Shane Beamer, South Carolina players talk what Missouri offense did right
South Carolina’s defense failed to keep Brady Cook and Missouri at bay on Saturday night.
Eli Drinkwitz’s offense was firing on all cylinders for most of the night, and even when it wasn’t, South Carolina still couldn’t quite keep it under wraps.
“First of all, give Missouri credit that’s a good football team, said it all week,” Shane Beamer said. “We knew it was gonna be a battle, they came in and played really, really well. And give the quarterback credit he played well.”
Missouri totaled 367 yards in the game and was averaging 5.3 yards per play. Cook himself threw for 224 yards on 17-for-26 passing. He also scampered for 53 rushing yards and a touchdown.
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It was clear that South Carolina’s defense was off to a rough start when Missouri jumped out to a 17-0 lead, and almost took that lead into halftime.
“They do a great job of just keeping you off balance with formations, personnel groupings, motions, trick plays, that’s kind of their MO,” Beamer said. “They did a great job tonight of getting the ball on the perimeter. We didn’t leverage it correctly a couple times.”
Beamer added that there were a few instances during the first quarter where he felt the defensive call was perfect and — in theory — should’ve been good enough to stop whatever Missouri was bringing. Despite this, Missouri was able to execute the plays for first downs.
“We just got to be better, plain and simple,” Debo Williams said. “Execute the calls, coach is giving us the right thing to do, we just have to execute it.”
Nick Emmanwori agreed that the defenses’ struggles on Saturday all essentially boiled down to the lack of execution and not the preparation for Missouri’s schemes.
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“We prepared for everything pretty much, it was just execution on our side,” Nick Emmawori said. “You got to just see the play coming and see the motion coming and play faster.”
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Throughout this week Beamer said that an emphasis has been placed on improved play on the perimeter offensively and defensively. Still, the defense wasn’t able to consistently contain Missouri’s offense on the edges.
“We got to get back on our A game,” Emmanwori said. “We had a pretty good week in perimeter in practice and stuff. We just got to execute and set the edge better and play fast.”
Missouri’s motion-heavy scheme kept South Carolina’s offense on the field for what felt like all night at times. The Tigers ran 69 plays and had four drives that were all 10 or more plays, and all but one were scoring drives.
Drinkwitz’s offense also excelled in later downs, going 8-for-16 on third down plays.
“We play in the SEC, everybody’s gonna be good,” Williams said. “We just got to be ready for everything that’s thrown at us and we’ll be better.”
South Carolina’s defense will have a chance to rebound next week against Vanderbilt in a primetime matchup under the lights in Nashville.
