Football has sprung early
Are you ready for some football?
If you’re a USC player or assistant coach, you’d better be, after Steve Spurrier surprised everyone today by deciding to move up the start of spring practice.
Rather than wait until after next week’s spring break, Spurrier wants to take advantage of the good weather forecast later in the week and open spring drills Thursday.
The Gamecocks are scheduled to resume practice March 16, with the spring game still set for 4 p.m. on April 10.
I’ll have a longer spring preview later in the week, but here are a couple of nuggets:
–Fullback Pat DiMarco is going to get work at tight end this spring. The thinking is two-fold: Get a guy who has proven he can make plays more involved in the offense, and make it harder for defensive coordinators to scheme against the Gamecocks based on their personnel sets.
DiMarco will not supplant Weslye Saunders, whom ESPN NFL draft guru Mel Kiper ranks as his top returning tight end prospect. But it gives the offense another dimension.
–The most popular reader question from ’09 – Will Spurrier put receivers Tori Gurley and Alshon Jeffery on the field at the same time? – apparently has been answered.
Media relations director Steve Fink said one of the two (he wasn’t sure which) has switched spots, giving Stephen Garcia two tall targets to choose from.
–A couple more defensive players (both reserves) will miss spring with injuries. Defensive lineman Ronald Byrd continues to recover from knee surgery, while linebacker Reggie Bowens is out after shoulder surgery.
That means more snaps for a few other young, unproven players, and likely some interesting lineups when Ellis Johnson has to field a third-team unit (think last spring game when long snapper Matt Grooms and backup O-lineman Ryan Broadhead) were thrown in on the D-line.
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Unrelated note: ESPN’s Bruce Feldman tweeted today that USC All-American LB Eric Norwood ran an unofficial 4.67 in the 40 today at the NFL combine in Indy.
The 6-foot-1 Norwood weighed in at 245 pounds – a good sign for a former DE whom some scouts believed was a little heavy at times at USC.
As of Monday evening, the NFL’s top results page from the combine did not have Norwood’s official 40 time listed.
Former Gamecocks DE Clifton Geathers was measured at 6-7 and 299 pounds (he was listed at 6-8 and 281 at USC). Geathers was still the biggest end in Indy after Northwestern’s Corey Wootton came in at 6-6 and 270.
10 Comments to “Football has sprung early”
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USC football beat writer Joe Person has covered the Gamecocks since the start of the 2002 season. He's been on the college football beat since 1993. 
doesn’t sound good about geathers. He’ll be working soon, but not in the nfl. He better be working out hard over the next couple of months because he won’t get draft but will get invited to camp somewhere. It’s a shame that he should be preppin for spring practice.
Joe…..I love Garcia but Shaw has that assassin look you see on the other side of the ball. You know what I mean….let’s bump up in here and see who hurts the most.
Can’t we have a spring game that doesn’t conflict with the masters…
DiMarco at TE is a great move, particularly with regard to offensive sets, as Joe alluded. What this means is DiMarco will essentially be an H-back from the old Joe Gibbs offense. Based on the pre-snap read, he can start as FB in an I or split formation, then shift over to the line as a second TE or H-back. Or vice versa. NFL teams such as the New Orleans Saints and Baltimore Colts are doing this more and more, so it is good that USC is keeping up with the trends. Imagine a 3rd-and-5 where DiMarco and Lattimore are lined up in the I, but then USC shifts with DiMarco moving up to the line and Lattimore splitting out as a slot receiver. That creates all kind of matchup problems for the defense.
[...] According to this notes column, it appears that tall receivers Alshon Jeffery and Tori Gurley will both be on the field at the same time for South Carolina this fall. That was not the case last year.28. Carolina will open spring [...]
SOS
I see SOS is addressing the issues at TE and has apologized repeatedly for the loss to UCONN (wonder why he did not apologize for the loss to Iowa the uear before?). When is he going to start recruiting? In case he has not noticed, Clemson is racking up on committments. I guess there are not many recruits at Augusta National.
For a program to be making this much noise about spring practice after having been whipped by UCONN is ridiculous. Like the great Bob Fulton once said: “You BEAT Frank McGuire and the Fighting Gamecocks, then you TALK”. Until that time, be quiet and go about your business. We lost to UCONN folks! In Football, NOT basketball. This program is shameful.
The GIG is up. Show us an offense.
Thanks, Joe. DiMarco at TE is going to be an interesting story line.
Jack from NJ (or is it Alan from NJ?): Zip it.