The Good, Bad, & Ugly: South Carolina vs Furman
This past Saturday night, the Gamecocks faced off against the Furman Paladins in their home season opener, in a game where improvement was needed on both sides of the ball, and they didn’t disappoint! South Carolina started slow, as we thought it could here on GamecocksDigest, but scoring 14 points in 53 seconds before the end of the half got them ahead, and they never looked back. Now that the smoke has settled, we can see what the film showed that was good, bad, and ugly.
The Good: Pass Protection
The offensive line play improved, especially in pass protection. In Saturday night’s game, Spencer Rattler remained upright while he was in the game. Also, he was only really pressured on one or two plays, one of which Rattler may have held onto the ball a tad too long. It’s worth noting as well Nick Gargiulo did a great job of improving from week 1 to week two in terms of run blocking!
The Bad: Perimeter Blocking
This is still something that I’m sure Justin Stepp is still preaching this morning, but they need more buy-in blocking outside. Many people might not understand or at least agree with wideouts needing to be better blockers; however, the way the college game is played now, it’s much less in between the tackles and more perimeter plays. These perimeter plays include screens, tear motions, and extended versions of the run game. Trey Knox and Xavier Legette did a great job on a couple of reps, but need more overall consistency in this aspect.
The Ugly: Defending Tunnel Screens
Furman ran various screen concepts in this game, but this particular one seemed to be a thorn in the Gamecocks’ side. Furman ran this four times. One fell incomplete because of a drop, the other three resulting in 60 yards or 20 yards on average per screen. I bring this up mainly because the team they’ll face next week has been known for running these screens out of their offensive playbook.
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