It’s been a season of growing pains so far South Carolina’s offense in a lot of areas in particular but one is hurting the team’s chances at scoring points consistently.

Getting across midfield has never been too much of an issue for the Gamecocks, whether it be by turnover or moving it across, but the issues come once they’re past the logo and going in for a score.

The Gamecocks have struggled finishing drives this season—typified by having six drives with a first and 10 in plus territory against Troy and coming away with nine points.

“It’s execution for sure, but I think it’s more about our communication. Whenever we did cross the 50, there was two or three of those drives where we shot ourselves in the foot with penalties and lost yardage plays,” Luke Doty said. “That’s’ on us as an offense. The play calls are there and are good but it’s on us to execute. That’s a big point of emphasis this week.”

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It’s been an issue all year, stemming from the inability to run the ball and it’s showing on the scoreboard.

Of the 99 plays run in opponent territory, 52 plays have been runs and the Gamecocks are averaging just 3.4 yards per attempt. Of the 52 runs, 28.8 percent have been either no gain or lost yardage and 48.1 percent went for two or fewer yards.

“Not being able to consistently hand the ball off and run it when you get into that area starts to affect you. Highly-rated red zone football teams are able to run the football,” offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield said. “Usually when you get in the red zone that’s when you run your quarterback. With our quarterback I’m not going to do that until he’s fully 100 percent. We have to find ways as coaches to hand the ball off and run it. That will help us.”

Also see: Looking at what's been holding the offense back

The Gamecocks have failed to capitalize and take advantage of some great field position as well with seven drives against FBS opponents starting in opponent territory.

Of those, they’re only averaging 2.3 points per drive and just 2.7 yards per play.

In plays run in opponent territory the Gamecocks have just six explosive plays and are averaging 3.5 yards per play with quarterbacks completing fewer than 50 percent of passes and averaging just 4.6 yards per attempt.

They stalled at times against Troy for various reasons—penalties, lack of execution two big ones—and Satterfield puts a lot of blame on himself.

“There were a couple on me. I went into last game and basically said, ‘Pfft. We’re throwing this thing and freaking going at it.’ there were a couple times, especially in the first half,” he said.

“There were a couple times where I was just taking shots. I cared a lot about the game but at that moment I wanted our guys to play free, I wanted to loosen up. Early on, that hurt us.”

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If South Carolina is going to overcome being double-digit underdogs this weekend against Tennessee (noon, ESPN2), it’ll need to be better not only getting points across midfield but scoring touchdowns in the red zone.

The good news for the Gamecocks is they’ve done well scoring inside the 20-yard line ranking fourth in red zone efficiency (92.9 percent) but are 12th in the SEC in overall red zone trips (14), red zone touchdowns (7) and red zone touchdown rate.

They’re tied with Arkansas and Georgia for red zone field goals with six but lead the league in red zone field goal rate, kicking a field goal on 48.9 percent of trips.

“I’m not complaining about kicking field goals down there,” Shane Beamer said. “We’re at least getting points down there–knock on wood—but we need to make those touchdowns. We need to score touchdowns this week and not kick field goals if we get down there. We’re glad we have Parker White, but I’d rather Parker White be jogging out there kicking extra points than jogging out kicking field goals.”

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