Sunday, after the Gamecocks’ season-opening win against Eastern Illinois, Marcus Satterfield and Greg Adkins didn’t have to say much to the offense, and in particular the offensive line.
As the offense goes about cleaning up and tweaking some of the things in the run game, the corrections came from the players themselves.
"We sat there and able to annotate ourselves. We had to point out what we did wrong and that was the message Coach Satt was sending to us. If we can see what we did wrong, that’s a good thing,” Dylan Wonnum said.
“We sat there and we had to call out and talk like grown men and say what we did wrong. Adkins gave a little feedback but not a lot. We had to annotate ourselves. We know what we did. There’s nothing he could say because we knew what we did wrong.”
The things needing correcting aren’t major, holistic overtures but more of the little things with making sure all five linemen’s footwork is on par; Wonnum said the line did their job but it could have been better if the footwork was right.
South Carolina struggled, albeit early on, in the run game with 98 first half yards on 24 carries, averaging 4.08 yards per carry but exploded and—when taking out the one sack allowed—ended with 265 rushing yards on 46 attempts (5.8 yards per attempt).
Of the Gamecocks’ seven explosive plays Saturday, four came in the run game and five total were made by running backs: MarShawn Lloyd with three and ZaQuandre White with two, including a 63-yard house call to help put the 46-0 win on ice.
White led the team with 129 yards on just 12 attempts and a touchdown while Lloyd had 55 yards in his Gamecock debut.
“It felt really good to go out there. When you don’t have to think about anything it makes the game so much easier,” Lloyd said. “When the second half came along and I started to get into my groove it felt good. I didn’t have to think about anything and just go have fun.”
But, the Gamecocks will need to have a better start to their rushing performance with competition ratcheting up to the Group of Five and a road trip to East Carolina on the docket.
South Carolina didn’t handle movement on the front seven in the opener, and will need to be better Saturday because deception up front is a key piece to the Pirate’s defense.
“Eastern Illinois did a good job of bringing pressure and moving their guys up front,” Head Coach Shane Beamer said. “That’s East Carolina’s M.O. as well so we better be able to handle it because we put it on tape early on we didn’t do a great job handling it. We have to have a great plan this week to execute against those guys.”
Wonnum said the early film on East Carolina has returns with a lot of stabs, twists and turns on the defensive line and the Gamecocks will have to be “locked in” this weekend (noon, ESPN2).
The key for South Carolina is to not get too jumpy as the Pirates throw a lot at the line to process, and execute once the play happens.
“Be ready for move calls and not jumping offside. That’s a big thing he preaches to us. There’s going to be a lot of move calls trying to get us to jump offside,” Wonnum said. “Being able to hold our horses—because we’re ready to come off the ball—we need to hold our horses and know what we have to do.”
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