The Verdict: It needs to get fixed
South Carolina football superfan Chris Paschal writes a weekly column during the season for GamecockCentral called “The Verdict.” Chris is a lawyer at Goings Law Firm in Columbia.
On third-and-3, Alabama’s Preston Dial ran a shallow crossing route just shy of the first down. It was warm and sunny in Williams-Brice Stadium that day in 2010, and in that moment South Carolina fans were sweating not only from the heat, but also because the Crimson Tide were marching down the field on their opening possession.
With just a few minutes off the game clock, Alabama was already in the red zone. Crimson Tide quarterback, Greg McElroy, threw the ball to the 6-3, 245-pound senior tight end. Dial caught the ball and immediately turned his big frame up-field to get the first down. But in that moment, instead of going forward, Dial was slammed into and wrestled to the ground just a couple of feet short of the first down.
Was it a linebacker who stonewalled Dial? No. Well, then it must have been a defensive end who had dropped back into coverage, right? Wrong again. The player that stymied Dial was an underclassman defensive back by the name of DJ Swearinger.
Swearinger wasn’t a massive recruit like Lattimore, Clowney, or Gilmore. He was from Greenwood, South Carolina, and he played like his opponents talked dirty to his mom, sister, or grandma. And while he made his fair share of big-time plays and certainly had his fair share of big-time hits, Swearinger’s greatest impact was the fact that he inspired so many others on the defense to match his intensity.
My schedule didn’t allow for me to write this column last week, and it was probably best. I was still fuming hours and days following the Tennessee matchup. It wasn’t necessarily that we lost. Neyland Stadium has always been a tough place to play and that Tennessee fanbase was out for blood.
Tennessee fans can mock Spencer Rattler all they want, but he was correct when he said this was Tennessee’s Super Bowl. If you were on social media at all this summer, or if you turned Knoxville Sports Radio on (like I did in the week leading up to the game), or if you listened to any number of SEC podcasts during the offseason, you would have thought Shane Beamer kicked Smokey and that the Gamecocks were full of demonic spirits. It would have taken a Herculean effort by Carolina to win that football game.
The reason I was so upset following that loss is because for what felt like the umpteenth time, Carolina was pushed around. I am sick and tired of watching us lose the same way repeatedly. How many times do we have to have one of the worst offensive lines in the SEC before it gets fixed? How many times do we have to have one of the worst run defenses in the SEC before it gets fixed? How many times do we have to be bullied by the other team before it gets fixed?
In August, I wrote that one of the changes we would see in year three under Shane Beamer would be that the ugly losses wouldn’t happen anymore. We were still going to lose games. Heck, we might even lose more games in 2023 than we did in 2022. But I was convinced we wouldn’t have to sit there and watch us get physically abused by the opponent for all 60 minutes of the game.
Through five games, that assumption has been wrong, with two of the three losses coming at the hands of a team that was able to assert their will against the Gamecocks for virtually the entire game – Georgia being the lone team that Carolina was able to stand up against for half of the game.
Shane Beamer has exceeded expectations in years one and two. I am proud to call him our football coach, and I am even more positive right now that he is the right man to lead Carolina to an elite caliber football program than I was in late 2020. He cares about Carolina, and he is dedicated to doing whatever is necessary to win football games in Columbia.
And that is a good thing, because something needs to be done about this reoccurring issue. I am not in that locker room, and I am not on the coaching staff. All I know is Carolina can’t run the football and can’t stop the run. Hoping a bye week is all that is needed to fix these glaring issues is foolish, but I am comforted by the notion that in each of Shane Beamer’s first two seasons, Carolina played better the colder it got outside.
We enter what will be a crucial October.
A struggling Florida team is first up this Saturday in Williams-Brice Stadium. The Gators have struggled on the road during the Billy Napier era, and Columbia should be juiced for this game. Is this the game where the defense finds that DJ Swearinger-like leader? Is this the game where all eleven hats swarm to the football with bad intentions?
So far in 2023, I haven’t seen that done on a consistent basis. Is this an offensive line that can finally play with enough grit and enough mental fortitude to run the football and protect the passer? So far in 2023, I haven’t seen that done on a consistent basis.
There is no need to panic. As Coach Beamer alluded to in his Tuesday press conference, the state of the program is on stable footing.
Exciting times are in the future. But I don’t want to wait for 2024 and beyond. I want this 2023 team to win.
So many of these guys stuck through the horrible years of 2019 and 2020. So many of these guys stayed at Carolina when they could have left for easier situations. Someone needs to step up and inspire those around them to play fast and play physical. DJ Swearinger didn’t wait for someone else on the defense to make that tackle on Preston Dial. He handled it himself. Someone needs to handle things on this 2023 roster. We can’t be the worst rushing offense and the worst rushing defense in the SEC forever. Somebody needs to fix it. Might as well start this Saturday.
