What’s ailing South Carolina’s defense this season? A closer look

South Carolina football coach Shane Beamer came out of the Tennessee game not happy about a specific part of his defense’s performance.

It’s a good example of what’s been the Gamecocks’ biggest issue thus far on that side of the ball .

“The biggest disappointment from a defensive standpoint was ... the three drives,” Beamer said. “Three drives can be the difference in a game.

“The first drive of the game where we pin them deep and they are taking over on the 6-yard line, and we allow them to go 94 yards on their opening drive for a touchdown. The first drive of the second half where we allowed them to go 75 yards for a touchdown. Then, when we kick a field goal to cut it to a two-score game, another 75-yard drive.”

Those marches went nine, 12 and nine plays. Those drives featured a total of five third downs, one longer than 3 yards (it was a third and six). Tennessee won the game 41-20, dropping the Gamecocks to 2-3 on the season.

South Carolina’s biggest issue on defense is that they’ve struggled to get opponents behind the chains consistently. By run or by pass, opponents are setting up favorable downs (including getting first downs).

The Gamecocks are in the bottom 10 nationally in how often they force third-and-long and how often they face third-and-short. And that’s despite breaking up passes at a decent rate and playing a lot of man coverage.

“Our game plan going into this game against Tennessee wasn’t to play soft coverage and protect our DBs,” Beamer said. “It was, get up and challenge their receivers, and we essentially played man coverage, man principles the entire night.

“Those guys did a great job challenging their receivers and making tackles. Looking at it, we have to clean up some technique issues. We gave up way too many quick slants. We have to be better on the quick slants from a technique standpoint, but proud of the DBs.”

The opposing completion percentage is still too high, at more than 69% against FBS opponents. (USC is closer to middle of the road in yards per completed pass.)

Two areas of concern for USC

The answers likely come in two areas.

▪ The first is disruption. South Carolina is only causing an average amount of havoc (tackles for loss, sacks, tipped balls) on the defensive line and well below that at linebacker. Those havoc plays disrupt — they create second-and-13 or third-and-9.

Some of that is being short on options at defensive end, where a lot of those plays come from, and some of it is having to rely heavily on the top tackles.

“We have to get more pressure on the quarterback,” Beamer said after Tennessee. “We said this was going to be a line of scrimmage game. ... We only created one sack and one tackle for loss, and that was by a linebacker. So part of that is depth and being able to play more bodies.”

Through five games, the Gamecocks were outside the top 75 nationally in how often they get to the QB and outside the top 100 in how often they stop runs at or behind the line of scrimmage.

▪ The other issue for South Carolina is a more fundamental one. All the scheme in the world can’t save a defense that is losing too many individual matchups. Sometimes that’s making a tackle in the hole or a defensive back getting the best of a receiver on a route. But often, it’s about the play up front, getting off a block, cutting off a running lane through a gap and not letting the guy across the line get the best of you.

The Gamecocks had the bye week to shore up a few things, but that simple facet is one the South Carolina staff intended to focus on.

“At the end of the day, somebody’s got to win a one-on-one rep,” Beamer said. “You look at us against Mississippi State, we created some negative plays and we had some tackles for loss and we had sacks. It wasn’t some magical scheme. ... It was guys just out competing and winning one-on-ones.”

Next USC football game

Who: South Carolina vs. Florida

Where: Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia

When: 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 14

TV: SEC Network

This story was originally published October 8, 2023 at 7:40 AM.