South Carolina defense struggles to stop run, perimeter plays at Florida
In the blink of an eye, South Carolina was trailing 24-0 in the Swamp. Florida’s offense took charge and controlled the game from the first drive.
The Gamecocks struggled to stop the run and lost 38-6 Saturday afternoon. The Gators rushed for a season-high 374 yards. And for South Carolina, that’s the most rushing yards it has allowed in a game this year.
During his Sunday teleconference, Shane Beamer thought his defense played better as the game continued, calling it a “tale of two halves.”
“I think it was 284 yards rushing in the first half if I’m not mistaken,” Beamer said. “And then I believe we held them to under 90 yards rushing in the second half. Proud of our defense—they battled.”
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While the defense slowly stopped the bleeding, only allowing one rushing touchdown in the second half, the first half set the team back. The Gators averaged 6.9 yards per carry, while the Gamecocks allowed big plays to unfold. Freshman running back Trevor Etienne’s 85-yard touchdown run was the biggest of the night. His only touchdown of the game put the game out of reach early in the first quarter.
“Florida’s got really good athletes and really good players, and they’re a downhill run game, but they certainly wanted to get the ball out in space,” Beamer said.
For as bad as that game was, Beamer knows he can’t just look at the game tape and move on.
“There’s good things that we can build on from that game and bad things that we need to learn from to make sure that they don’t happen again,” he said. “We certainly learned from it. But we know that this one’s behind us and there’s nothing we can do about the Florida game now.”
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This wasn’t something new for the defense. South Carolina is allowing 192 yards on the ground and 4.67 yards per rush. It’s a problem that has become more glaring 10 games into the season.
On top of that, Florida threw a lot at the defense with its high-tempo offense. The Gators controlled the clock by just under 13 minutes and called 79 plays—29 more than the Gamecocks did.
How does the defense plan to correct these issues?
“We’re gonna continue to continue to see perimeter plays from opposing offensive until we do a better job of stopping it—there’s no question about it,” Beamer said. “And that’s getting off blocks, that’s mixing up what we call defensively as well.”
With a high-powered Tennessee offense coming into town Saturday night, Beamer said the defense has to go “play football and not be on our heels.”
“We certainly know we’re gonna see that this Saturday night as well,” he said.
