Gamecock Mailbag: Taking the pulse of South Carolina’s offense after Kentucky loss

The honeymoon phase is certainly over in Columbia.

After falling to Kentucky 16-10 Saturday, South Carolina has now dropped consecutive games and heads into a crucial stretch against Troy, Tennessee and Vanderbilt hunting for consistency.

Let’s get to some of your questions on the week that was:

Why is our offensive coordinator always broken like the ice cream machine at McDonald’s? — Caleb T.

I’ve got to give Caleb some credit, this might be the best-phrased question we’ve gotten in the short-lived tenure of this mailbag. Just fantastic stuff.

As for the actual question at hand, I don’t think South Carolina’s offense is so much broken as it’s been predictable. The Gamecocks ran seemingly the same collection of plays over Saturday’s first half before getting a smidge more creative during the third quarter.

I’m not an Xs and Os expert and Shane Beamer and his staff are certainly paid ample salaries to make this offense work, but it’s a problem that the Gamecocks’ rushing attack hasn’t surpassed 100 yards in three consecutive weeks.

We got a glimpse at what this offense can be when clicking on the South Carolina’s 75-yard touchdown drive on Saturday. It has to look like that throughout games, not just in spurts.

Why is Kentucky a better football program than South Carolina? — Shawn R.

Let’s start with the obvious: Shane Beamer is in his first year at South Carolina, while Mark Stoops is in his ninth at Kentucky.

These things take time.

Stoops has built a consistent winner at Kentucky and I feel pretty confident saying it’s one of the most underrated head coaching efforts over the last decade in college football. Some of it has to do with recruiting, where the Wildcats have established ties in Ohio and other Midwestern states to lure talent into the Southeastern Conference. The other piece of it is just great coaching. Kentucky has carved out an identity as a big physical team in the trenches over Stoops’ tenure combined with a handful of legitimate NFL prospects on both sides of the ball.

That said, there’s a lot to look at in Kentucky that South Carolina could stand to emulate. (Think creative recruiting geography, physicality at the lines of scrimmages.) Also, don’t forget that it’s not that long ago Kentucky fans were calling for Stoops’ head after he went 12-24 over his first three seasons. He’s now 41-26 over his last five-plus seasons.

Kentucky is objectively better than South Carolina right now, but the Gamecocks are in the middle of a rebuild. It takes time to turn things around.

Down by six, 2 1/2 minutes on the clock. Why not onside kick it to at least have a chance at one more possession? Your defense hadn’t been too successful in getting 3 and outs all game, why think they could now? That’s a poor coaching decision, in my book. I heard the entire stadium gasp when they kicked off to the end zone. — Shane M.

I’m not going to lie, I looked down at my coworkers on press row and said, “What the hell?” when South Carolina kicked deep after pulling within six points late on Saturday.

The decision, at least on the surface, seemed puzzling. The Gamecocks defense had assuredly played well and USC was still armed with two timeouts, but by not kicking onside you took an opportunity away from your guys to make a play.

Beamer told reporters after the game he thought just that — the defense was playing well and they felt comfortable letting them try to make a stop.

It’s easy to second guess after the final result and, in all reality, onside kicks rarely work. However, it felt ill-conceived South Carolina didn’t give itself at least a chance at a recovery.

Wished they would have thrown the ball more instead of running it so much. — Kelly J.

Play loose and throw the ball down the field. We are so conservative again. — Timo H.

I’ll go ahead and combine these thoughts since they boil down to the same thing.

Here’s the fun part, South Carolina actually has been fairly aggressive!

When you combine Luke Doty and Zeb Noland’s attempts of 16-plus yards, the Gamecocks rank seventh in the SEC in attempts of that length, according to SEC StatCat. Doty and Noland’s combined nine completions at that range would also be good for tied for third in the league.

Yes, fans would love to see an air raid-style look where South Carolina is attempting 50 passes per game, but that’s just not the reality of offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield’s system.

The other part to this is the Gamecocks need to establish a run game to open up longer throws. If teams can sit in coverage and not worry South Carolina springing a run, it makes things immensely more difficult in opening downfield passing opportunities.

Ben’s Best

Shoutout to my co-worker Augusta Stone for this one. With Troy coming to town on Saturday, what better way to ring in the new week than ranking the top-five “Troys” of all-time.

1. Troy — City in Greek mythology
2. Castor Troy — Nicolas Cage’s character in “Face/Off”
3. Troy Bolton — Zach Efron, High School Musical
4. Troy University
5. Troy — the 2004 movie with Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom and Diane Kruger

This story was originally published September 28, 2021 at 10:06 AM.

Ben Portnoy

The State

Ben Portnoy is The State’s South Carolina Gamecocks football beat writer. He’s a 10-time Associated Press Sports Editors award honoree and has earned recognition from the Mississippi Press Association and the National Sports Media Association. Portnoy previously covered Mississippi State for the Columbus Commercial Dispatch and Indiana football for the Journal Gazette in Ft. Wayne, IN.