by Chris Paschal
I was in the backseat of a pickup truck yesterday afternoon in Montgomery, Alabama having just found out that I had lost in the semi-finals of a law school trial competition I was in. I wasn’t in the best mood. Remarkably, Todd Ellis, the Voice of the Gamecocks, found a way to cheer me up. The XM Radio turned on and moments later I heard Todd Ellis say, “oh there’s a fumble… and Carolina’s got it!” That was the beginning of the biggest fourth quarter for Gamecock Football in a long time.
At the beginning of the season, I wrote a post titled “Who’s to Blame?” after South Carolina lost to North Carolina. Here’s who I thought was to blame: the defensive leadership, the quarterback play, and the coaching staff. All three of those units absolutely laid an egg in Charlotte, NC to start the season. At the end of yesterday’s post-game press conference, coach Will Muschamp said that the team had been through a lot so far this season and that the team has been very inconsistent.
That was evident through the first four games of the season. It’s almost unfair and irresponsible of me to break the first four games into two categories, but if you did, it would be that the North Carolina and Missouri games were bad showings and the Alabama and Charleston Southern games were good showings. That’s not good enough with this schedule. Something had to change. Here’s what changed.
There is a big difference between thinking that you’re good and proving that you’re good. This defense at the beginning of the season thought it was a good defense. It thought that it had good players. That’s all fine and dandy, but this is a results driven game. Talking about recruiting rankings and draft projections don’t actually force the interceptions or sack the quarterback. I think the North Carolina and Alabama game really woke this defense up. This defense needed to get punched in the mouth a little to get settled in. Between the Kentucky game and the Georgia game, this defense has played like an elite defense.
It starts up-front. South Carolina’s defensive line is elite. Just ask Georgia Head Coach, Kirby Smart. In his post-game press conference, he said, “they out-played us up front… it wasn’t the controlling the line of scrimmage performance we like to have… [South Carolina’s] got good front guys, they’re able to control the line of scrimmage… they played really physical.”
Depth is a huge bonus for South Carolina. In the interior, South Carolina can play four guys that are big (all over 300 pounds) and that can gobble up blockers. At the edge, South Carolina finally has pass rushers. Aaron Sterling, JJ Enagbare, and DJ Wonnum can all get after the passer. But the anchor of this defensive line is Javon Kinlaw. When you have a 6-6, 315 pound, interior defensive linemen that can rush the passer, dominate double teams, and has a motor, you have a weapon on defense. Kinlaw will hear his name in the first round of next spring’s NFL Draft.
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