Snap Judgments – 2017 USC @ Georgia Edition

 

 

 

 

 

Some quick, barely researched, not fully formed thoughts from South Carolina’s 24-10 loss to Georgia.

In a loss, progress. There are no moral victories. However, there are losses from which you can take away positive impressions of your team. South Carolina entered Saturday as roughly 25-point underdogs to top-ranked Georgia. The Gamecocks had played unevenly over the course of their first eight games, not particularly gaining (or earning) the respect of the college football public at large. Meanwhile, Georgia had steamrolled everyone in their path, sans a one-point win over Notre Dame on the road, while beating the brakes off their SEC opponents by an average of 32 points. There was very little reason to believe USC could keep this game interesting for the national CBS audience, hence the huge Vegas spread.

But the Gamecocks did keep the game interesting, trailing by a touchdown at the half and 11 points at the end of the third quarter. The game wasn’t completely put away until a Jake Bentley interception with just under two minutes left in the game. While it would’ve taken a minor miracle at that point to even tie the game, there were plenty of the Bulldog faithful holding their breath up until that play.

Georgia was clearly the more talented and deeper team. Their offensive and defensive lines were dominant, and behind future NFL stars Sony Michel and Nick Chubb they out-gained the Gamecocks by nearly 200 yards on the ground. But the Gamecocks never appeared intimidated and never lost their confidence, which can’t be said for a lot of USC teams who have faced hostile environments and/or top 10 teams in the past.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not happy with the loss. We missed some opportunities to make the game closer or even pull a monumental upset. But at the same time, I was very proud of our guys, and think this team might be closer than we thought to being pretty good.

Then again, as I said last week, maybe we will just forever be the team that plays to the level of its competition. This week against Florida will be a good test of that theory.

Muschamp 2.0. I’m not a fan of hypotheticals, but do me a favor and go through a little exercise in your head – pretend Will Muschamp’s failed stint at Florida never happened. Forget all the preconceived notions you had of him when he was hired. Pretend Muschamp was a hot young defensive coordinator at Texas that Ray Tanner was able to lure to South Carolina to rebuild our program.

He took over a program almost completely devoid of talent that went 3-9 the season before he arrived, having been abandoned by their head coach midway through the year. His first team improved by three games in 2016 and lost in overtime in a bowl game. His second team became bowl eligible before the end of October and if things go as expected will increase its win total by two more games in 2017.

No, I don’t like the fact that Muschamp will almost always punt on 4^th and 5 from the opponent’s 40-yard line. No, I don’t like how he runs out the clock at the end of the half with a 1:30 to go and three time outs. No, I don’t like that he doesn’t go for a kill shot after a turnover in plus territory.

Know what I do like? Winning. And so far the Will Muschamp method has worked at South Carolina. I  can complain about his in-game decisions on occasion, but the overall results so far are pretty good. If you can get over what you remember about his Florida days, the results are damn good.

Kurt-ailed. I still don’t know what to make of Kurt Roper. Over the course of this season I’ve called for his head and I’ve called him a very good coordinator. Statistically he appears to be directing one of the worst offenses in the SEC. But he’s also been limited by injuries across the offensive line and the loss of his best player (Deebo Samuel) and his best running back (Rico Dowdle). A lot of people were hammering him again on Saturday, but I personally didn’t think he called that bad of a game against one of the best defenses in the country.

That said, there are still plenty of offensive weapons on this team, and the statistics don’t lie. Honestly I’m starting to run out of runway in my defense of Kurt Roper.

Hold your comments I might change my mind next week.

Backs to the wall. South Carolina’s run game, to put it mildly, has been the team’s biggest disappointment in 2017. Our running back situation has become pretty dire, and looking across at the other sideline on Saturday only accentuated that point. Not one tailback for South Carolina would be able to crack the four-deep on the Georgia roster. The Bulldogs have future NFL stars in Michel, Chubb and DeAndre Swift, while Brian Herrien and Elijah Holyfield would probably start at USC. Dowdle has been hurt and was not performing well prior to his injury, and AJ Turner and Ty’Son Williams have had their moments but are far from the type of game-breaking back we desperately need. We can only hope the light comes on for one of these guys or the next recruiting class brings one in. Otherwise our run game will continue to suffer.

King for a day. We thought Jamarcus King was a pretty good corner most of last season, until he had that moment. You know, the one where he got carried five yards on the back of Mike Williams for a Clemson touchdown. From that point we found multiple ways to criticize him, some deserved, some probably not.

But King has rebounded the last few weeks and is once again playing like the best cornerback on the team. Against Georgia, even when he had passes caught against him he was pretty much in the back pocket of the receiver the whole way. He has certainly regained his confidence just in time for the home stretch.

Of course, before his recent slump Rashad Fenton was being lauded by some as the best Gamecock corner ever. Just goes to show, when you play corner you’re only as good as what you do with the next pass thrown your way.

Lying in wait. Florida is a mess right now. In their first game after Jim McIlwain was ousted from Gainesville, the Gators were pummeled by Missouri 45-16 for the Tigers’ first conference win of the year. South Carolina has opened as a 9.5-point favorite at home and all signs point to an easy win for the Gamecocks. But hold up.

Remember that whole playing to the level of your competition thing? Yeah, that’s kinda our curse. Also, Florida will have had a week to stew over the humiliating performance in CoMo and will most certainly come out with more life and fight than they had last week. Despite all the Gators’ problems, I have a feeling this will be a typical South Carolina-Florida root canal game.

Worst case scenario. Clemson won the national title last year and is primed to make the college football playoff once again this year. Georgia has a cakewalk to the SEC Championship and even if they lose that game might make the playoff. The thought of Clemson back-to-back national championships or Georgia following the Tigers’ title with one of their own is enough to make me abandon the game of football altogether.

Go cocks, beat the Gators!