Weekly thoughts: The SEC is a beast

— We’ve now had a couple of days to reflect on what happened in Week 1 of college football.

I said going into South Carolina’s opener against Old Dominion that the Gamecocks taking care of business against the Monarchs would be a positive sign heading into league play.

But it wouldn’t actually teach us a lot about how good this team could be, not with the significant step up in competition that is about to take place.

On the flip side, if the team struggled in some areas, it could end up being a bad omen as the Gamecocks begin this loaded slate.

Indeed, there were some problems. Those were particularly evident on offense, with USC accumulating less than 300 yards of total offense on the day.

While many other SEC opponents played cupcakes in week one, we saw enough to make this declaration: this conference may be even better than we thought.

The two teams projected to be worst in the league had nice showings. Vanderbilt scored a big win over Virginia Tech at home, while Mississippi State scored 56 against Eastern Kentucky.

Ole Miss scored touchdowns on its first seven possessions against Furman and won 76-0. Georgia beat a top 15 team (Clemson) by 31 points.

Only three teams from the SEC lost. LSU was one, and that was a fourth-quarter, neutral-site affair against a ranked Southern Cal team. Florida looked lifeless in getting smacked by Miami, but that was generally expected. Texas A&M, with a first-year coach, dropped a game to a top ten Notre Dame team.

Other teams in the league won by 56, 63, 66, 48, 70, 31, and 70 points, respectively.

The overwhelming majority of the programs in the SEC project to be better teams than last season.

But only one team can win each game. This is going to be a hotly contested, highly competitive year.

And when looking at the Gamecocks’ schedule going forward, it’s likely even harder than we anticipated heading into the season.

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— We touched USC’s issues on offense above, so there’s certainly no reason to gloat in Columbia about Clemson’s struggles scoring.

It’s still compelling to watch what has happened in the Upstate.

Many Gamecock fans were upset that Shane Beamer didn’t make a huge run at Garrett Riley, who was hired as offensvie coordinator at Clemson prior to the 2023 season.

Dabo Swinney fired Brandon Streeter – a friend of Shane Beamer – not long after South Carolina delivered the Tigers a loss in Death Valley in 2022.

Maybe the Tigers figure it out, go on a run, and this section ends up looking very dumb.

But the sample size we have of Riley at Clemson shows that it was probably premature to say he was the “best offensive coordinator in the country” before he got to Clemson.

Or to definitively say that he would have immediately turned South Carolina into an explosive offense had Beamer hired him at USC.

Larry Williams of TigerIllustrated.com pointed out over the weekend that Streeter’s offenses averaged 5.6 yards per play in 2022 (14 games). Through Riley’s first 14 in the Upstate, his teams are averaging 5.16 yards per play.

Clemson didn’t score an offensive touchdown in Columbia last year, only winning because of a defensive score and a listless performance by the Gamecocks’ offense.

The Tigers have generally been disappointing on that side of the ball, particularly in big games.

Given recent events, maybe the Tigers should have given Streeter a raise and extension instead.

— Florida State has gone from being left out of the College Football Playoff to beginning the 2024 season living a nightmare.

The Seminoles’ last three games have been a demolition against UGA in the bowl, then losing to Georgia Tech in Ireland and to Boston College at home.

The Eagles’ offensive attack in the latter game was, by the way, engineered by Will Lawing, the son of the late former South Carolina assistant Brad Lawing.

Former Clemson quarterback DJ Uiagalelei has struggled, and the Noles’ defensive line – another group that was prematurely anointed as “the best in the country” – has not been effective.

While we won’t pretend to know what’s happened on the lines of scrimmage, FSU’s fall further illustrates just how important the quarterback position is in football.

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

— We mentioned earlier the thrashing that Billy Napier’s team took over the weekend.

Or, as we will call him from here on out, Basement Billy.

The third-year coach committed a huge blunder this week in answering a question about his team.

“I think we got to become a more consistent team and we have to execute better. If we can focus on those things and not necessarily what some guy in his basement is saying in rural central Florida on social media, then we got a chance to get better, right? I think that’s the key,” Napier said.

Even ignoring the lack of basements in rural central Florida, yikes.

There’s a certain playbook that – for whatever reason – college football coaches begin to run when they’re in trouble.

The staples are becoming increasingly closed off and going “bunker mentality”, even publicly.

The other one is taking potshots at fans and media.

It was bad enough that the Gators got walloped in an important game against an in-state rival to open the season. It became worse when videos circulated afterward of Miami players greeting Florida’s recruiting visitors in The Swamp, telling them to head to “The U” instead.

Napier then made it worse with his comments following the loss.

The cherry on top is that Florida’s schedule does not get any easier. There is a reprieve with Samford on the schedule this week, but then things get tough again. The November slate is comically difficult.

It looks like the storm that’s been brewing in Gainesville is about to flood Billy Napier’s basement.

— The world has now discovered South Carolina freshman EDGE Dylan Stewart, with clips of his performance on Saturday going viral in the player scouting community.

Being ranked as a five star out of high school can bring unrealistic expectations that are almost impossible for first-year guys to reach.

Stewart’s situation was different coming out of high school than, say, Nyck Harbor. The former was thought to be more ready to make an impact at a big position of need.

It’s just one game, but wow.

To be clear, this is not normal. An EDGE rusher playing in his first game does not usually display this type of dominance in rushing the passer, the array of moves that Stewart showed to go along with supreme athleticism.

There is sure to be a “welcome to the SEC” moment for the freshman, possibly as early as this week.

But man, he’s fun to watch.

This is why recruiting matters. Stack up guys like Stewart, and you’ll win a lot of games.

It’s hard to find guys like him, though. So enjoy it.

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— I’ve only seen this from a couple folks, so I don’t want to build a straw man, but…

Anyone saying things like “LaNorris Sellers isn’t the guy” or he’s “not an SEC quarterback” are being too emotional and just flat-out disingenuous.

That’s a little premature even for our 2024 microwave society.

Consider this: the same people raving to us this offseason about Dylan Stewart were also raving about LaNorris Sellers. That seems to mean something.

The two positions those guys play are not the same, and – all due credit to Stewart for what he did in game one – the difficulty level of playing quarterback is much more than rushing the passer.

Listening to Sellers’ comments and speaking to some folks in the aftermath of the ODU game, it’s pretty clear that he was sped up and nervy in his first collegiate start.

Here’s to thinking that, win or loss against Kentucky on Saturday, we already start to see some improvements from the redshirt freshman.

In case you missed it, I wrote on Tuesday about five things that need to happen for him to take the next step.

— We’ve written before that Shane Beamer’s teams have shown a knack for rebounding and pulling out unexpected performances after being buried publicly.

The classic example is South Carolina’s ending to the 2022 season; the Gamecocks were completely lifeless against Florida and then exploded for wins over Tennessee and Clemson.

Looking back at that season, a big reason for fans’ frustration was because it was almost incomprehensible to have the personnel that USC had on offense and still struggle that badly.

Spencer Rattler, Juice Wells, Xavier Legette, Nate Adkins, Marshawn Lloyd, Jaheim Bell, Josh Vann, Jalen Brooks, a veteran offensive line, and USC still put up some stinkers. Those last two regular season games showed what it could have, should have, been for much of that season.

While USC did not lose its week one game, folks are disappointed, even ticked off, about what the Gamecocks showed on offense. Fans are having a hard time finding wins on this loaded schedule if things don’t get drastically better on offense, and quickly.

On one hand, it’s true that some of the mistakes the Gamecocks made on Saturday are correctable. On the other, some of them were concerns that we had coming in, things that could linger, particularly against better competition.

It’s also fair to point out that none of those guys listed above from that 2022 team are on the roster any longer.

While the Gamecocks have a talented young quarterback, signed Rocket Sanders from the portal, and have some other capable guys that were brought in this offseason, there are still some positions that must be proven from a personnel standpoint.

We’ll know much more in the next two weeks.

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