South Carolina with 'disappointing' self-inflicted wounds in upset bid

Shane Beamer had notes scribbled on South Carolina’s play sheet, blue ink dotting the already marked-up piece of paper. 

Instead of play calls, Beamer had South Carolina miscues lining the page in that dark blue ink. The ink is representative of one of the biggest reasons the Gamecocks come away from Athens losers to Georgia. 

“They’re a championship team and they beat us in the second half. But we helped them in a lot of ways as well, which is frustrating,” Beamer said. “I’m proud of the fight. One of our sayings around our program is stay in the fight and we stayed in the fight today.” 

[Win a Spencer Rattler-autographed football]

The Gamecocks jumped out to a 14-3 lead over the reigning national champions only to watch that turn into a 10-point deficit quickly with Georgia scoring touchdowns on three of four drives to open the second half. 

Things spiraled quickly for South Carolina, who had far too many self-inflicted wounds over the final two quarters while trying to complete the upset over the top-ranked Bulldogs. 

“Trying to block a punt and we have 10 guys on the field. We had fourth and 15 and we’re trying to chip the edge and we don’t chip the edge. We had back-to-back presnap penalties, we had personnel issues trying to get guys in and out of the game defensively. That’s on us as coaches,” Beamer said. 

“We gave up a sack on third down when we were in field goal range. That can’t happen when we’re about to tie the game there. We get a holding penalty on a kickoff return, we had drops, we just didn’t play clean football in the second half and that’s frustrating. Kids played their butts off and gave us an opportunity to win the game.” 

[Win a framed print of The Taunt/D.J. Swearinger from Vista Art]

Of the Gamecocks’ 11 penalties, six came in the second half while being 38 yards worth of flags. Eight of South Carolina’s penalties also came on the offensive side of the ball with five on the offensive line. Offensively, there were five false starts, a delay of game, a holding call and a chop block. 

“The disappointing thing is the disappointing penalties presnap on receivers and offensive linemen,” Beamer said. “Just too many penalties in the second half.” 

Of Georgia’s 458 yards, 290 came in the second half. The Bulldogs also averaged 6.9 yards per play (up from 4.5 in the first half) and averaged 4.8 yards per rush after halftime (3.7 in the first half). 

The Gamecocks, conversely, averaged four yards per play and 3.1 yards per rush in the second half compared to 3.5 yards per rush and 6.9 yards per pass before halftime. 

[Win tickets to the South Carolina-Mississippi State football game]

It was situational football too with the Gamecocks going 3-for-9 on third and fourth down in the second half compared to Georgia’s 3-for-8. All of those conversions came in the third quarter with Georgia 3-for-4 in those 15 minutes. 

“At the end of the day, if they don’t score any points, we win this game,” Debo Williams said. “I think they had 21 unanswered. If they don’t score 21 in the third quarter we win this game. We have to be better.” 

The Gamecocks (1-2, 0-1 SEC) battled but it wasn’t enough in what turned into the fourth-straight loss to Georgia after an upset win 2019. 

There were some good things from South Carolina–especially early–but it’s always going to be hard to beat a team like Georgia with this many self-inflicted issues.

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“We just shot ourselves in the foot. I mean, we had 11 penalties, I believe. We shot ourselves in the foot with false starts, wrong formations, just stuff we need to clean up,” Spencer Rattler said. “I’m proud of my guys a lot. We battled against the best team in the country and should have won the game.”

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