Carolina Confidential – Sunday thoughts on Missouri loss

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— Every football game starts with sort of a best case scenario and a worst case scenario of realistic possibilities and unfortunately for South Carolina, this one played out — especially in the first half — with Missouri taking advantage of all of the potential on-paper issues one could potentially expect on the worst-case side.

The unfortunate truth in my opinion is that Missouri is a better and more talented team than South Carolina right now — certainly when compared to this highly banged-up edition of this South Carolina football team.

In many ways, both teams were exactly what we thought they were coming into the game in terms of tendencies and strengths and deficiencies

South Carolina appeared to have found something to work with on its offensive line last week but with Vershon Lee out this week the up-front play as a whole resembled what it’s looked like for much of the season, especially on the road.

Missouri won the battle up front on both sides of the ball, which once again meant a Carolina offense that moved the ball at times but struggled to find much consistency.

There was just simply too much pressure on Spencer Rattler and too much running room for Missouri RB Cody Schrader.

Both sides battled in the second half and to their credit did not quit but this was a game that field goals weren’t going to win, especially when trying to erase a big deficit, and even when the defense did get some second-half stops, the offense wasn’t able to do enough to make it truly matter.

— While some will point to the four field goals (five attempted) as being more red zone issues, Carolina’s red zone numbers this year fall in the category of symptom rather than problem in my opinion.

It’s not that the Gamecocks are specifically “bad” in the red zone, it’s that this offense — with the highly explosive combo of Spencer Rattler and Xavier Legette combined with its shaky offensive line play — has pretty consistently been a unit that is heavily boom or bust and relies on those explosive plays for success… whether in the red zone or not.

In the couple of games where Carolina has consistently run the ball (last week against UF being the most recent example), the offense has not surprisingly leveled out a little bit and not had to rely on those explosive plays but for the most part this season, it’s needed those to survive.

It’s possible that those issues are a bit exacerbated in the red zone due to tighter windows, confined spaces, and more aggressive defensive calls. And this offense does have a habit of giving up sacks on third downs either inside the red zone or just outside of the red zone that result in either longer field goal attempts (or put them out of FG range) or in fourth down situations where they can’t really go for it.

— Which brings us to the next point… Shane Beamer has never been shy about going for it on fourth downs but nearly every fourth down decision sort of put him between a rock and a hard place.

The rock being that most of these were fourth and long scenarios and the hard place being that he likely deep down knew that field goals probably were not going to win this game.

0-0 | 9:01 1st
4th & 21 @ Mizz 33 (after sack on 3rd & 8)
Missed FG

24-0 Mizz | :31 2nd
4th & 10 @ Mizz 33
FG

24-3 Mizz | 10:37 3rd
4th & 8 @ Mizz 18
FG

24-6 Mizz | 7:07 3rd
4th & 10 @ Mizz 20 (after sack on 3rd & 3)
FG

27-9 Mizz | 10:31 4th
4th & Goal @ Mizz 3
FG

The last two are the only ones that you could maybe argue towards going for it.

But even the second to last one, as a 4th and 10, is likely a low percentage conversion, especially with the o-line problems and the only reason you’d go for it would be if you’ve just decided that it’s the point in the game where you’re going to make your stand and try to completely flip the momentum. It did come after Missouri’s punter dropped the snap and put the offense in great field position. It would have been a gutsy call but a tough one to make. And really the biggest problem with that sequence isn’t the decision to kick the field goal, it’s the sack on the 3rd down and the dropped pass on 2nd down that would have gone for a 1st down and probably a touchdown.

The last fourth down/field goal decision is the one that I thought you could make the best case for going for it and in the moment I absolutely thought they should have. But the analytics say that it’s basically a wash either way. I just didn’t think one could expect the defense to hold Missouri to nothing the rest of the way which is what you’re basically needing when you kick a field goal there. If you score a touchdown, you’re allowing the defense to give up one more FG and still be within two scores (so basically you need one true stop and one forced FG).

— There’s plenty more to get into, but this piece has gone long enough for now, and we’ll have more thoughts on the game and more big picture thoughts as the week progresses.

With the way this schedule is structured, Carolina would need to go 4-1 down the stretch in order to get bowl eligible. As bad as things have looked this year, the final four games are actually all winnable on an individual basis but next week’s game — a road matchup with Texas A&M — is another terrible matchup for the Gamecocks from a strength vs. weakness standpoint. A loss there would mean the need to go 4-0 down the stretch and another strong test of this team’s ability to go through adversity.

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