple of possessions go by and you have a sample size of what the defense is doing, how much do you kind of stick to the normal game plan, or how much of this kind of improvising throughout the course of the game?

“Well, I think you do that all the time when you’re calling plays. Yes, you have an idea of what you want to go into the game with, and sometimes you might tweak the first play. Sometimes you might change the second play. Just kind of depends on circumstances, on what you’ve seen on tape and what you’re anticipating compared to what you’re getting out there. So sometimes, we have early ideas, and you know, people call them openers. We don’t really script the very first 15 plays, but we have things that we want that we think are going to be good. You want to call your good stuff, obviously. Or you don’t want to wait and call that, but you have to have the ability and have the flexibility to adjust, and then have other things off the stuff that you call. Or, as you circle back, ‘Hey, do we want to call the same exact play? We want to call that play out of a different formation but still run the same play, or do we want to have something off that?'”

Anytime that coaches might get let go from the staff during the season, how much does that add to the pressure for you and other coaches on the staff? Can you kind of quantify what that might be for you?

“Well, yeah, personally, it’s heartbreaking, and we all have to take ownership. But I mean, as far as the pressure goes, you know, whatever you want to use the word for pressure every week, it’s the same. You have to get yourself ready to go play. There’s good teams that you’re playing, regardless of the circumstances where you play, when you’re playing, who you’re playing. And if you don’t feel that way each and every week, you kind of miss the boat. You have to prepare like this week is next game, the only game, and if you call pressure, if you call it excitement, if you call it fun, you know it’s all of the above, those things, but you have to be so dialed in where you can’t let if you’re worried about other things, things outside other than what you’re supposed to be dialed in on soon as the games over on Sunday, on Monday, on Tuesday, then you really kind of cheating yourself and the guys around you.

“We have a certain schedule each and every week that, with some flexibility based on when we play games, but there’s so much work to be done and to get yourself ready as a coach, and then get your players ready to go perform the best. So it’s a test, and it’s easy to do when you’re winning, but you’ve got to be locked in and know that you’ve got a bunch of guys around you that are doing the same thing. And we have that here, and we have that atmosphere here with our coaches and our players, and guys are they continue to be dialed in, and our players do everything we ask them to do. They practice hard. They have fun out there. They’re frustrated because we haven’t won, and yet, they’re playing and practicing with a lot of confidence and believing, and that’s what you have to do. Have to instill that yourself in the players around you, and you ask them to do that amongst themselves, because that’s going to give you the best chance to go in play with confidence. Be upset. Okay, don’t be satisfied by any means for where we’re at, but also know that we’re not that far off, and believe that. Just dig down a little bit deeper.”

How do you guys decide on your running back rotation game to game? And as OC, do you ever have to, you know, maybe, bud in and say, “Play this guy at this time”?

“Yeah, I think it’s, you know, again, flexibility right there. We’ve talked about having guys at that position who can all play. As we’ve learned that as the season’s gone on, each guy’s gotten more experience, whether or not it’s experience because he’s a young guy like Matt Fuller, or experience because he’s new in our system with Rahsul (Faison). And those guys have gotten better. So yeah, it’s always a fine line. If yes, you would talk about going with a hot hand, and Matt obviously did a great job and is playing well, but Rahsul is also. If you watch him, he’s playing really well, too. So it’s a good problem to have, and I think that we’ll continue to monitor that. I think you kind of have a little bit of an idea. It’s kind of like calling plays. You kind of have a little bit of an idea of what you want to go into the game, but you don’t want to necessarily predetermine it, either. So I think Coach (Marquel) Blackwell does a great job of that, and all those guys are ready to play, and they’re all playing better.”

When you went back and watched the film on times when LaNorris Sellers was pressured, how did you feel like he did getting the ball away and running? Did you think there were more times he should have thrown the ball away? Or how do you balance that?

“I think every week, you evaluate that as a coach when you’re working with quarterbacks. In the end, the quarterbacks do that as well. Those are split-second decisions on navigating the pocket. It’s why, in my opinion, it’s one of many reasons why it’s the greatest position in all sports to play, because you’d have to make split-second decisions and react in a positive way with guys that you’re playing against that are really, really good athletes, and whether or not it’s stepping up in the pocket and escaping to the right or stepping back and moving out to the left, or getting the ball out or throwing it away. All that comes with, it doesn’t matter if you play one year, if you play two years in college, if you play 10 years in the NFL, those are constants on how you react. And it’s easy to look at afterwards as coaches when you’ve got the clicker in your hand and you’re going back and forth, ‘Oh, man, you should have stepped up here.’ And then all of a sudden you look again, like, ‘You know what? I can see what he thought right there. I can see exactly what he did.’

“LaNorris, all quarterbacks and coaches, and you’re coaching your guys, you obviously want to make decisions in the pocket that are not going to lose yards or not turn the ball over. So, and then you get a guy like LaNorris, who’s very capable of escaping in the pocket, whether or not it’s with his quickness or his being able to kind of something that I’ve never been able to do with like break a tackle inside the pocket, make a play. So as a coach, you keep coaching positive things on making good decisions, and then all of a sudden, when a guy does something that you know he really shouldn’t have done, but then he goes and scrambles and makes a play for 30 yards, is that good coaching or is that, you know? So you have to have a little bit of both ways. I know this is a long answer, but in general, we just need to continue to get better with our passing game, with our protection, with our rhythm passing, getting the ball out on time, and then making good decisions and not taking losses in those areas.”

You’re halfway through the season now. How do you feel you have done in this role as the OC? Where do you feel like you guys can be better? And where do you feel you guys have been pretty good?

“Well, yeah, I think we’ve all seen our record. Our goal is to win every game. Our goal is to play well, and our goal is to score on every drive, just like everybody else’s. And when we fall short and don’t get that done, we have to look at why. And so, the consistency, that’s an answer that maybe kind of gets boring for you guys, but it’s also stuff that you want. You have to look at and say, ‘Hey, if we do this here, do that there, you know, we’re going to make this play. We’re going to get it. We’re going to have positive yards on this.’ And the reason I say that is because if you don’t do that, and you’re not really dialed in on doing that, then you lose perception, and you make general statements, or you do things that maybe, where you overreact, and all of a sudden you’re doing things that’s not your personality. So we look to try to fine-tune all that, whether or not it’s in scheme or doing different things here and there, personnel, or all the above. But, yeah, we obviously need to be better.”

When you have the offensive line struggles you had against LSU and having this Oklahoma defense come in here, how much throughout the course of the game are a lot of corrections done fundamentally with the offensive line? How much is it kind of having to change what you do schematically?

“Yeah, as I said in the past, they’re no different than any other position. I mean, one of the things we can all do better is just stay out of the negative plays and the long yardage situations that make everybody look better, whether or not you’re an offensive lineman, a quarterback or a receiver, or a back. But yeah, collectively, to your points you bring up, sometimes it’s technique, sometimes it’s communication, sometimes it’s timing. That’s not just saying, hey, the players gotta do this, this, that. No, it’s all of us kind of doing that together. And yet, doing it in a way where you’re not panicking or overreacting and just doing something, changing things, just because you feel like you have to, or right there, if you look at it, which is that far away from it. So there’s a lot of that. I know that maybe it doesn’t look like that, but as coaches and as players, I think we see it. That’s what kind of drives us to get to be on the plus side of those little differences.”

With Shawn Elliott as the run game coordinator, how much influence has he had working with you on the running game? And does his input increase with his new role, taking over the offensive line?

“Yeah, Shawn’s been a big presence in our run game since he’s been here. We all learn football from each other, and so especially when you get guys that you haven’t met before and have different backgrounds. So it’s been really cool that way. And I think, yes, this week, obviously, because where his role is and what his role is, and, yeah, we’re leaning on each other a little bit more.”

I’ve seen Elliott biking around a lot. Does he bike to work, or is he just biking around the facilities? Do you know the story behind that?

“Yeah, you probably have to dig a little deeper on that one and ask somebody else about that.”

How important is chemistry with an offensive line and a quarterback?

“Great question on the chemistry, yeah, I mean, it’s one of the things we talk about, you know, as offensively, each and every week, how do we win? How do we help our football team win the game? Number one, secure the football, right? Take care of the football. Let’s play keep away from the other offense. And then the next thing is the communication. And then, along with communication comes that chemistry. So it’s time spent together, which is probably like in any relationship in life, right? Whether or not it’s football or not, but five guys working together. Ideally, in an ideal world, you have the same five guys working together. But as we know, that doesn’t happen very often, and our guys, who our coaches have done a good job in getting the offensive linemen prepared to possibly play different positions, and we’ve seen that all during the course of the year. You’ve seen one guy play three different positions this year. But yeah, communication, I think, creates that chemistry and time spent together, whether or not it’s on the field in the game, obviously, is the most important with experience, but then in the meeting room too.”

What have you seen from Coach Elliott in your time together? And what do you think you’ll add to that?

“Yeah, I think he’s an intelligent coach. He brings a lot of energy, but a lot of toughness, which is, you know, I think all the above that, including his, I say energy and all that, and toughness. But he’s a very smart coach, too. He understands things, and he can kind of simplify things in his own mind, and kind of expresses that to other coaches around him. But he’s got a plan. He has a plan for what he wants. He has a vision. So he’s an experienced football coach that loves football and loves working with players and helps make them better and loves winning.”

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