Halftime Notes: Georgia trails South Carolina 14-3
ATHENS, Ga. — The No. 1-ranked Georgia Bulldogs are in trouble at halftime of their SEC Opener. UGA trails 14-3 to South Carolina and DawgsHQ has some thoughts on it. Below, we share our observations from the first half of play.
*** Two red zone possessions and three points total. That’s a recipe for disaster. No shots at the end zone in any of those possessions is highly questionable. I feel like the play-calling outside of the red zone has been solid. The second possession was tough because of the no-call on what clearly looked like DPI and the false start. Horrible execution and that’s on the coaching, too.
*** Poor showing early on from the offense. Carson Beck hasn’t looked comfortable and isn’t seeing it downfield. He has had a couple of opportunities. On the third-down pass that was batted down, he never stopped giving ground on his drop, which hampers his ability to throw around the rush.
*** The run game has looked better outside of one really poor play that the Bulldogs overcame on the opening drive. Kendall Milton has shown a little more twitch early in this one and Daijun Edwards has looked really good. He also won the route on the ball that was batted down but it never got to him. Edwards also tip-toed a little on that 3rd and 1 carry.
*** Georgia is getting some separation downfield but, as I mentioned earlier, Beck just hasn’t seen it or hasn’t gotten the protection. Brock Bowers has gotten free down the field a couple of times. He wasn’t targeted on the first one and he wasn’t hit on the second one. Those are plays this offense has to make right now.
*** Amarius Mims going down is a big blow. Next man up but that’s a lot easier said than done with Austin Blaske out as well. Xavier Truss, who had a bad first series at guard, is out there and had the bad penalty in the red zone.
*** Georgia is getting some pressure but not finishing. Rattler is getting away from it or getting the ball out before Georgia can get him on the ground. The Gamecocks are unable to run it outside of that lower-red area possession where they punched it in with a quarterback run.
*** Daylen Everette is getting picked on in a big way. South Carolina has been able to bite off some chunks against him. Xavier Legette is a fantastic players and the Gamecocks are going to him often. David Daniel-Sisavahn had a chance to make a play on that deep ball but he was also playing catchup. Tough matchup there.
*** That second scoring drive was set up by a huge momentum boost due to the missed field goal from Peyton Woodring. He has missed very makable kicks in two weeks. That should fall under a concern without a doubt. Dillon Bell bringing that ball out of the end zone at the end of the half was a huge error.
