Scott Davis: South Carolina's full-blown power surge, Gamecocks punishing opponents with brute force

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 (sign up here) and a column during football season that’s published each Monday on GamecockCentral.com.

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Stronger. Tougher. More physical.

In more than 30 years of watching the Gamecocks play SEC competition, South Carolina fans have all too rarely been able to use those adjectives when describing their football team.

Oh, there have been plenty of good players to suit up for the garnet and black during the last three decades. We’ve been electrified by a string of great wide receivers, by some unforgettable defensive backs and running backs, even a memorable quarterback or two.

But far too often over the years, as we watched our SEC rivals slowly grind down the Gamecocks over four quarters, we’d find ourselves thinking about how much stronger, how much tougher, how much more physical our opponents seemed. You’d hear the same old cliches season after season: The Southeastern Conference is big boy football, survival of the fittest, only the strong survive.

And it frequently seemed that by each season’s end, South Carolina’s football team would wear down in the face of brawnier, sturdier competition. It felt like other SEC rosters were made up of lumberjacks, Navy SEALS and UFC fighters.

In 2024, the script has been flipped. And flopped. And hurled into the garbage can.

And after South Carolina stomped all over Vanderbilt’s dream season in Nashville on Saturday (your final: Gamecocks 28, Commodores 7), it’s officially time to write a new script.

Right now, this team is punishing its foes with brute force – not wearing down the competition so much as punching them into submission until the fight gets called. This feels like unchartered territory for South Carolina football. How did we get here?

The Gamecocks began this season coming off a 5-7, no-postseason year in 2023 that featured more of the same things we’d grown accustomed to in 30+ years of SEC competition: A struggling running game and seemingly endless questions about the program’s offensive line performance. It certainly didn’t look like the recipe for an upcoming showcase of raw power as we embarked upon the 2024 season. A sloppy performance in this year’s opener against overmatched Old Dominion did little to quell the fan base’s early doubts.

But with every passing game, the Gamecocks have slowly but surely transformed themselves into a group of power players, punishers and strongmen. If every week in the SEC is a heightened version of the old playground contest King of the Hill, then right now the Gamecocks are getting fitted for crowns and scepters.

We started wondering if something was different when we watched the team cruise into Lexington in Week Two and push around a Kentucky program that had been revitalized under Mark Stoops in part by becoming tougher and more physical. Even in South Carolina’s razor-thin losses to Alabama and LSU, something seemed to have been changed: The Gamecocks looked occasionally capable of imposing their wills against the league’s best teams. What was going on here?

Over the last three games, this display of strength has blossomed into a full-blown power surge: South Carolina has simply looked physically dominant against Oklahoma, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt – the latter two of whom had been Top 25 teams when they faced the Gamecocks.

Coming into Saturday, virtually no one in the SEC – including the defenses of Alabama and Texas – had been able to contain Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia in 2024. Pavia is one of those slippery quarterbacks who is so difficult to tackle that it occasionally seems like his jersey is covered in motor oil. But the Gamecocks harassed and flustered Pavia all evening – he looked genuinely shaken by game’s end and ultimately limped off the field with an injury.

Meanwhile, South Carolina’s running game looks as robust and formidable as it has in a decade, with Rocket Sanders notching his second consecutive 100-yard rushing game against a quality opponent. For another Saturday, the Gamecocks seemed stronger, tougher, more physical than the competition.

When it was all said and done, Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea was forced to utter somber postgame comments like, “I thought they were obviously the better team, the more physical team tonight. That was a three-phase ass-kicking.”

Yep, that about sums it up, coach.

With three games left, South Carolina is now bowl-eligible for the third time in four seasons under Shane Beamer – a feat that many of us weren’t sure would even be possible this season in the face of a brutal schedule. Instead, these Gamecocks have been every bit the equal of that imposing schedule. And now, some among the national analytics community are even wondering aloud if South Carolina isn’t one of the best 12 teams in the country, and are floating the idea – however remote – of the Gamecocks somehow working themselves into the College Football Playoff conversation by season’s end.

Did you see this ferocious power play coming way back in Week One, when the Gamecocks often seemed to have trouble blocking Old Dominion’s defenders? I didn’t, and don’t mind admitting it.

Being wrong never felt so fabulous.

That’s because this team has been punching, pounding and pummeling its doubters for a month now.

May they keep throwing punches all the way through the end of November. There’s still time to win 10 football games this year, and the people are enjoying the power.

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The Rocket Sanders Game Balls of the Week

When you deliver your second consecutive 100+-yard rushing performance against SEC competition to go along with three touchdowns and, just for added fun, some big plays in the passing game, you’re probably going to have the Weekly Game Balls named after you. Our first Ball heads to…

Rocket Sanders – You want Big Boy SEC football? The Rocket is in flight and circling the Solar System right now, and if things keep going the way they’re going, we might need to officially christen the rocket at the entrance to the SC State Fairgrounds “The Rocket Sanders Rocket.” Can I formally request that a petition be drafted on that? Sanders pieced together a 15-carry, 126-yard rushing game to go along with 52 yards receiving and three touchdowns…and he made it look like an absolute breeze. He was the best player on the field Saturday, a week after being the best player on the field against Texas A&M.

Shane Beamer’s “Vengeance is Mine” Policy – I wrote after the Kentucky game that Beamer thrived on being doubted – he absolutely lives to prove haters, questioners and even wishy-washy fans wrong. Big wins seem to stoke Beamer’s obvious passion even further, and it’s clear he’s feeling it right about now after his Gamecocks slayed yet another quality SEC opponent to put themselves in position to finish with a winning record in the league.

In a lively postgame press conference, Beamer reached back to 2023 to throw shade on a story he’d read in The State newspaper last season that suggested his program was falling behind because it wasn’t favored by enough against Vanderbilt. Beamer – already the most popular South Carolina head football coach in history other than Steve Spurrier – certainly knows his audience: Gamecock fans have felt tormented by the State for nearly a century.

“That might’ve been one of the most embarrassing pieces of journalism I’ve ever read,” Beamer said, laying a smackdown worthy of Ric Flair’s prime.

Um, this feels like it might be as good a time as any to remind everyone that I am not and have never been a journalist, but simply a South Carolina fan who writes about my experiences watching Gamecock sports. And I’ve written a lot of un-embarrassing things about how much I’m pulling for this head coach. And speaking of Beamer…

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Shane Beamer’s Ascendance as “The Man” at South Carolina – From the very beginning, we knew something was different. From his first press conference in December 2020, Shane Beamer felt like one of us. It felt like he understood us, that he understood this school, this state and our people. There have been many coaches here – some of them successful – who we could not say that about.

That’s why last season’s setbacks delivered so much anxiety to Gamecock Nation. It was more than that we were troubled South Carolina was struggling again. It was that we wanted this – this Shane Beamer thing – to work. We wanted this coach to thrive at this school. It felt right, felt like something the universe should reward. In a perfect world, this would be the guy to take us to the promised land.

The promised land may still be out there in the distance, but after this season’s unlikely resurgence, Shane Beamer has firmly cemented himself as The Man at South Carolina. This is going to be the guy we ride with. He’s carrying himself with the confidence of someone who knows that. And his team is, too.

QB Harassment – Vanderbilt’s Pavia was hustling around the field all night trying to make plays against a savage and merciless Gamecock defense, but few plays were to be found. I’ve been watching South Carolina football since the 1980s, and I’m not sure I can remember many times when I’ve felt this confident when the Gamecocks are on defense. It always feels like they’re about to make a play to stop a drive cold – and often enough, they do.

LaNorris Sellers Stepping Into the QB1 Role with Authority – We knew Sellers could run, and his supreme elusiveness showed up most obviously on Saturday night when he squirted through a certain sack in the shadow of the end zone, then somehow found the presence to hurl a 51-yard completion to Jared Brown. Against Vandy, he also threw the football with precision, firing lasers along the way to a 14-for-20, 238-yard, two-touchdown night.

Buffalo Chicken Dip – I made a platter of it for our SC-Vandy viewing, and the spicy kick it delivered seemed fitting on a night when the Gamecocks pounded the Commodores and Shane Beamer pile-drove his postgame press conference.

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The “If Only We’d Finished Off Those LSU and Alabama Games Earlier This Season, We’d Be Talking About the College Football Playoff Right About Now” Deflated Balls of the Week

If Only We’d Finished Off Those LSU and Alabama Games Earlier This Season, We’d Be Talking About the College Football Playoff Right About Now – Still true, still timely.

My Forecasting Abilities – In a column during the bye after the Oklahoma game, I wrote that Ole Miss was “no longer a serious contender for the College Football Playoff.” Inevitably, the Rebels drilled Georgia last night in Oxford. They look like a serious contender for the College Football Playoff. I also wrote that November might be more difficult for South Carolina than October was: The Gamecocks are now 2-0 in November and have won their games this month by a combined score of 72-27. In fairness, my column was about the fact that no one has any idea what’s about to happen in today’s college football. Come to think of it, maybe I should get a Game Ball for that one.

What would definitely get a Game Ball is another win in the SEC. This week we’re back on Electric Avenue at Williams-Brice for a late afternoon tilt with those maddening Missouri Tigers, who represent yet another Top 25 foe for South Carolina to suit up against.

The Tigers have owned the Battle of Columbia in recent years, winning five straight.

Oh, the doubters will be vocal yet again – indeed, Shane Beamer hasn’t beaten Missouri in his tenure as South Carolina’s coach. Nobody believes in Beamer and the Gamecocks when Missouri is the opponent, right?

Right?

The College GameDay guys, the Vegas guys, those embarrassing journalists – I mean, surely they’ll all be picking Missouri to win this football game, won’t they?

Hopefully so.

Because Shane Beamer’s suddenly powerful team loves to make doubters look dumb.

Tell me how you’re feeling after South Carolina rolled up another SEC opponent by writing me at [email protected].

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