When I saw it, I couldn’t believe it.

By “it,” I’m referring to the opening line for the South Carolina at Vanderbilt matchup this weekend. A measly 2.5 points was all the Gamecocks were favored by. That’s it.

According to the oddsmakers, the No. 2 team in the SEC East a short 2 weeks ago — and might still be depending on who you ask — was less than a field goal favorite to go into raucous … Vanderbilt? Wasn’t that the team that earned 1 SEC win last year and was picked to finish dead last in the division?

Indeed it was. And yeah, in case you were wondering, the line did move eventually.

South Carolina is now only a 2-point favorite.

That’s a somewhat stunning early-season development that whether you agree with or not, says a lot about the state of the East. It’s a wide open race to finish second to Georgia. At least that’s the case according to the oddsmakers.

If it really is just 2 points separating No. 2-7 in the division, we’re in for a wild year full of second-guessing ourselves when it comes to the East.

To be fair, it did sort of take the perfect storm to set this up. No, that’s not an attempt to reference the fact that South Carolina is coming off a canceled matchup with Marshall because of Hurricane Florence.

It took the right combination to set up this situation where the oddsmakers are somewhat dumbfounded by this lack of separation in 2-7 in the East.

The last time we saw South Carolina was obviously the blowout loss to Georgia. That game cooled any and all hype that the Gamecocks were the sleeper pick to win the division. Add in the fact that their only other game was a blowout win against lowly Coastal Carolina and that’s not exactly a large 2018 sample size for that new offense.

Then there’s Vanderbilt, which has covered the spread each week so far, including when it went to No. 8 Notre Dame and lost by 5. Really, that was a game that the Commodores could have won. A goal-line fumble here, a converted fourth down there and suddenly we’re talking about the team many believed was the worst SEC team coming into 2018 as having a road win against a top-10 team.

Credit: Jeff Blake-USA TODAY Sports

Maybe there is a little of 2017 that’s being taken into account when it comes to that 2-point spread. Even though South Carolina won 9 games last year and it got some nice preseason buzz, it’s easy to forget that the Gamecocks were 6-1 in games decided by 1 possession or less (one of those games was a 7-point home win against Vandy).

When oddsmakers came out with that season-long over/under win total of 7 for South Carolina, my thought was that regression was expected because of that stat. It didn’t matter that the Gamecocks returned nearly their entire offense with the exception of Hayden Hurst.

Perhaps the bigger reasons for South Carolina’s lack of Vegas love goes back to the 1-possession stat from 2017, or the fact that the Gamecocks spent just 1 week in the Associated Press Top 25 since Sept. 2014 (then the Georgia game happened).

Who knows?

Maybe Vandy’s defense won’t have the Week 4 drop-off that it did last year and it really will shut down Deebo Samuel and Bryan Edwards. The Commodores have allowed just 13 points a game in a 3-game start that includes a road matchup with a top-10 team.

Perhaps South Carolina’s inability to run the ball will make this game go down to the wire. The Gamecocks did also struggle against a smart, efficient quarterback like Jake Fromm, so maybe there’s a belief that Kyle Shurmur can repeat that type of effort.

We still have so many questions about both teams because after all, it’s only Week 4. That 2-point spread would be that much more noteworthy if we were talking about a matchup between the second-place team and the seventh-place team in November. But we’re not.

Hopefully the first real full weekend of SEC games will shed some light on what already looks like a wild division. I mean, we’ve only seen 1 non-Georgia game in the East and it was Kentucky ending a 31-year losing streak to Florida.

Let’s get weird, y’all.

This South Carolina-Vandy spread is the second dose of weird we’ve seen from the East this year. We could look back at that spread Saturday night and wonder why we ever thought Vandy — AKA the team with 1 winning season in SEC play in the past 35 years — was 2 points worse than a team many believed would be No. 2 in the East.

It’ll take the perfect storm for this East unpredictability to continue. One thing is for sure, though.

It definitely doesn’t seem like the oddsmakers know who’ll stay afloat.