Putting in perspective South Carolina's offensive performance

Shane Beamer said it best after South Carolina’s 56-20 victory over Charlotte Saturday. The Gamecocks needed an offensive performance like that.

After struggling for consistency the first three weeks of the season, with frustration hitting a head in a 48-7 loss to Georgia, South Carolina responded with what is one of their better offensive performances in recent memories.

“We needed that from an offensive standpoint. When you run the ball as effectively as we did tonight it makes things so much in the passing game,” Beamer said. “That was an efficient offense tonight. That’s what we expect. I told MarShawn (Lloyd) in there I don’t care if it’s Georgia, Charlotte or whoever. That’s how we need to play football around here.”

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The Gamecocks scored 56 points. It’s the first time they’ve hung half a hundred on an FBS team since the 2013 season when they did it to Arkansas.

Saturday was the first time South Carolina didn’t punt against an FBS opponent since 2018. The Gamecocks scored on nine of their 11 drives against Charlotte, including getting points on their first eight.

The 8.3 yards per play were the most since 2014 against Tennessee. Spencer Rattler becomes just the third player since the 2015 season to throw for at least 180 yards on 23 or fewer attempts.

Collin Hill and Luke Doty both did it during the 2020 season.

The biggest positive, though, was getting the run game going. The Gamecocks piled up a whopping 7.4 yards per attempt. It’s the most. It’s the most yards per rush as a team since doing it against Ole Miss and Vanderbilt in the 2020 year.

South Carolina did it largely running counter and gap scheme runs. That allowed MarShawn Lloyd to be just the third South Carolina running back since 2000 to average at least 11 yards per carry and score three rushing touchdowns.

Kevin Harris and Marcus Lattimore did that as well, but Harris did it against FCS Charleston Southern.

“We know one thing we wanted to do is be able to run the ball and be able to show people we can run the ball,” Rattler said. “We definitely showed that tonight. That breeds a lot of confidence in the run game and makes things a lot easier.

South Carolina’s backs forced 18 missed tackles and averaged 4.76 yards after contact per rush attempt.

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“The key to the game was to dominate the line of scrimmage. The way they played their safeties the running backs were going to have to make some one-on-one plays and make people miss,” Beamer said. “MarShawn did that. He got a game ball. You see when you run the ball like that it makes things easier in the pass game as well.”

South Carolina’s offensive line averaged 4.5 yards per rush and only allowed pressure on six of 28 dropbacks.

“I’m really, really proud of them,” Beamer said. “I told Marcus earlier this week I wanted to run the ball 40 times Saturday night. It looks like we ran 40 exactly. And a lot of the other ones were called runs as well which were balls we kicked out on the perimeter. I’m really proud of that offensive line.”

Charlotte defensively might not be Georgia or some of the teams still left on the schedule. But a good offensive performance is still a good offensive performance.

Now it’s up to the Gamecocks to parlay that into next week against South Carolina State and then to Kentucky before the bye week.

“We know one thing we wanted to do is be able to run the ball and be able to show people we can run the ball. We definitely showed that tonight. That breeds a lot of confidence in the run game and makes things a lot easier.”

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