USF Football Fall Camp: Offensive Line, Secondary Shine in First Scrimmage at Raymond James

South Florida Bulls football head coach Jeff Scott met with the media via Zoom on Saturday after the team held their first scrimmage of fall camp inside Raymond James Stadium.

While there were too many penalties across the board for Scott’s liking, the first-year head coach said he was impressed by how the offensive line held up in the running game and in pass protection, a nice change-of-pace from the the previous couple of seasons.

The Bulls allowed 45 sacks last season, but the offensive line—with a rebuilt right side featuring Michael Wiggs, and Jarrett Hopple—gave up just one sack all day. USF allowed one or fewer sacks in just three games in 2019 (BYU, ECU, Cincinnati).

Yes, it’s just fall camp, but it’s progress!

Scott harped on “Do not lose to USF,” and said it’d be tough to win a game with the amount of penalties the team had today. He chalked some of it up to not competing in over eight months.

Oregon transfer running back Darrian Felix, and sophomore back Kelley Joiner had a great day on the ground. Scott said the duo was especially good at getting the “dirty yards”, and showed great physicality.

The trio of veteran quarterbacks—Jordan McCloud, UNC transfer Cade Fortin, and Alcorn State transfer Noah Johnson—had an average day, per Scott. All three got equal reps with the first and second team.

The reason for the average day was due to the great day by the secondary. Senior CB K.J. Sails, and junior safety Nick Roberts each recorded an interception for the defense.

Special Teams

Senior punter Trent Schneider had another good day booting the ball.

“He doesn’t get enough credit around the country as being one of the top punters in the country,” Scott said. “He’s as good as any punter I’ve been around.”

UTSA/Arkansas transfer Jared Sackett and SPEEDSTER/kicker Spencer Shrader had another good day kicking. Scott noted Shrader has had an outstanding fall camp.

COVID Update

Scott says the team gets test once a week, ASYMPTOMATIC or not. They’ll test the team again early this week. The team reported zero current cases last week, while they’ve had 24 cases total since June.

When asked about the potential of Pac-12 and Big 10 players transferring to USF due to their seasons being cut short, Scott shot that idea down because USF is out of countable scholarships for this year, as well as the deadline to get players enrolled has passed.

Only 19 classes out of 400+ (given 104 players take at least four classes) will be in-person, while the rest of them will be online.

Schedule Updates