This week’s preview will be free, but upcoming previews just like this for future games will be for insiders only. Not an insider and like what you see? From now until Sept. 9th you can lock in a year-long Gamecock Scoop subscription for just $22. That's less than $2 a month. Just use promo code: GOCOCKS22 at checkout.

Almost exactly 365 days ago, South Carolina opened up the Shane Beamer era at home against a team nicknamed the Panthers. There was energy in the building and a lot of excitement about the new era, but no real stiff competition on the other side of the field.

The Gamecocks faced Eastern Illinois, a team who went 1-10 at the FCS level and just by nature of its FCS status, only had 63 scholarship players on the roster. It was live game action, but little more than that as South Carolina ran out with a 46-0 victory.

Bring it forward 12 months, and Beamer’s team will face a very different variety of Panthers in Georgia State. An experienced opponent returning 17 of its 22 starters from a team who won seven of its final eight contests last season, it is a completely different mindset going into this year’s opener.

In as cut-and-dry a manner as you will ever hear from a head coach, Beamer sized up the challenge.

“No disrespect to Eastern Illinois who we opened up with last year, but this ain’t Eastern Illinois,” Beamer said on Tuesday. “And we made that very clear with our players this morning.”

Matchup: Georgia State @ South Carolina

Venue: Williams-Brice Stadium

Kickoff: 7:30 p.m. ET

Network: ESPN+/SEC Network+ (Check out our streaming set up guide)

Broadcast team: Courtney Lyle; Chris Doering; Tamara Brown

Spread: South Carolina -12

Over/Under: 56.5 points

Georgia State head coach Shawn Eliott is a name very familiar to South Carolina fans from his time as the school’s interim head coach after Steve Spurrier retired in the middle of the 2015 season. Before earning the head coaching job in Atlanta, Elliott spent 16 years as an offensive line coach split between nine years in the role at Appalachian State and seven with the Gamecocks. He made his mark as a coach with offensive line play, and he has molded his program around it.

His Panthers were eighth in the country in rushing last season and bring back both of their top two rushers from 2021 in Tucker Gregg and Jameyest Williams. The focal point of his team will undoubtedly be running the football again, a mindset that seeps down from the head coach through the entire roster.

“To me, teams take on the personality of their head coach,” Beamer said. “I would hope people see us and talk about how hard we play and the effort we play with, and the competitive spirit and the physicality and the toughness. But you certainly see that with them as well. Gamedays when Shawn was here, I used to think we would have to get him an IV after some pre-game warm-ups. He’s out there sweating and bleeding and drenched in sweat, and we hadn’t even kicked off.”

It translates over to the defensive side of the trenches as well. Elliott was a defensive lineman when he played at Appalachian State. The Panthers set their program record for sacks in a season last year with 38 across the 13 games. Of the six players who recorded more than two of those sacks, five of them are back this year and will slot into the team’s 3-4 scheme.

Outside linebackers Jamil Muhammad and Blake Carroll made up the backbone of the pass rush with a combined 11.5 sacks a year ago, and both players are around for another year to potentially cause problems for South Carolina on Saturday night.

“They run to the football. They’re very difficult with what they do up front with their slanting and angling,” offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield said. “They’re not as big as a typical SEC defensive line — they’re maybe 20 pounds lighter — but they move so fast and effectively with a relentless mindset.”

South Carolina’s success in the turnover department last season has been well-documented. The team led the SEC in takeaways with 15 interceptions and 10 fumble recoveries scattered at all three levels of the defense.

Georgia State’s defense was nearly as opportunistic though, forcing 22 turnovers. First-team All-Sun Belt safety Antavious Lane became the first player in Georgia State history to record an interception in three consecutive games last season, and he will be the driving force of the secondary again.

And of course, Spencer Rattler is still working on his own previous struggles with turnovers. Interceptions were part of the reason he lost his starting spot at Oklahoma, and the only way to really prove he has moved past these issues will be showing it against a turnover-happy defense.

With the inherent luck involved with turnovers, you can’t gameplan for the bounce of a ball or the spin off of a deflection. But in a game where the running game could limit possessions and shorten scoring opportunities, turnovers could potentially tip the scales in either direction.

“You definitely want to play decisive,” Rattler said. “You want to be aggressive, but you want to be smart at the same time. That’s with every team, every offense, but I would say there is a fine line. You’ve just got to naturally play it, I guess.”

The best possible development for South Carolina on Saturday beyond simply winning the game would be winning it decisively at the line of scrimmage. The Gamecocks have some big battles against some very physical teams coming up in the SEC, namely with their first two conference opponents against Arkansas and Georgia. Pushing Georgia State around up front on offense and winning one-on-one battles defensively would be a very positive sign for this group.

It would allow the offense to be free-flowing and showcase more of what Rattler and the running backs can do, it would take Georgia State out of its usual game script required to run the ball all night and would probably lead to a comfortable win by multiple scores.

The air goes out of the balloon in one night.

After an entire offseason of hype and good energy around the program after Beamer’s first season, his team is opening year two with a live underdog coming into town. Georgia State has a very specific recipe for how it can exploit opponents and a coaching staff with plenty of experience pulling off upsets in big road games.

Georgia State caught Tennessee sleeping in the 2019 season opener, and the Volunteers started 1-4 off the back of the week one upset. The Panthers are capable of winning this football game, and a demoralizing opener could spiral things quickly with a long road trip against a stylistically similar opponent on the horizon for next Saturday.

Ultimately, South Carolina will have a little bit too much depth and size at the line of scrimmage for Georgia State. The Gamecocks will surely get Georgia State’s best swing — and will probably take some punches in the first half as a result — but Rattler and the offense should be able to move the ball down the field enough to get 2022 off to a winning start with a 31-21 South Carolina win.