Gamecock Defense Prevents Big Plays, But Wears Down In Loss To Georgia

South Carolina's Football team saw their defense fight with a lot of pride against Georgia, but the play volume and lack of competitive depth caught up to them.

A lot of blame may come towards the Gamecocks defense that may not be fully warranted. This defense did a tremendous job of slowing down Georgia's offense only giving up 3 points in the first half. However, there were some key tendencies that were different in the second half that changed the outcome.

Soft Man Coverage

South Carolina has been a press man team this season thus far, however in the second half they played a much softer man coverage. Typically, when a defense try's that, they have a fear of getting beat deep, but to that point, Carson Beck had not showed you consistently he could do so. Mike Bobo picked up on this and the screen game became very effective in the 2nd half for Georgia because of it.

Lack Of Competitive Depth Showed

This defense was noticeably getting tired in the second half, due to a lot of factors. The biggest being how often they were on the field in the second half with the offense only being able to run 12 plays in their first three possessions. With that, this defense never really had a chance to catch their collective breath and didn't have the competitive depth at certain positions to continue to fight.

Preventing The Big Play

For the first time this year, i felt the Gamecocks defense was very good at making that big play. While the game got away from them, this defense still, overall, found ways to make stops, especially TJ Sanders with the batted down passes and Debo Williams shooting run lanes forcing a hold. O'Donnell Fortune made a big pass break up on a deep shot from Georgia as well, but in the end, I think the depth just got to the Gamecocks.

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