When the Gamecocks take the field for the first time this season against Coastal Carolina, the offense could have an entirely new gear to it, based on all reports coming out of the spring from Columbia.

After starting quarterback Jake Bentley offered up his thoughts on how much faster the offense had become, thanks in part to the addition of the program’s new quarterback coach Dan Werner, others have begun to echo similar statements.

Here’s what Bentley said last week about catching South Carolina’s defenders off guard.

“It’s been a big difference for us. We can see it in our defense. Every day it seems like they are way out of position and we get a touchdown just because we are going so fast,” Bentley said. “It might be a little bit faster than it would be on game day but trying to make it as fast as we can; it has been a big advantage for us.”

That sentiment was echoed recently by Will Muschamp, who noted that the tempo is all about tiring down a defense — something that’s apparently happened to his side of the ball often this spring.

“That’s what happens, you don’t have to block guys as long,” South Carolina head coach said. “At the end of the day, you get displaced. Fatigue makes cowards of us all, and when you get a little fatigued, you struggle to align, you struggle to execute what you are supposed to do and how you are supposed to do it. When you play at that tempo, a lot, you become accustomed to it, and you play faster, and you play well.”

However, it’s not just the South Carolina contingent that’s impressed with the speed of the Gamecock offense. According to Ben Breiner of The State, ESPN college football analyst Tom Luginbill described the Gamecock offense as looking “old-school Oregon” during his Tuesday morning appearance on SiriusXM program SEC This Morning. Luginbill offered up this comment after visiting Columbia this spring.

If going faster results in more points for South Carolina, the decision to speed things up could be paramount to the success of the program in 2018. Coming off a 9-4 campaign and considering both Florida and Tennessee are led by first-year coaches, expectations will be high for South Carolina next season. For what it’s worth, in the team’s four losses last season, South Carolina failed to score more than 17 points in each loss. The Gamecocks also failed to reach that number in two wins (Louisiana Tech and Tennessee) that could have easily been losses due to the lack of production from the offense.