Some quick, barely researched, not fully-formed thoughts from last night’s season opener:
– The insurance salesmen, accountants, doctors and lawyers were right. When the decision to start Connor Shaw over Stephen Garcia was announced on Thursday, there were a lot of fans that took to the world-wide web to express their displeasure. Mild as my objection was, I was one of those folks. There were a few who defended Steve Spurrier with tried and true variations of “You’re an insurance salesman, you think you know more about football than Steve Spurrier?”
Well, I certainly don’t know more about football than the HBC, but I know what I saw Saturday night. Connor Shaw looked like a squirrel trying to cross I-77 in his three series, and when Garcia entered in the second quarter a calm came over the offense. All of our failings against ECU cannot be blamed on Shaw, just as all our successes cannot attributed to Garcia, but I do know that once Garcia came into the game we outscored ECU 56-20. I’ll take that over great scrimmage stats any day.
– #7 is for real, but people need to start talking about #6 . Jadeveon Clowney was big, fast and powerful, just like we’ve been told. You noticed when he was in the game, and you noticed when he was not. I know, he wasn’t playing against an SEC-caliber offensive line, but still, you have to be excited about the future of the War Daddy. The story on the DL, however, was the play of Melvin Ingram. He is a freakish athlete (did you see the hands on that pick?) that was all over the place last night, and deserves to be talked about in all-SEC terms.
– Lattimore was Lattimore and Jeffery was Jeffery – And thank God for that. #21 even looked a little quicker and more decisive running the ball.
– We have a return game! Ace Sanders’ PR for TD was easily the most exciting play of the game last night, and the first time we’ve seen that out of the Gamecocks since 2003 (Chavez Donnings, anyone?) Bruce Ellington looked great on kickoff returns as well.
– Speaking of Sanders and Ellington… We have a lot of weapons on offense, we just have to find a way to get the ball in their hands. I was a little surprised we didn’t see any short passes to one of those two guys to try to get them out in space (Sanders’ short TD catch doesn’t count), but that part of the playbook may be closed until next week. Shon Carson looked very quick with the ball in his limited touches, and I was really disappointed we didn’t get to see Dameire Byrd last night. Hopefully that situation will be cleared up by next week.
– Stephon Gilmore is not a shutdown corner. This situation continues to disturb me. A great cornerback is going to get beaten on occasion, but a great cornerback is going to make a great play every once in a while too. I haven’t seen a great play out of defensive #5 in quite a while. Somebody please tell me why I’m wrong, I would like to be reassured.
– Don’t let the 37 points bother you. I really think our defense will be better this year than last. ECU’s points were a product of turnovers and their offense, which will score a lot of points on a lot of people this year. And they’ll need every one of them.
– Game Ball: Antonio Allen. Wow, 16 tackles, 2 caused fumbles, 1 fumble return for TD. Have yourself a night young man.
– We will be playing an ultra-desperate team next week. UGA was manhandled by Boise last night (side note: mad props to Boise, I was wrong), and conventional wisdom says UGA will be playing to save Mark Richt’s job. This could also wind up being an elimination game in the SEC East race, so USC will have to eliminate the mistakes from last night and be ready for a hostile bunch of Dogs.
Join us for TRC Unleashed tomorrow night where we’ll discuss these topics plus many more.
Go Cocks!
The Rubber Chickens Blog 
Buck, everything is spot on…and I agree about Gilmore. I’ve posted about him ad nauseum since last night on FB, forums, etc., and he is just not playing well right now, or maybe he isn’t that good. I’m not sure I know which. I do know that I was disappointed in him though. He is healthy, and one of the players in the secondary who isn’t (or at least shouldn’t) be a question mark. They picked on him because they could, and with the jump ball(s), and the punt return, he was responsible for at least 2 TD’s that shouldn’t have been. It happens though….coaches let him know I’m sure, because they put Ace back there for PR, and Gilmore went sky high for that break up he almost picked.
Lock it down Stephon, and get ready for UGA, I know you can shut ’em down! I will say that Lewis kid is probably better than any WR UGA has, even King.
yeah CC looked better than Gilmore…..maybe they should stick CC and a healthy Auguste out there, just a thought. I think we should be good against a hostile Georgia crowd, as long as we stick to our balanced ground and pound offense.
Hopefully, that won’t damage Shaw’s confidence going forward. I doubt it, as he seems to be mentally strong and has a good head on his shoulders. But that whole scenario turned out about as badly for him as it could.
I found myself laughing on a number of occasions when all our d-lineman would come crashing through in waves. Scary unit we have.
Allen did all that filling in for Jeffery at SPUR. Almost single-handedly turned the game around for us.
Gilmore needs to get his head right. Struggled to locate the ball, and when he did, he’d often get beat for it anyway. Throw 50 fade routes on the man every day in practice this week. He seemed to get better as the game went along, though.
I saw it in the practices and we all heard the coaches talk about it, but I was very impressed with our team speed in the game. And that was without the fastest guy on the team. Really need to get him back ASAP. He should be a huge weapon. Or a very small weapon. You know what I mean.
Really, outside of the boatload of first half turnovers (which is certainly an aberration), I feel about as good as I can about that as an opening game.
Is it Saturday yet?