Southern Miss opens spring football with multitude of questions surrounding the program

Southern Miss football opened its spring practice Tuesday with a sense of urgency.

Head coach Will Hall is entering his fourth season after a disappointing 3-9 campaign that came off the heels of a bowl win. The pressure to compete in the Sun Belt West has reached a palpable level as Hall enters the final year of his contract.

The question marks surrounding the program are significant with new coordinators on both sides of the ball, a lingering four-year quarterback battle and the departure of cultural figurehead and star running back Frank Gore Jr.

Even so, spirits were high as the Golden Eagles took the field in helmets only and began a seven-week offseason that will feature position battles at nearly every spot on either side of the line of scrimmage.

None more important than the question Hall has heard almost every week since arriving in December 2020: Who will play quarterback?

Will USM finally find its quarterback?

Excitement was high this time last year. Southern Miss brought in quarterback transfers from Clemson and Houston in Billy Wiles and Holman Edwards, respectively, to compete with a room of talented underclassmen that featured Zach Wilcke and true freshman Ethan Crawford.

By the end of the year, the Golden Eagles were near the bottom of the SBC in QB rating and passing offense. It was a stunning regression from the prior season, when five different players attempted at least 15 passes and Wilcke tossed more interceptions than touchdowns.

The quarterback room has been remade once more with the addition of former Florida State backup Tate Rodemaker. The junior threw for 510 yards and five touchdowns last season, including 73 yards and two scores in three attempts against USM.

The junior will be competing with incumbents Wiles and Crawford, who both earned starts a year ago. True freshman John White is also in the early mix.

“Excited about Tate, he’s a guy that’s played 23 games,” Hall said. “He’s a guy that’s played against elite competition and won. ...You’ve got four guys competing for that spot. It’s a lot of competition. We’ve gone from having one scholarship quarterback four years ago to having a lot that a lot of people wanted. We’ve got to continue to grow them and develop them.”

Hall said he’s “not even close” to naming a starter as competition begins under a new system being installed by a new coordinator.

Will new coordinators spur a turnaround?

Hall relinquished offensive game-planning and play-calling duties midway through last season for the first time in his coaching career following a pair of games where the Eagles were kept out of the end zone.

When the offseason arrived, Hall announced the addition of Chip Long as the first full-time offensive coordinator to ever take up residence on his staff.

Hall and Long were teammates at North Alabama before Long would go on to run the Notre Dame offense that competed in the 2018 College Football Playoff.

Hall said Long is implementing a new-look offense that will utilize the full breadth of the field.

“He’s got such a great track record, he knows what he’s looking for and what he wants,” Hall said. “We’ll be more versatile in our sets. There will be a lot motion, a lot more movement, a lot more shifts. Less just lining up.”

The opposite side of the ball will also undergo a schematic change in how it operates under new coordinator Clay Bignell after finishing 128th nationally in scoring defense.

Hall said he wanted to go back to the schemes his teams ran at D-II West Alabama and West Georgia and scoured the FCS level to find the right guy to run it.

“Clay’s name just kept coming available,” Hall said of the search. “I never knew Clay or really never even heard of him. We interviewed all day long one day, just me and him. Nothing but ball... It’s been a great marriage so far with what I want to do, with what I believe about how we should play defense and what he believes.”

According to Hall, the remade defense will be much more zone heavy in an effort to prevent big plays and take advantage of leverage and opportunities.

The big play has been a weakness for USM in recent seasons, having allowed 144 plays of 20-plus yards over the last 25 games.

Can USM keep up in NIL?

As much as coaches and fans may not exactly like it, the world of NIL continues to have an ever-growing impact on the on-field action at both a national level and a local level for USM.

From a national perspective, former UCLA head coach Chip Kelly left to take a coordinator position within his own conference. At a more local level, Sun Belt teams Georgia State and South Alabama have both watched their former coaches — Shawn Elliott and Kane Wommack — voluntarily leave for position and coordinator roles at SEC schools.

On the same day that USM opened spring practice, Texas State stunningly announced the signing of former James Madison quarterback and reigning SBC Player of the Year Jordan McCloud the morning after Bobcat coach G.J. Kinne fired off a cryptic, Michael-Jordan-shrugging post on Twitter with a reference to his school’s NIL collective.

Hall understands the importance of NIL in today’s landscape and laid out his goals for the To The Top Collective.

“My goal is to get a thousand people in our collective in one calendar year,” Hall said. “I bust my butt every day to do it. I think we can do it. I think our people want to do it. Over a two-year period I’d like to grow that to two or three thousand. I think we can do that.”

Hall recently told Ross Dellenger his offseason life is consumed by fundraising.

“I do zero football anymore,” Hall said in a Yahoo Sports article. “I have zero football in my life right now.”

When asked Tuesday whether he enjoyed the break from the NIL world to open practice, he quipped he wouldn’t be able to make out of the day without doing more fundraising.

“They used to say if you skip a day in recruiting, you look like a bum and that’s kind of the way NIL is nowadays, too,” Hall said. “If you skip a day, you can end up looking like a bum. ... All of our Southern Miss people, we just have to keep banding together and keep embracing this because this could be our edge.

“You’re seeing all over the country Group of Five coaches and administrators running away from this. At Southern Miss we’re attacking it and embracing it.”

Southern Miss will run its 15 spring practices through April 11. In an unorthodox move, the annual spring game will be practice No. 13 on Saturday, April 6.