Jimmies and Joes More Than Xs and Os

by Chris Paschal

While teams throughout the region are preparing for championship games and waiting to hear what bowl game they will be attending, South Carolina is looking for a new Offensive Coordinator.

It needed to be done. I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago about how Bryan McClendon just didn’t have the right feel for the game. He designed good plays, and he had moments of success, but often times, South Carolina’s offense was a hodgepodge of covered wide receivers and blown-up “pin and pull” run plays.

Some names with experience calling plays have been thrown around. Chad Morris, Mike Bobo, Steve Addazio, and other big names could be a possibility. Some noise has been made for Bobby Bentley. Whoever it is, Muschamp has to give them total authority over the offense. This will now be his sixth offensive coordinator in his eight years as a head coach. Nothing has worked. If he is to have any chance at winning next year and scoring points and saving his job, he has to trust whoever the offensive coordinator is. Throw all the money you can at the best option you have and don’t touch the offense in 2020.

Can he do that, I don’t know? Many have said it is obviously a Muschamp issue. I mean you can’t tell me that four guys (Roper counts twice since he did Florida and South Carolina) have had a shot at running an offense at a SEC school and all of them failed because all of them were bad playcallers? It has to be the common denominator which is Muschamp, right? I think that is partially correct. Muschamp has to learn from his past, his mistakes, his stubbornness… whatever it is.

But you know, a home run offensive coordinator hire would only fix so much. A cure-all for a lot of these issues would be recruiting at a higher level.

Part of the reason why McClendon fell on his face this season is because his offensive line, all three of his quarterbacks, his top two receivers, his top tight end (out before the season started), his next top tight end, and pretty much all of his running backs were hurt at some point this season. I don’t care who is calling plays, you can’t score points with that.

You want to know why Alabama and LSU and Clemson score so many points? It’s because they have elite players. Yes, all three teams have great offensive minds, but if you want to compete at a high level you have to have the best players in the country.

Of course there are exceptions. Mike Leach comes to mind. But even Mike Leach, an offensive genius, is a 8 or 9-win season coach at schools with ceilings of 8 or 9 wins with the occasional 11-win shooting-star. South Carolina’s floor should be 8 or 9 wins.

I know what a lot of you are going to say. South Carolina doesn’t have the tradition to justify what I’m saying. I get it. I live with a Clemson fan. I hear that a lot. But tradition doesn’t win football games. Players do. And South Carolina has everything you need to land an elite player: a fantastic operations facility, a big stadium, a lot of talented alums in the NFL, an SEC schedule, and a lot of TV exposure. Think about this – a 4-8 South Carolina team was on CBS once and ESPN five times while a 7-5 Tennessee team was on ESPN four times. Nobody wanted to watch this South Carolina team and they still had eight kickoffs after 3 PM.

Clemson and Georgia and LSU and Ohio State and Alabama and Oklahoma can talk all they want about the culture of their program, but that culture is built and based on one thing – elite players. Will Muschamp said he could sell ice to eskimos. Well this is going to be his toughest sale yet. This roster needs better players. Across the board. Everything else is in place.

If South Carolina wasn’t in a Power Five Conference, I would get it. If they didn’t have a great football operations building, I would get it. If they didn’t get on TV a lot, I would get it. If they couldn’t point at Jadeveon Clowney, Stephon Gilmore, Melvin Ingram, Deebo Samuel, and others in the NFL, I would get it. If they played in Vanderbilt’s stadium, I would get it. But like Clemson and Georgia and Alabama and so many schools that win, they do have those things. They have the same shiny toys. The difference is Clemson and Georgia and Alabama have a coaching staff that can recruit great players.

South Carolina can get Chad Morris or Mike Bobo or Lincoln Riley or Urban Meyer or Bill Belichick, I really don’t care, because they have to also get some four-star and five-star studs. And not just a Bryan Edwards or a Zacch Pickens. You have to get a lot of them. You look at who is coming back on the offense, and it’s apparent you have to get more players on offense. Five-star running back (according to Rivals.com), Marshawn Lloyd, is a good first step. Four-star quarterback, Luke Doty, is another good step. South Carolina needs more good steps though if the next offensive coordinator has any shot.

Which brings me to my last point. And it’s slightly unrelated to the heart of this post, but it’s something I thought about this morning. It might be too late for Muschamp. Unless Ray Tanner and the Board of Trustees and President Caslen don’t need to see significant improvement in 2020, I don’t see how Muschamp makes it past 2020. If his career at South Carolina comes down to the 2020 season, and the 2020 season is going to be determined by the offense, and this is an offense with a new play caller, a new center, a new top-target receiver, and a brand new backfield, how is this going to work out for Muschamp? The schedule, at least on paper, looks a little easier, but unless this offensive coordinator is a miracle worker, it might not matter.