An open letter to South Carolina football fans: 2018 is going to be intriguing
By Keith Farner
Published:
Gamecock fans,
This is the year you’ve been waiting for since the fall from the high of three consecutive 11-2 seasons. This is the season you hoped the team would bounce back to following Steve Spurrier’s retirement, however you still think about the timing of that announcement. But this is also the year that expectations are changing.
The page has been turned for the better in that fans and media expect more out of a team that won 9 games, including the bowl game, and this is widely viewed as the best South Carolina team in five years. Entering his third season, coach Will Muschamp has already matched the best two starts in program history. Muschamp is 15-8 at South Carolina; only Joe Morrison (15-8) and Spurrier (15-10) have done as well.
Remember the joy you felt on New Year’s Day following the win over Michigan? The feeling of going from trailing 19-3, to celebrating amongst fans as Muschamp, fresh off of getting doused with Gatorade, exchanged hugs and hand shakes with anyone in his path.
That’s reignited this preseason as camp opens and the “all gas, no brakes” battle cry looks to become reality.
“We’re going to win a championship so get ready!”
Tell ‘em, Coach! pic.twitter.com/xJNyNh7Tt9
— Gamecock Football (@GamecockFB) January 1, 2018
But if you’re looking for someone to get out ahead of his skis, don’t look at Muschamp. Of course, this is the same coach who last season, as results passed expectations, deflected any real reaction until the end of the season to evaluate the entire product. He did it again, from SEC Media Days leading into preseason camp.
“Our focus right now is to finish summer and have a great training camp,” he said. “You can have all of the goals you want and all the expectations you want, but none of that matters unless you understand what it takes to achieve those. We’re excited about having the opportunity to report on August 2nd and start practice on August 3rd.”
Messaging could be one of the valuable lessons Muschamp learned between his tenure at Florida, and now in Columbia. He admitted in Atlanta that he learned he could only control things within reach, and, “there’s certain things you can’t control and you need to move on.”
“At the end of the day, I’m a good defensive football coach. I’m a good special teams coach, and I can recruit,” he said. “I think those are things you got to stay in your lane as far as those things are concerned and move forward and that’s what we’ve done.”
Perhaps the silver lining to one of the biggest questions on the team, the defensive secondary, is that’s a unit where Muschamp himself played, and he’s most familiar coaching. It would also help the secondary if the pass rush, a noted priority for Muschamp, steps up and puts more pressure on quarterbacks, especially without blitzing.
What Muschamp can control is using Deebo Samuel all over the field, and unleashing him at least to the level the star wide receiver and special teams ace opened last season before he was injured. But Samuel, Rico Dowdle and the rest of the skill players are hardly a worry. In fact, they might be the biggest reason to be excited about this season.
The underlying question for the season might be if the offensive line, while replacing a pair of veterans, can be rebuilt and improved at the same time. The concern is scoring, especially in SEC games, where the Gamecocks last season put up 17 points or fewer in four games, which resulted in a 1-3 record against Kentucky, Texas A&M, Tennessee and Georgia.
Muschamp noted in Atlanta that the top six offensive linemen have about 80 starts between them, but there is a significant dropoff in experience at the bottom of the depth chart.
One of the more intriguing aspects of this season will be Jake Bentley’s growth at quarterback under a new offensive coordinator in Bryan McClendon and quarterbacks coach in Dan Werner. The Gamecocks have said they will tweak the offense to play at a faster pace, but one wonders if Bentley’s noted turnovers, and poor accuracy at times, will change for the better in this new system.
“We want to be able to dictate the tempo of the game more, play faster,” Muschamp said in Atlanta. “I think Jake plays better when he plays faster, and that’s certainly — you’ll see a noticeable change in our offense as far as the tempo is concerned.”
There is room to grow. The Gamecocks, in almost every major offensive category last season, were at or near the bottom in the SEC. Of course, having Samuel and Dowdle for the entire season would offer an obvious bump.
Make no mistake, there is optimism on the horizon, which is unchartered territory for a program that hardly has a key game to look forward to on a regular basis, especially outside of Clemson. But here they sit, with loads of attention on Week 2 playing host to Georgia in the coveted 3:30 p.m. CBS time slot, that the Gamecocks have the opportunity to propel the program to Atlanta in December.
Along with the Georgia game, there are others circled on the schedule, including the Kentucky series, which has gone the wrong way for the Gamecocks the past four seasons. That motivation will be paired with the Texas A&M game, another 4-game losing streak for the Gamecocks, and a memory last season of yielding seven sacks that exposed the offense line’s deficiencies.
There are plenty of aspects of this team to chew on, and keep us occupied until the Sept. 1 kickoff against Coastal Carolina.
Muschamp wasn’t everyone’s first choice when he was hired, and there are lingering questions about the offense, and concerns about the defense. Sure, the program is a step behind Clemson and Georgia at the moment, but the future trajectory is positive, and that’s a lot more than a lot of August preseasons in program history can say.
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
