Muschamp determined to fix South Carolina football's rush defense

Coaches are no strangers to long nights watching film and getting ready for next week’s opponent. It’s not every night of the season, but once in a while coaches have to stay up until the wee hours of the morning breaking things down.

South Carolina had one of those nights Sunday.

The goal, Will Muschamp said, is to fix South Carolina’s run defense.

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“We’ve gone back,” Muschamp said on his weekly teleconference. “We’ll continue to go back and we’re going to be here for a while tonight to figure this thing out so we can go into our off day to feel good about our plan to get ready for a very good rushing football team in Texas A&M.”

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South Carolina’s run defense has struggled at times this season, giving up over 100 yards on the ground in four games so far, including having opponents rush for over 200 yards at least twice.

They gave up a season-high 286 yards on the ground in a 37-35 win over Missouri Saturday, leading Muschamp to want to reassess some of the things the Gamecocks are doing as coaches.

“At the end of the day, we’re not coaching it as good as we can, and that’s on me. We’ll go back and look at scheme,” Muschamp said. “We’re not going to overhaul our system right now. At the end of the day we have a good system, we have to coach it better and put our guys in situations to be successful and that’s on me.”

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South Carolina is currently tied for 85th nationally and 13th in the SEC giving up on average 171 yards per game.

The Gamecocks had a defensive staff meeting Sunday afternoon before the team practiced with the hopes of starting the process of revamping the scheme a little bit before the Aggies roll into town.

It’ll be a tough task—Texas A&M is fifth in the SEC in rushing and the Aggies’ Trayveon Williams leads the league with 720 rushing yards—but Muschamp thinks with the right tweaks the Gamecocks can contain it.

“We have to hash some things out to be able to stop the run better,” he said. “I think in my opinion we’re certainly capable but we have to go back and figure out some things."

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