Defense Continues To Be A Major Issue For South Carolina

In a close game late, South Carolina's football team couldn't hang onto a 10-point lead in large part because the defense didn't make the big play.

The defense for the South Carolina Gamecocks hasn't had a good first half to the season, to put it lightly. They've had some issues with giving up explosive plays, missing tackles, and failing to get off the field on third and fourth down. Where exactly are things going wrong, and can they be fixed?

We'll tackle the easy one first: Missed tackles (pun intended). This is something that has plagued the defense weekly and seemingly on plays where they had the opposing offense dead to rights. In the second half alone against Florida, there were roughly 5-6 missed tackles, and they all came in crucial moments. You're at the point in the season where you cannot afford for this to still be an issue and can't spend too much time in practice working on this. However, they may need to.

The other concerning area on this defense is how many explosives they give up. Tonight alone, the Gators had eight plays that went for over 20 yards. Now, a lot of this has to do with how aggressive the defense plays at times, as Clayton White's unit plays a lot of man and tries to apply pressure as much as they can. The issue is that when that pressure doesn't get home, it leaves your guys on an island, and you realistically can't cover SEC-caliber wide receivers for prolonged periods of time.

This could be fixed by calling for more zone coverage, but that would require a good bit of communication, something this unit hasn't been proficient enough with to this point.

Lastly, the Gamecocks' defense has failed to consistently finish drives, not only on third and fourth downs but seemingly when they need it most in crucial parts of the game. While the small silver lining is South Carolina's defense has shown they can play sound football for certain stretches, they have yet to be able to show they can do it consistently for 60 minutes.

The defense has their work cut out for them as the road doesn't get any easier in the back half of the season, and there needs to be some changes, whether that's personnel, scheme, or a complete overhaul. The Gamecocks' defense has shown they can make good things happen, but unfortunately, the bad is simply outweighing the good at this point in time.

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