Some quick, barely researched, not fully-formed thoughts from South Carolina’s 34-14 loss to Missouri.

Hello darkness. Well, here we are again. It’s only been three weeks, but we’ve once again seen a Gamecock performance so bad that we’re digging up buyout numbers on Will Muschamp. A record-setting performance against Charleston Southern (lol) and a respectable showing against Alabama pulled us back from the ledge after the season opening debacle against UNC. We once again had some hope that the team might be a little bit better than we thought, and they had a chance to prove it against a Missouri team that we should, at minimum, be on equal footing with.

But once again, a Muschamp-coached team – a team “desperate” for a win according to Dakereon Joyner – looked completely lost from the opening bell.

The defense propped us up for most of the game until they crumbled under weight of Missouri’s time of possession dominance. The offensive game plan looked like the incoherent rambling of an insane man. We had exceptionally dumb penalties by young guys (R.J. Roderick) and veteran guys (T.J. Brunson) alike. We looked ill-prepared, poorly coached and completely outclassed. And the final score reflected it.

Two guys stood out by busting their asses to the final bell – Bryan Edwards and Javon Kinlaw. Both seniors. Both guys I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do without. Because despite all the talent we seem to have accumulated in our recent recruiting classes, I just don’t know if we have anyone on the sidelines who can mold them into a competent football team.

3 and out. Friday afternoon word started to leak that on-the-cusp-of-freshman-sensation Ryan Hilinski had an injured right elbow. That was bad news, obviously. As we crept into Saturday we found out Hilinski was with the team, was going to “give it a go”, was dressed out, and then was going to start. There was never any official word from the team that I’m aware of. Good news, right?

Wrong. Hilinski was a shell of what we had seen the previous two weeks. The accuracy we had come to expect through two whole games was completely gone. He missed receivers in every direction – high, low, left right – his bad passes did not discriminate.

Immediately we attributed it to the mysterious injury that we’d all heard about but were never officially told about. After the game, Will Muschamp told Todd Ellis something along the lines of “if he was hurt I wouldn’t have played him”. Okeydoke then.

Where there’s smoke there’s fire. And if Will Muschamp was honest with us instead of trying to be some dollar store Bill Belichik the fan base would be much more appreciative. How about a simple “he’s got an elbow but has been cleared to play and we think he’s out best option.” Instead, the further down the toilet this program goes, the more surly Muschamp gets. His circling of the wagons is alienating the fan base at a time when he should be communicating more, not less.

Speaking of Hilinski, and I realize it’s only been three weeks, but I worry about the kid. He took a beating last week, and then took another one yesterday, particularly later in the game. He was in obvious discomfort most of the day, yet the staff kept trotting him out there, finally waving the white flag and giving Dak Joyner a chance with about three and a half minutes left in the game.

It was another stubborn decision by a stubborn man, and it’s getting oh so tiring.

The buyout. When it comes to Muschamp’s buyout, somewhere between $18mm and $22MM apparently, there are a lot of folks saying “it ain’t gonna happen” because it’s too rich for our blood.

I’m not so sure of that. We’ve been pretty lucky with coaches leaving in that we haven’t had any extravagant buyouts recently. Is that a heck of a lot of money? Sure it is. But what’s the cost of letting this program continue to slide into the abyss while fans don’t come to game in droves and stop buying apparel and stop supporting the program in general.

The bigger question may be what to do with Ray Tanner. Tanner will probably hit us with another “vote of confidence” this week because he’s the guy who had to hire his third choice and make it look like it was his first choice. Many of your expressed on Twitter yesterday extreme displeasure with the job Tanner has done, and I’m right there with you. In case you missed it, I wrote this after the UNC game:

Ray Tanner was a hall of fame baseball coach who wanted to be an administrator, and we rewarded him with a job he’s unqualified for because he won a lot of baseball games. Now the football program is paying for it. Other programs may follow.

If this season continues to spiral out of control, trying to figure out the buyout situation will become of utmost importance. Because $18-20mm dollars will be lost in short order through season ticket cancellations, fewer donations, less merchandise bought, etc. The cost of getting rid of Will Muschamp will be high and painful, but what will be the long-term cost of keeping Will Muschamp?

And of even greater importance, is the guy who hired and extended Will Muschamp really the guy we want negotiating a buyout and hiring the next head coach at USC?

WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE RECRUITS. Somebody had the nerve to tweet to me that we shouldn’t fire Will Muschamp because of the recruiting classes he’s about to bring in. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. What good does a top 20 recruiting class do if you don’t have a staff that can develop talent and put winning game plans in place?

Just for giggles, Carolina’s last four recruiting classes were ranked 20, 25, 21 and 18 by 247 Sports. Missouri’s last four classes were ranked 25, 43, 43 and 43. Kentucky’s last four classes were ranked 38, 34, 30 and 37. Make your own conclusions.

But. With all that said, the odds are still high Muschamp will be our coach in 2020. And as much as I don’t think he’s our guy sitting here today, I’ll be pulling like hell for him to win every game.

Headline news. After yesterday’s abomination, waking up this morning we certainly didn’t need this:

It was an extremely unfortunate gaffe by The State, a newspaper that has drawn the ire of Gamecock fans literally for decades. To their credit, they offered a quick apology (not quick enough for most) and explanation (not acceptable for most), and stated they reached out to the Hilinski family (which many questioned).

For the record, I haven’t lived in Columbia since 1992 and simply don’t have the history with The State that many of you do. I don’t think there’s some conspiracy within the paper to make our university or its sports teams look bad.

They made a huge mistake, mostly due to a clunky and inefficient editorial process that has people writing headlines without a real tie to the story. Personally I’m ready to move on. It sucks but I don’t need some virtual pound of flesh to make it right.

What’s next. Kentucky is next, and foolish me woke up this morning feeling like we’re going to win that game. We need a healthy Ryan Hilinski to do it, or we need a staff that’s honest with its fans to tell us he is indeed hurting, and Dakereon Joyner taking first team reps in practice this week. We also need fannies in seats, and I’m confident we’ll have a lot of them.

While I breathe I hope.

Go Cocks.

Some quick, barely researched, not fully-formed thoughts from South Carolina’s 47-23 loss to Alabama.

Hi Tide. On October 9, 2010, the Alabama Crimson Tide came into Williams Brice stadium as the number one ranked team in the country, defending national champions and sporting a 19-game winning streak. South Carolina was a team and program still searching for a corner to turn early in their sixth season under legendary coach Steve Spurrier.

On a day none of us will soon forget, the Gamecocks pulled the 35-21 upset, and went on to have an unprecedented run of success for the program – an SEC East title followed by back to back to back 11-win seasons. It was the beginning of the salad days for Gamecock football.

This past Saturday, the Crimson Tide returned to Columbia for the first time since that day. In the 8+ years that have passed, Alabama has won conference and national titles and further established themselves as the premiere football program in the land. South Carolina, after those 11-win seasons, fell off a cliff. They watched their hall of fame coach figuratively and then literally quit, started a rebuild near rock bottom with an SEC East cast-off, and are currently trying to work their way back to the upper half of the conference.

The talent gap is so great between Alabama and South Carolina that the Gamecocks never really had a chance on Saturday, no matter how many times we tried to invoke the spirit of October 9, 2010. But they fought, and fought hard, and made a game of it for the better part of two and a half quarters. If you are violently opposed to “moral victories” then skip the second half of this sentence – but what I saw against Bama on Saturday was encouraging, especially after our week 1 debacle.

The key for the rest of this season is to keep moving forward, build on the performance from Saturday, and avoid any form of regression. Will Muschamp and Dakereon Joyner today talked about the team being “desperate” for a win going into Missouri. That is absolutely the right attitude for this week, and for the rest of 2019.

Meathead. We’ve established in this space that Will Muschamp is a meathead. But even so, the evidence is overwhelming that his players (current and former) love the guy. You can see it in the way they play the game – hard, fast and physical.

That said, the way the guy manages a game for 60 minutes continues to be troublesome. Yes, he had some out of character moments on Saturday that showed he may actually be willing to do some things differently – fake punt, fake field goal, going for it on fourth down, etc. Those were very much anti-Will.

But at the same time, you never feel like his decisions are part of a greater plan. They’re just in the moment, they’re the next move, without a lot of regard for the move after the move after the move. Or put more succinctly:

The fake onside kick makes it worse, not better. All tactics, no strategy.

— Lapsed Optimism Attempter (@chickenhoops) September 14, 2019

Two hand touch. It’s been talked about ad nauseam since the game, but my goodness our tackling was hideous and cost us huge chunks of yardage and points. It sounds like it’s a correctable thing (tackle first, rip the ball out second, instead of the other way around.) Let’s hope it gets corrected and fast.

IT. Ryan Hilinski is the truth. Aside from his natural, God-given talent, he seems to have IT. He showed incredible poise and leadership to be starting his first SEC game against THE football program of the millennium. I think he’s the kind of guy who is going to be able to keep us in games when we have no business being in those games. This is going to be fun.

Bad intentions. Rico Dowdle and Bryan Edwards are playing like there’s no tomorrow. Both are running with a renewed sense of purpose and quite frankly look like they’re ready to impale defenders with their projectile bodies every time they get a chance. Their stock has risen sharply early in the season.

Let it breathe. There’s not a ton we can take from the first three games of the season, except that we’re 1-2 when we fully expected to be 2-1. We had Charleston Southern completely overmatched, while Alabama had us greatly overmatched.

Missouri will be a great test of where we actually are, but I warn you to not take too much from the result, win or lose. I’m seeing a lot of folks saying “must win”, and I don’t believe that at all. CoMo is a tough place to play, and despite an opening week loss to Wyoming, the Tigers are playing very tough and confident football. A loss there does not end our season.

I think there may be wins on our schedule where we didn’t see wins before. I believe with weekly improvement we can beat Florida and give Texas A&M a run for their money. Vandy, Tennessee and Kentucky can all be had.

In this world of instant and unreasonable reaction, we tend to make judgments on an entire season based on one game (guilty as charged here). Let’s remember there’s a long way to go. Let the season play itself out. Let it breathe.

Go Cocks.

Some quick, barely researched, not fully-formed thoughts from South Carolina’s 72-10 victory over Charleston Southern.

Temper, temper. Your expectations that is. Trust me, I’m not trying to be a downer because there were plenty of things to get excited about as we watched the Gamecocks run up and down the field against an overmatched and undermanned Charleston Southern squad. Ryan Hilinski had a spectacular debut at QB. We had two running backs go over 100 yards, including Kevin Harris doing his best Earl Campbell impersonation. The defense played like a Will Muschamp defense is supposed to play. However…

It WAS Charleston Southern.

Some folks jumped us for tweeting that on Saturday, saying it doesn’t matter who we’re playing, football is football, we’ve played down to our competition many times before, etc., etc. Which, hey, fair enough on the point that we’ve struggled with teams like them before. But, that was easily the worst team on our schedule this season, and we did exactly what we were supposed to do to them – drag them. You don’t get any extra credit from this stodgy old blogger for winning in the manner you’re supposed to against highly inferior competition.

There were encouraging signs coming off a terribly disheartening loss to North Carolina, but the fact is Muschamp and company didn’t have to make any tough decisions, Hilinski wasn’t under any pressure, there were running lanes the size of Assembly Street for our backs, and the CSU offensive line was tissue paper. That won’t be the case for the next ten, eleven, twelve or thirteen games (see, optimism!).

For those of you thinking “WHY CAN’T YOU JUST ENJOY THE VICTORY”, trust me I did. It was fun to watch all those new and/or young guys out there contributing. There are few things better than a South Carolina football game where the outcome is never in doubt for the good guys. I just don’t think a 62-point win over an FCS team means our problems are solved.

Hope in Hilinski. Make no mistake, Saturday’s star was Ryan Hilinski. The true freshman came out and played about as well as he possibly could, completing his first twelve passes and finishing 24-30 for 282 yards and two TDs, and threw in a rushing TD for good measure. He was calm, poised and collected running a college offense for the first time, and validated all the excitement we’ve had about him since he arrived on campus.

Again, things get exponentially tougher against Alabama this week, but Hilinski made his first impression count.

Offensive stars. The Gamecock offense was sharp this week, and a lot of guys got to show off their wares to the home crowd. Dakereon Joyner was electric, racking up 67 total yards and given the QB position a dimension that will be needed down the road. The aforementioned Kevin Harris bulldozed his way to 147 yards and three TDs on six whole carries, Mon Denson had 9-118, Rico Dowdle 10-87 and Tavien Feaster 6-64. Overall the Gamecocks rushed for a program-best 493 yards while averaging 13 yards per carry.

I’ve been very cautiously optimistic about the running back position lately, and now I’m just optimistic.

Farewell to Jake? When we tweeted last week during the UNC game that the Jake Bentley era was over at USC, we certainly didn’t expect it to end this way. With word coming down that he would be having season-ending surgery to repair his broken foot, you have to believe his career at South Carolina is likely over. You have to believe Hilinski is the future, even if he stumbles some during the course of the season. It would be hard to imagine Bentley coming back next season and winning the job just for one year. Logically, it seems like he would rehab, enter the transfer portal and play in 2020 for a team that will be able to showcase his talents for NFL scouts.

That said, I appreciate the person and player Jake Bentley has been at South Carolina. We’ve been mostly positive about him and defended him on this blog and our other properties. Only recently have I thought it might be time to go in another direction, and I’m sad for Jake and his family that it had to happen this way. He brought us some great moments at USC, and there’s no reason to do anything but thank him for his hard work for or football program and our university.

Thank you Jake, you will be missed.

Go Cocks.

Some quick, barely researched, not fully-formed thoughts from South Carolina’s 24-20 loss to North Carolina.

Trust your eyes. Yesterday, when we still had a chance to win the game against North Carolina, I fired off two pretty uncharacteristic tweets:

The Jake Bentley era is over.
The Will Muschamp era is over.
Turn the reigns over the Hilinski.
Go hire Dino Babers.

— Personal Fowls (@RubrChickens) August 31, 2019

We (this account) have given Jake Bentley the benefit of the doubt for three years. No more. Pull the rip cord, get him out of there.

— Personal Fowls (@RubrChickens) August 31, 2019

These tweets were uncharacteristic for a few reasons. One, while I comment on the play of our players on a regular basis, I try not to be overly critical. (These are still 18-22 year old young men, after all.) Two, I’ve been very, very patient with Will Muschamp, defending him and hoping against hope he was going to become the head coaching superstar he seemed destined to be ten years ago. Three, I can’t think of a time in my entire life when I would’ve advocated for a true freshman quarterback to play over a fourth year senior quarterback.

But yesterday I snapped. And judging be the response to these two tweets, most of you snapped as well. After an offseason where it felt like we might be gaining ever so slightly on our competition in the SEC East – HARD WORK IS PAYING OFF Y’ALL SPURS UP – we proceeded to tie our shoelaces together in the locker room and stumble all over the field for four quarters against an ACC team that won a grand total of two games last year.

From here on out I’ve decided to trust my eyes. To trust what I see.

What I see in Will Muschamp is a stubborn old-school coach who refuses to make changes to his style to keep up with the modern game. Muschamp doesn’t care about style points. He’d prefer to get a lead, sit on that lead, and try to choke the life out of the other team and win a 17-13 slugfest. I know that because of how often we default to ultra-conservative play calling when we have the slightest of leads. Play defense and win the field position battle are great fundamental strategies of 1980s football. But in 2019 doing those things resulted in almost 200 yards of offense and two touchdowns in two possessions for North Carolina. Muschamp is not going to change. And his style is not going to win many games in today’s college football, much less at the University of South Carolina.

What I see in Jake Bentley is a quarterback who hasn’t improved much, if at all, since he first took snaps for the Gamecocks as a freshman. He’s had his good moments over the years, but those moments are always counterbalanced by plays and days like yesterday. His emotions get the best of him, he becomes hesitant, unsure of himself, and allows those emotions to affect his mechanics. A lot of things lost that game yesterday, don’t get me wrong. Bentley didn’t call the plays, he didn’t give up consecutive 98 and 95 yard drives, he didn’t miss blocks and miss tackles. But he has the ball in his hands on every offensive snap, and had a chance to win that game for us yesterday. And he didn’t come close.

What I see in this Gamecock program is mediocrity. Aside from a couple of years in the 80s, and the run from 2010-2013, mediocrity is all I’ve ever seen in this program. Maybe change would just result in the same thing we’ve seen for the better part of 100 years, but sitting still with Will Muschamp…as the kids say, that ain’t it chief.

The Ray Way. A lot of folks tweeted at us yesterday about the role of Ray Tanner in all this. And again, use your eyes, these folks ain’t wrong. Tanner got a head start on the head coaching search when Steve Spurrier walked out mid-season. He had Tom Herman on the hook, but couldn’t land him. There are a lot of stories about why, but the fact remains Tanner couldn’t close the deal. He then turned to Kirby Smart, and in the dead of night had Georgia outmaneuver him and steal Smart away.

There were still hotshot coaches out there we could’ve landed – Lincoln Riley, Dino Babers, Justin Fuente – but to my knowledge we only interviewed Riley and deemed him too young and inexperienced to lead such a high-profile program like South Carolina (insert eye roll). These guys didn’t fit the SEC “profile”. So here we sit, with an SEC retread who can recruit pretty well but has not yet proven he can coach his way out of a paper bag.

Ray Tanner was a hall of fame baseball coach who wanted to be an administrator, and we rewarded him with a job he’s unqualified for because he won a lot of baseball games. Now the football program is paying for it. Other programs may follow.

Frosh. I watched freshmen Bo Nix and Sam Howell lead their teams to wins yesterday. Why not Hilinski? Let’s go.

Offensive. I’ve brought this up before, but the decision to hire Bryan McClendon as our offensive coordinator looks a little worse all the time. We had a chance to hire an experienced OC with FBS play calling experience. Instead, we decided to hire a good guy who might have some potential on the cheap. Muschamp couldn’t afford to do that, but his stubbornness won out again.

Defensive. Depth on the d-line, good linebacker play, a top-notch secondary, and THAT’S what we get?

Hype. I catch a lot of flak because I don’t particularly care for the hype videos our social media/video team posts. Don’t get me wrong, they are simply doing their job, and they do the best job in the country. But to post these uber-dramatic videos that make it sound like we’re going to war, the players are working so hard for YOU, we’re building a program you can be proud of, SPURS UP RAH RAH RAH – and then go out and lay an egg like we did yesterday, it just makes us look foolish. So don’t get mad at me if a hype video doesn’t make me want to run through a brick wall.

What’s next. Obviously Will Muschamp isn’t going to get fired any time soon, because Ray Tanner has been not only supportive, but effusive in his praise about how Muschamp runs the program. But Muschamp is losing the fan base quickly. The landscape of college football has changed. People are spending their entertainment dollars on this team, and they’re getting nothing but heartache in return. It’s ok to be mad, and it’s ok to vent. Hell, I don’t even go to games and I’m letting my anger flow.

A 6-6 season would be a blessing at this point, but I’m not sure where those six wins are going to come from after what I saw yesterday. He better open the playbook and make some changes to his style or he’ll be the hottest defensive coordinator on the market in 2020.

Go Cocks.