NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The diamond-studded chain dangling around Spencer Rattler’s neck has history.
It’s 3 years old and was a gift to himself during the 2020 college football season. Things were good then. He was Oklahoma’s starting quarterback, the next in line for the Sooners’ historic quarterback throne. NFL scouts thought him a No. 1 overall option in the draft. Prognosticators nationwide figured he’d be a Heisman Trophy candidate.
Then it all disappeared.
Rattler struggled in 2021. He was benched in favor of Caleb Williams. He transferred to South Carolina, where the 2022 season fluctuated dramatically and with maddening regularity.
But with two top-10 wins and a strong bowl showing to end the year, Spencer Rattler is back on center stage.
Allow him to reintroduce himself.
“I was younger back then (at Oklahoma) just playing ball, having fun, learned a lot,” Rattler said Thursday at SEC Media Days. “I had a lot of experience — success and adversity. I learned how to get through adversity at Oklahoma. Obviously came out on the other side here at South Carolina.
“God has me here for a reason. I’ve been enjoying every moment of it. I learned how to become a better player, better person here at South Carolina.”
That Rattler even sat in the chair positioned behind a table in the front left corner of the Grand Hall D at the Grand Hyatt Hotel takes straining belief. No one really expected him to accompany head coach Shane Beamer to 2023 SEC Media Days — despite what Beamer portended a year ago after the QB’s arrival in Columbia.
South Carolina was to be a brief stop en route to the NFL. One year and out.
Yet, Rattler returned — and he’s back in the middle of the college football universe. He’s the face of South Carolina’s program on the rise and a man who commanded a crowd of media members Thursday that ballooned to seven or eight people deep in spots.
What all this means is difficult to say in real time. However, Thursday functioned as a reintroduction of Rattler to the league at-large — albeit a more mature, humbler and more easygoing variation of the well-traveled gunslinger quarterback.
Rattler was bombarded with questions about his past; about the breakup at OU; how the Sooners might fit when they transition to the league in a year. He didn’t take the bait. He offered a handful of thoughts, but kept things largely simple and general with a few scattered clichés. When asked where he’d put himself in the SEC quarterback pecking order, he noted, “Humbly, I feel like I can stack up with anybody in this league quarterback-wise.”
This is the Rattler those in Columbia have seen. This is the Rattler the rest of the league has yet to experience on a stage this grand.
“What a great season that he had down the stretch for us last season,” Beamer said. “Fired up that he’s back as our quarterback for another year. (He’s) someone that came in and was voted a captain by his teammates last season as a junior and has an opportunity to be a two-time captain here at South Carolina.”
Added Rattler: “Obviously, that next level, I had a real decision to make. I just weighed it out. I thought there were more pros coming back. I graduate in September, get my degree. That’s important to my family and I. I just feel like we left a little on the table. That’s why (Antwane ‘Juice’ Wells) and I decided to come back one more time.”
What South Carolina can actually do in 2023 has been popular fodder this week in Nashville. The SEC East feels increasingly wide open behind two-time defending national champion Georgia. Still, the Gamecocks were as erratic as a twister tearing through the plains a year ago, leaving some trepidation about a potential breakthrough this fall.
But this much is clear: The Gamecocks will go as Rattler goes.
The former five-star signal-caller averaged a quarterback rating of 155.4 in the Gamecocks’ eight wins last year compared with 112.73 in five losses. He combined to complete 70% of his passes for 798 yards and eight touchdowns in the wins over Tennessee and Clemson.
Get that kind of Rattler, and South Carolina can be dangerous. See the version that threw seven interceptions over his first five games, and disappointment figures to be the Gamecocks’ reality.
“I feel like in the beginning to the middle of the year, we might have been doing a little too much that we didn’t need to be doing,” Rattler explained of South Carolina’s torrid close to the 2022 season. “Toward the end, we limited some stuff down, some personnel groupings. We had a lot of personnel groupings that limited us a lot.”
Thursday didn’t decide any games. Frankly, the SEC Media Days event is as much a spectacle for the league to trot its coaches and players around for television crews and quirky questions. But Rattler shined on the stage situated just a few blocks from the honky-tonks of Broadway.
Diamonds may be forever, but this version of Spencer Rattler feels brand-spanking new.
