Young secondary continues to make strides
Three games into the season, South Carolina’s defense has yet to put together a dominating performance for an entire 60 minutes.
Saturday’s matchup against Vanderbilt, a team that has been pedestrian on offense thus far, may be the contest in which the Gamecock defense takes control.
“It’s good to take baby steps in the right direction, but we need to take a leap,” secondary coach Grady Brown said. “We need to play well and put something on tape, get ready to move forward and just play consistent.”
The Gamecocks have looked slightly better on defense each week, most recently coming up huge several times against a Todd Gurley-led Georgia offense.
It’s hard to say the Gamecocks contained Gurley and a stacked Georgia backfield after the Bulldogs’ star gained 131 of the team’s 217 rushing yards. Rather, the defense made a few plays in the passing game that propelled South Carolina to a victory that included a forced intentional grounding penalty and redshirt sophomore Gerald Dixon's deflection that forced a field goal attempt during Georgia’s last offensive possession.
Head coach Steve Spurrier said before the contest against the Bulldogs, the Gamecock defense needs to get off the field on third down, and he continued to push the point after the game.
In terms of percentage, it was the best performance yet for South Carolina on third down, allowing the Bulldogs to convert on just five of 12 opportunities.
However, there were still major lapses in crucial moments — most notably a third-and-16 at the end of the third quarter, when the Gamecocks were trying to keep Georgia at a distance. Gurley looked like he would be stopped initially, then reversed field to pull off an improbable 17-yard gain, proving that the defense still has plenty of room for improvement.
South Carolina is a heavy favorite against Vanderbilt and cannot let those same plays happen if it wants to prevent the Commodores from hanging around in the game.
Vanderbilt is averaging a less-than-mediocre 14.7 points per game. The Commodores managed one touchdown in a 37-7 loss against Temple, but it came on the defensive end. It wasn’t until the third game against Massachusetts where Vanderbilt finally scored its first offensive touchdown.
The Commodores’ situation at quarterback is a bit of a mess. Sophomore Patton Robinette is slated to start, but there has been talk all week of Vanderbilt using a two quarterback system on Saturday.
The uncertainty at Vanderbilt’s quarterback position may benefit a young Gamecock secondary, but Brown is not having his players focus on who will be under center.
“Honestly, with where we are as a secondary, I’m not sure we can be overly concerned with who’s playing at quarterback,” Brown said. “We need to be concerned about taking care of our assignments.”
The Gamecocks are last in the SEC in rushing defense, allowing 518 yards through three games on 5.3 yards per carry. Vanderbilt redshirt freshman Ralph Webb will look to add more damage as he leads the Commodores with 281 yards on 58 carries. South Carolina defensive line coach Deke Adams said the main point of emphasis for his line is stopping the run — then they'll worry about getting to the quarterback.
Sophomore linebacker Skai Moore seems to be the player that is keeping those rush defense statistics from being worse. He may have had his best career game against Georgia with 10 tackles, six of them being solo stops. Moore did not seem phased by tackling Gurley.
“I’m pretty confident in my ability to make tackles on anybody and bring down whoever I go against,” Moore said.
Moore made comments on the secondary’s progression, including young players like freshman Al Harris Jr and redshirt sophomore Rico McWilliams at cornerback, saying it takes time to get comfortable, but that both of them are starting to get the hang of it.
Dixon felt similarly to Moore about the youth in the defensive backfield.
“We knew we had young defensive backs when we first started so we knew we were going to have to start slowly,” Dixon said. “But, I feel like we grew to a stronger team after we took a loss the first week."