For years, University of South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer watched quarterback Spencer Rattler play in the biggest of moments and face the most adversity.
Whether starting 1-2 for Oklahoma with losses to Kansas St. and Iowa St. in 2020 or getting pulled in the first half against rival Texas two consecutive years, Rattler went through it all during his collegiate career.
And as Beamer recounts, Rattler's responses all had similar characteristics.
"Calm and confident," Beamer recently told NFL.com. "The bigger the game, the more confidence and swagger he has. He truly feels like he's going to dominate every time he goes out there."
Beamer was an assistant at OU while Rattler was the starter there before he got the South Carolina head coaching job for the 2021 season and eventually recruited Rattler to the Gamecocks. Beamer is as good an authority on Rattler as there is.
Beamer will be watching with pride as Rattler makes his first NFL start on Sunday against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers while Derek Carr recovers from an oblique injury that is expected to sideline him for at least the next two games.
"Spencer is everything you'd want a quarterback to be," Beamer said.
Rattler's experiences at Oklahoma and South Carolina help explain that.
After starting 1-2 in 2020, Rattler committed two early turnovers and was pulled in the first half of the team's next game against the Longhorns. However, he returned after three series and led Oklahoma to a 53-45 win over Texas that took four overtimes to settle.
Rattler's Sooners then ran off another seven straight wins, including a Cotton Bowl victory over Florida.
"Getting benched never fazed him," Beamer said. "That told me everything you need to know about Spencer. And he never lost another game at Oklahoma."
Rattler, who was benched at OU for eventual No. 1 pick Caleb Williams -- coincidentally during the next year's iteration of the Red River rivalry -- went on to pull off more heroics at South Carolina. In the words of Beamer, "He came here and did a lot of things in his first season as a starter that had never been done before."
That includes becoming the first Gamecocks QB to beat Texas A&M, and the first to win back-to-back games against top-10 opponents.
That's what the Saints are hoping for today and this upcoming Thursday night when New Orleans hosts the Broncos in Week 7. To the public, it was a mild surprise when head coach Dennis Allen made this decision, considering Jake Haener began the season as the backup QB to Carr.
Yet, Rattler impressed in the spring, leaving New Orleans thinking it'd gotten a steal in the fifth round. It was more of the same in the preseason for Rattler, who boasts significant upside. Allen described this past week of practice as a positive one, and Rattler could give the offense an added dimension with his running ability.
"He has a no-flinch mentality," Allen said. "That's what we saw a lot of in training camp as he grew each week and ultimately some of the reps we saw in preseason reflected that."
Beamer saw plenty of that at South Carolina, noting two more examples.
In 2022, his team lost, 38-6, to Florida, a particularly brutal game. All Rattler did was throw six TDs for a stunning upset of No. 5 Tennessee the following week.
"Very few QBs can flush a bad week from the week before and truly go into the next week thinking and believing they're going to throw for six TDs and his team will score 63 points," Beamer said. "He played out of his mind."
Against rival Clemson the next week, Rattler threw an early pick-six to Tigers star linebacker Jeremiah Trotter Jr., now with the Eagles.
"He jogs off and winks at me," Beamer said, laughing. "Like, 'My bad.' He knew he made a mistake. He came back and made some big-time throws, leading us to victory."
