South Carolina shoots itself in foot with inability to make plays offensively
With just over 10 minutes to go, head coach Shane Beamer had a tough choice to make. South Carolina had the ball around midfield with a fourth and seven play upcoming.
He could either try and go for it to keep the drive alive down by nine points to Clemson, or punt the ball away, pin the Tigers back deep and count on the defense to get a stop.
On the surface, it seemed like an easy decision. Most times, you’d go for it. But there was more to it than that.
“I thought a lot about going for it. Wanted it to be a little bit less than seven (yards),” Beamer said. “There were 10 minutes on the clock when we got stopped. We had timeouts left. We had a chance to pin them down there in the in the end zone by the Cockpit with 10 minutes left. The analytics people say don’t punt down two scores under 10 minutes.”
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Ultimately, Beamer elected to send his punt unit out. It was a choice that led to some boos from the unhappy fans in attendance. But he felt confident in what he decided to do. He trusted his defense to make a stop.
“I just felt like we could get them backed up in there and have a chance to get the ball back and get field position,” Beamer said. “It had been a field position game all night and we had crappy field position most of the night, but I thought that was an opportunity to pin them deep, get a stop and hopefully get the ball back with field position.”
Part of Beamer’s decision also came down to the offense’s inability to put together good drives. Outside of one touchdown in the first quarter, the Gamecocks had a rough go of it, punting on eight straight drives at one point.
“Hindsight being 20-20, you go for it. But when you’re 2-of-13 on third downs, it doesn’t give you a ton of confidence going for it on fourth and seven either,” Beamer said. “At that time, I felt like the best thing was just put our defense back out there. They were playing their butts off and see if we could get another stop.”
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South Carolina’s offensive struggles were a big reason why it lost 16-7 to Clemson on Saturday. The Gamecocks amassed 169 total yards, 92 of which came in the first quarter. The Tigers did a good job of halting the run game, which forced Spencer Rattler into a lot of tough throwing situations.
In what might’ve been Rattler’s final game at South Carolina, he went 16-for-32 with 112 yards and an interception. Clemson did a solid job of taking away his top target, Xavier Legette, for most of the game. Legette finished with six catches for 68 yards.
Other than Legette, only one other player had more than 10 yards receiving for South Carolina. That would be tight end Joshua Simon, who had two catches for 22 yards.
Rattler also took two sacks on the night, both of which came on third down. With how one dimensional the offense was, it put more on Rattler’s plate to be perfect every throw.
“We were pressured on a lot of plays and it’s tough,” Rattler said. “They’re bringing a lot of different stunts and pressures. It’s just tough to find a rhythm when they’re doing that and playing at such a high level. We were shooting ourselves in the foot a lot of the time and just couldn’t convert on third down. It was rough.”
