Defensive Front Looking To Create More Disruption
When it came to conversations surrounding South Carolina's defensive front this past offseason, there was both a question posed by the media and a reoccurring theme from players and coaches alike: 'What kind of pass rush should we expect?' For the theme, rush defense has been emphasized because it has to be better. Just two games into the 2023 season, the Gamecocks find themselves struggling in both categories, having recorded just two sacks and five tackles for loss collectively against North Carolina and Furman.
If South Carolina's defense maintains that pace in both categories, they would finish the regular season with 12 sacks and 30 tackles for loss, which in 2022 would've been the second-to-worst and the worst marks respectively... in the entire country. To put it bluntly, with a more athletic linebacker core and younger secondary in terms of the two-deep this defense possesses, they need more production from this front, something that veteran leader Alex "Boogie" Huntley expanded on yesterday when asked what he wants to see the defense do moving forward.
"Making more explosive plays, really. That's a big thing we have to do to win games: just have explosive plays, have tackles for loss or sacks, whatever it may be. I think that's one thing we started [against] Furman, but we still have [a] ways to go in that [area], so we just gotta keep improving that."
Head coach Shane Beamer was later asked about Huntley's comments regarding this topic and agreed with his sentiments, indicating those are the kind of things that can decide the outcome of a game.
"I would agree with Boogie, we've got to be more disruptive upfront, and that's creating negative plays. We've talked about it before: it wasn't good enough offensively or defensively against UNC, and the discrepancy was the negative plays between the two defenses [and] offenses. So we do need to be more disruptive."
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