Tale of the tape: South Carolina has quick hook at safety

At the first snap against Tennessee’s football team, South Carolina defensive back D.J. Smith made his first start of the season. It capped off a back-and-forth week in which he was listed as a starter, told reporters later he was still working with the second unit behind Jordan Diggs and finally had his status publicly confirmed.

His time on the field lasted all of two drives.

A review of the game film showed Smith only saw the field for a play or two after those first two Volunteers scorind drives, with Diggs playing the other 60 or so plays.

When Diggs was in, the Gamecocks allowed 4.6 yards per carry. With Smith playing, that figure jumped to more than nine.

Structurally, Smith didn’t appear to do anything too egregiously wrong. He took less-than-stellar angles on a 20-yard Alvin Kamara catch-and-run and a 23-yard Kamara outside jaunt. He also bit up on a receiver running a screen route and nearly gave up a catch on a slant, but he also served as the last line of defense on one 20-yard run, keeping it from getting worse. He wasn’t in a great spot on a 37-yard scoring pass up the seam, but most of South Carolina’s back seven was having trouble on the play.

What stands out even more is that, even though Diggs was used in a multitude of ways (covering slot receivers or tight ends, as a lone deep safety, up in the box), he didn’t manage to accumulate a single statistic. From the TV angle, he seemed to be solid, though there were also a few plays where he had issues.

Schematically, it didn’t seem as if much changed after those first few drives. Tennessee didn’t run much different from its regular offense, and the Gamecocks didn’t switch up the way they played defense.

South Carolina blitzed a tad more than usual, with five rushers coming on more than half the dropbacks, but that was true of the early drives and did not cause significant havoc.

Instead, it was just a matter of tightening things up. Players flowed better to the ball, cut down space (on average) and hustled better into the play after getting optioned off.

Going downhill

When the South Carolina offense opened a drive pinned on its own 10, it decided to go heavy. Think adding an extra 473 pounds to the backfield.

The Gamecocks debuted a set with a deep back in the pistol and two fullback/H-back type blockers forming a triangle around the quarterback. Those blockers were linebacker Jonathan Walton and tight end Kevin Crosby, who both came out and immediately blasted open a hole for a 19-yard run by Shon Carson.

The trickier wrinkle was yet to come. On the Tennessee 10-yard line, the offense again came out in that formation. After motioning as if he would kick out an edge defender, Walton slipped into the flat for a scoring pass. It appeared there might have been a read element, as the team ran the play earlier, with Walton slipping out and looking for a pass, but Brandon Wilds had already taken the ball and was stuffed in short yardage by an unblocked end.

The team also drew wide receiver Pharoh Cooper into the running game, motioning him to create triple-option looks (those usually ended in dives, leaving it unclear if there was any actual choice for quarterback Perry Orth).

But the Gamecocks’ success on the ground was tempered by breakdowns on the interior of the line.

On six runs with four or fewer yards to go (all third and fourth downs) South Carolina got stuffed three times, and would have been once more had Wilds not bullied ahead after two fullbacks shot past a linebacker. None of the team’s standard zone plays gained more than four yards.

One big issue there was run-plugging Vols tackle Owen Williams, who twice beat USC center Alan Knott, once on a double team, to pull down a runner in the backfield.

Third down

Although the Gamecocks’ defense tightened up after the first two drives, third downs proved to be an issue. Tennessee mostly had to go at least six yards (usually seven or more), but when they converted, the average play went nearly 17 yards.

Seven of those were passes that went for between 11 and 30 yards, usually taking advantage of the middle of the field. It appeared linebackers and slot cornerbacks had issues with underneath coverage and negotiating space in relation to the safeties (who took drops so deep the defenders in front of them had more ground to cover).

There were miscommunications passing off responsibility for receivers crossing the middle, moments when receivers or tight ends just ran past cornerback T.J. Gurley and Walton at linebacker. Tennessee quarterback Joshua Dobbs also hit a perfect corner route in a weak spot in the USC cover-2.

So even with improvement, there were still problems.

Notes:

▪  South Carolina had one peculiar miscommunication when Lorenzo Nunez was in at quarterback. He was on the field for at least three plays, running one counter and one sweep as a receiver, but it was the third play that stood out. On a second-and-12 play, the freshman quarterback took the snap, his line dropped into pass-blocking position and receivers sprayed downfield. Only Nunez just handed the ball to Wilds, who seemed on the same page as his quarterback and no one else. Wilds got dropped for a loss, leaving him and Nunez looking bewildered, and the drive later sputtered. Coach Shawn Elliott said it was a called pass.

▪  The flea flicker is always a fan favorite, usually ending in a lob downfield to a wide-open receiver. So Perry Orth going underneath on such a play for 18 yards to Matrick Belton in the second quarter seemed a bit incongruent. Looking at a wider angle, it appeared the primary target was Cooper on a deep post, but the deep safeties didn’t bite. The linebackers and cornerbacks did, leaving Belton open slanting over the middle.

▪  USC has had problems with the offense petering out late. The Gamecocks didn’t score on their final three possessions for three different reasons. On one, they fell behind the chains, another the heart of the offensive line could not hold in short yardage. On the last one, the offense was moving, but Jerell Adams got into the Tennessee red zone on a great play but had the ball cleanly punched out from behind for a game-ending fumble.