What went wrong on offense for South Carolina against Tennessee
When freshman quarterback Ryan Hilinski found junior receiver Shi Smith over the middle Saturday at Tennessee, it looked like the start of an explosive afternoon for South Carolina.
That 75-yard touchdown pass tied a career high for Hilinski and set a new personal best for Smith. It also staked the favored Gamecocks to an early lead over the Volunteers.
But that single play wound up accounting for nearly a fifth of USC’s 397 total yards for the game, and the offense went scoreless in the second half as Tennessee exploded for a 41-21 win.
So what was missing from South Carolina’s offense this weekend?
One and done
Smith’s 75-yard touchdown continues a pattern the Gamecocks have followed this season. USC has scored on its first possession in six games this year, matching last season’s total.
All told, 15.38% of South Carolina’s points this year have come on its first drive of the game, a disproportionately high percentage considering the Gamecocks average around 13.5 drives per game, give or take a few that are just running out the clock.
Scoring early obviously isn’t the problem. It’s that Carolina has been unable to follow up its fast starts with strong finishes. The Gamecocks are +33 in point differential in the first quarter this season and -38 in the fourth.
“The other team, our opponents make more plays than us in the second half,” senior receiver Bryan Edwards said. “That’s what it boils down to.”
Third downs
South Carolina entered the game ranked 113th in the country in third down offense, converting 34% of chances. The Vols held the Gamecocks to 4-of-18 on third down, 22.2%. USC averaged 8.5 yards to go on third downs.
“We got to stay on the field on third down,” coach Will Muschamp said. “The field position killed us a little bit in the first half, in the third quarter especially, we gotta be able to flip the field. We just never got anything going. We couldn’t stay on the field at all on third down on offense.”
Leaning on the passing game
Freshman quarterback Ryan Hilinski put up 300 yards for the second time in his career, coming very close to surpassing his total from the Alabama game. He also threw the ball a whopping 51 times, again just a little short of the Alabama game, but far more than he had against Florida or Kentucky, when the run game took center stage.
“I think that, you know, we just never got anything going on traction, we never got on track in anything we were doing,” Muschamp said of the run-pass balance. “We ran a couple more RPOs, we had a couple more tempo plays that we wanted to call, you know, just did what was as effective as we needed to be.”
Hilinski’s accuracy was missing at key points, and he wasn’t helped by some dropped passes and an injury-weakened offensive line that allowed a fair amount of pressure. All in all, the run game had picked up a lot of slack over the past few weeks, and when the Gamecocks needed to take to the air to match Tennessee’s explosive plays, the results mostly weren’t there.
“We just say, take it one thing at a time, you know, try to get ourselves going. That’s all you really can do,” Edwards said of his message to Hilinski after the game.
Little things
It’s harder to define, but both senior offensive lineman Donell Stanley and senior running back Tavien Feaster had some tough words for USC’s offense. Stanley said the group had to “mature up” moving forward and that Tennessee was more excited to play down the stretch, while Feaster knocked the unit for not being “desperate” enough once it got the lead.
Fixing an issue like that won’t be easy, but the Gamecocks will have to if they want to keep their bowl chances alive moving forward.
