South Carolina's struggles come to head in loss to Georgia
Minutes removed from South Carolina’s 41-point loss to Georgia, the worst to the Bulldogs in program history, Shane Beamer summed up the Gamecocks last two weeks in one quote.
“We’re not playing well. We’re not playing our best football right now. That starts with me as the head football coach. I obviously did a horse-crap job of getting our team ready to play today,” he said. “We’re going to get right. We’re a fourth of the way through the season. We’ve played three games and have to get better.”
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South Carolina went scoreless for most of the game, using a touchdown pass with 53 seconds left to avoid the shutout and also struggling to do much of anything offensively at times.
The Gamecocks hit a few big plays but ultimately finished averaging 4.8 yards per play while turning the ball over three times.
South Carolina averaged 3.1 yards per rush, only had two red zone trips (one score) and fumbled twice although they did not lose them. South Carolina only had two plays of over 10 yards, none in the middle two quarters.
None of it is winning football, something the Gamecocks need to figure that out with a quarter of the season over.
“We talk about running the ball and stopping the run, we talk about beating ourselves with penalties, we talk about winning the explosive play battle,” Beamer said. “We talk about winning the fourth quarter and talk about winning the turnover battle. To me, it starts with turnovers. We’re not creating and turning the ball over too much ourselves.”
The good news for South Carolina is they have two games against non-SEC competition while trying figure some things out.
The games—both at home against Charlotte and SC State—will have South Carolina as likely heavy favorites. The Gamecocks (1-2, 0-2 SEC) need to use that time to figure things out on both sides of the ball.
“It’s a lot of things. It’s not just one thing. Personally I have to limit the turnovers, the interceptions. We’re going to be throwing the ball a lot so I have to limit that. I felt like we ran the ball decent today when we were on a roll,” Beamer said.
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“We have to clean up everything. Get in a better flow and not get ourselves in bad situations with these third and longs. We have to make it easier for ourselves, and we’re not right now.”
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Georgia put up 547 yards of total offense while averaging 5.9 yards per rush, with the Gamecocks not putting up much resistance.
The Bulldogs scored on eight of their 10 drives before taking a knee to end the game. The 8.4 yards were the most allowed since giving up 8.9 against Ole Miss in 2020.
“We just have to be more consistent all together. Starting with myself, we have to be more consistent tackling, on the perimeter, coverage,” Brad Johnson said. “Every way we can be more consistent and bring that to the table every single game, every single play.”
The Gamecocks have those two games before a road trip to Kentucky, and will need to figure a few things out before then.
“Trust. Trust in each other, the coaches, the game plan. I’m sure you guys see it. A lot of universities across the country might do well a couple games and might do terrible a couple games,” Juju McDowell said.
“They lose trust and the rest of the season goes to shambles. The more you maintain trust the more you realize you’re not far off from where you want to be.”
