Scott Davis: Questions, comments and concerns? Yep.

Scott Davis has followed South Carolina athletics for over 40 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective. He writes a weekly newsletter year-round and a column during football season that’s published each Monday on GamecockCentral.com.

Following is this week’s Scott Davis newsletter. To receive it each Friday, sign up here.

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If you’ve ever spent more than five minutes working in a corporate office setting, you’ve sat through one of those sluggish, boring, endless PowerPoint presentations designed to give the employees an update on the company’s “vision for the future.”

When the end mercifully comes, after the presenter has worked through a series of interminable slides and graphs, he or she will typically look to the assembled group and ask, somewhat condescendingly, “Questions, comments, concerns?”

And if South Carolina’s season-opening football game against Old Dominion on Saturday night represented a vision of what to expect from the 2024 season, then Gamecock fans everywhere have already started making a long list of questions, comments and concerns.

Questions, comments, concerns? After a down-to-the-wire 23-19 victory over an Old Dominion team that went 6-7 last year and was itself breaking in a host of new players and dealing with first-game jitters?

Yes. Yesssssssssssss, honey.

If you’ve visited a Gamecock-related message board anytime over the last 12 hours or so, then you know a significant segment of the fan base has already moved past the “Questions” phase and headed straight into the “Comments and Concerns” chapter (and if you haven’t visited a Gamecock-related message board, maybe don’t unless you’re OK with a raucous Not Safe for Work environment).

The questions seem almost endless: Is this really the offensive plan for 2024 or was this just one of those “try to survive in Week One against a lesser opponent without showing too much” deals? Is the offensive line who we thought they were…again? Are there really and truly no weapons at all at receiver, or was there just too much general chaos on offense to get them worked into the mix? Is the defense going to largely play well for most of four quarters, but nearly negate the effort by giving up back-breaking big plays throughout the year?

And on and on.

As for the comments and concerns, well…head to the message boards or social media for a heaping helping of those (or do what I do and glance at that for about 12 seconds and then turn your phone off and power down your laptop and go outside for a long walk and a good cry).

Friends, it wasn’t good.

It’s OK to say that out loud – it really is. We are all adults here. We can all stand in a circle, hold hands, look each other in the eyes and acknowledge that one was ugly, and that South Carolina was lucky to escape at home with a win against a Sun Belt Conference team, and that the upcoming schedule is monstrous, and as we sit here in the first few days of September, we have questions, we have comments and we have concerns. That is indeed allowed.

In fact, South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer acknowledged some of those same sentiments himself, both in his comments with the SEC Network on the field after the game and in his postgame press conference. He used the word “unacceptable” a time or two. He pointed to sloppiness and miscues in “all three phases.”

In some ways, the coach almost seemed at war with his own instincts during the postgame media meetup. Beamer’s default setting is to stay relentlessly positive, to focus on encouraging storylines while acknowledging obvious mistakes, and to build up the confidence of his players so that they can stay motivated in the bloodthirsty gladiator arena that is SEC football.

Saturday night following the game, you could see him occasionally drifting towards that positive default setting (“The narrative might be that the offensive line struggled. The offensive line played pretty good.”), but ultimately heading back in the direction of publicly recognizing the reality. Perhaps he knew, somewhere down deep, that his fans needed to hear him say that if what they’d just watched was any kind of vision for the future, it was a dark one.

“It was nowhere near good enough,” the coach said.

And that’s the concern for Gamecock fans, who’ve been waiting on redemption for nearly a year after the most-hyped South Carolina football season in a decade ended with a 5-7 thud and another loss to Clemson.

Because we’ve all seen the teams left on the docket this season. We know what awaits. And we know what another bowl-less, sub-.500 campaign might mean for the program’s long-term stability.

Questions, concerns, comments? There are many.

What we don’t have, after a shaky season opener that left the fan base’s already jangled nervous system even more frazzled, are answers.

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The “Reality Bites” Game Balls of the Week

Longtime readers of this column already know that we hand out Game Balls each week to worthy winners, as well as Deflated Balls for the most unfortunate and unsettling moments we’ve just witnessed. Sometimes, we name the Game Balls after a top performer and let that top performer hold the namesake as long as he keeps top-performing. Other times? Let’s just say that the Game Balls were named after Taylor Swift for much of 2023. This week, we’ll shout out the ‘90s Generation X comedy “Reality Bites,” an enjoyably talky flick if you’re looking for something to stream and/or are a huge Winona Ryder fan. Speaking of reality and it biting, let’s toss a ball in the direction of…

Facing Reality – We needed to see some displeasure on Shane Beamer’s face after this 60-minute collection of mistakes and missteps. We needed to hear a little urgency and angst in his voice. Beamer’s positivity is actually his superpower as a coach – not his kryptonite. But this was a night when Gamecock fans needed their coach to acknowledge the disappointments they were feeling after a long, lonely offseason culminated in an ugly squeaker against one of the worst teams on South Carolina’s 2024 schedule. He did that. He may not have liked it (“I’m proud as heck of our team”), but he did it. Sometimes a successful head coach needs to be able to read the room, and this just wasn’t the moment for defensiveness or spin-doctoring. You know it wasn’t a good evening when the postgame comments of Old Dominion’s head coach sounded like the type of disappointed remarks an SEC coach would make if his team had struggled against a lesser opponent.

Signs of Life in the Running Game – If we’ve received any answers at all after one game, it’s this one: South Carolina will certainly be more effective at running the football in 2024 than they were in 2023. Then again, the Gamecocks were one of the worst rushing teams in the United States of America last season, so the bar was on the ground. But at least the team didn’t trip over it. New addition Rocket Sanders looks ready to regain his 2022 form, assuming his line can push opposing defenders backwards for long enough. And quarterback LaNorris Sellers clearly gives the offense an added dimension in the rushing attack. As for questions, concerns and comments on the running game? Um, we’ll get there.

Nyck Harbor Not Giving Up on the Play Following an ODU Fumble Recovery – After LaNorris Sellers lost a fumble in the first half, an ODU defender picked it up on stride and looked poised to rumble it into the house. Gamecock receiver Nyck Harbor managed to catch up and push him out of bounds near the five-yard line to prevent a score, and mere seconds later, South Carolina defender O’Donnell Fortune intercepted ODU quarterback Grant Wilson in the end zone to keep the Monarchs off the scoreboard entirely. Considering what the final score ended up being, you might say that was a difference-making moment. In fact, let’s also hand out a Bites Ball to…

Turnovers – In addition to Fortune’s pick, the Gamecock defense collected a pair of fumbles and a game-sealing interception to finally shut the door in the fourth quarter. Without those plays, we’re talking about a South Carolina loss today, and whatever questions, comments and concerns we had would be intensified by a factor of 10 trillion.

Pettiness and Spite – Sunday morning, I went out for a hike in the woods of the North Georgia mountains, where my extended family vacationed for the Labor Day weekend. At a trailhead, I saw a parked SUV whose entire rear windshield was covered with the Clemson University logo. Did I chuckle out loud at the sight? I did. Hey, it made me feel better. I’ve never claimed to be a virtuous person.

[Win two tickets to the South Carolina-LSU football game]

The “Reality Bites” Deflated Balls of the Week

Since reality bit so hard in Week One, let’s just stick with the theme while we hand out our Deflated Balls, shall we? A few Deflated Bites Balls to the following…

The Notion That It’s All But Impossible for Any Team to Play Well in Week One – Is it? In ESPN’s preseason Power Poll of SEC football teams, just two of the league’s 16 teams were picked lower than South Carolina. Of those two, Mississippi State won its opener 56-7 against Eastern Kentucky and Vanderbilt upset Virginia Tech. Meanwhile, Auburn scored 73 in its opener, Alabama routed Western Kentucky 63-0, and Ole Miss laid the hammer down on poor Furman to the astonishing tune of 76-0. True, Old Dominion has a little more talent than most of those programs, but there’s something to be said for taking care of business and establishing a winning mindset in Game One when you’re facing an undermanned opponent, and the Gamecocks did anything but. Any chatter about “first-game jitters” or “breaking in new players” that is designed to form a protective bubble around this team needs to be silenced. Let’s just say South Carolina didn’t play well, needs to play better in a hurry, and move on, shall we?

Nearly Everything About South Carolina’s Passing Attack on Saturday – From the play-calling to the execution, everything went wrong in the passing game for South Carolina against the Monarchs. Pass protection was iffy at best. No one stepped forward to claim the mantle of Number One Receiver (or even second, third or fourth receiver). Sellers often missed the mark with high throws and even a handful of underthrown short dumps in an uneven 10-for-23, 114-yard evening. In general, this was one of those “burn the playbook and start over” performances in the passing game. Which leads us to…

The Ultimate One-Dimensional Offense – If you were looking for balance from the South Carolina offense, you didn’t find it. The Gamecocks rushed the ball a staggering 56 times against just 23 passes, an ungodly ratio that won’t get it done against just about any defense, much less an SEC-caliber opponent. Though Sanders looks like the running back we hoped he’d be, he’ll find it all but impossible to locate running room if the Gamecocks can’t soften up opposing defenses through the air at least occasionally. Indeed, by the end of the ODU game, the Monarchs abandoned any pretense of worrying about South Carolina passing against them and loaded up to stop the run. It didn’t help that the offensive line failed to wear down the ODU defense as the game dragged on, either. This was not a hole-opening, pile-driving performance from the long-maligned South Carolina O-line, and while they may not have played as poorly as it seemed in the moment, there’s little need to pretend they slung anyone around in this game. And since they carried the burden of past performance into this contest, the negative reaction they received from onlookers after the game shouldn’t have been shocking to a single person. While we’re here, I’m not one to scream about play-calling after every game (really, I’m not), but surely no one would make the case that South Carolina’s offensive staff experienced its finest hour on Saturday, would they?

Week One Already Feeling Like “Must Win” Territory – If, as most national observers predict, South Carolina’s ceiling in 2024 would be to upset someone along the way, win six games and drift into a lower-tier bowl by season’s end, then a loss to Old Dominion in the season opener would have just about capsized the schedule before the year even got started. One and done? It would have seemed like it.

Gamecock fans waited through the chilly winter, through summer’s blast furnace, through the endless chattering of Talking Season, hoping for answers about where the South Carolina football program might be heading after one of the most deflating campaigns in recent memory.

We still have none.

True, it’s just one game.

But the fans of many of our SEC competitors already feel like they understand their own programs after one game.

For us? We have questions. We have comments. We have concerns.

Buckle up, my fellow Gamecocks. We’ve only just begun.

And that might just be the scariest part.

Tell me how you felt after Week One by writing me at [email protected].

See what other Carolina fans are saying about the Old Dominion game on The Insiders Forum!