South Carolina's third scrimmage is officially over and, like the two before it, there's good and bad coming from it.
Will Muschamp met with the media on Sunday after the Saturday practice and detailed what he liked and didn't like about the roughly 160-snap scrimmage.
Below is his entire answer about his key takeaways.
“We went in the stadium and went through pregame routine, which we’ve done twice now. We had 140 offensive and defensive scrimmage snaps, more than I anticipated. It was really good work. I saw some improvement in all three phases.
We had 20 special teams snaps. We incorporated within the scrimmage when punts came up we had seven live punts we had to cover where we had to hold up or come to the punter. We had 12 field goal or PAT situations and we were much better in protection than in the previous scrimmage and we started the scrimmage with a live kick off versus kickoff return.
I think you saw some of the football yesterday with some of the special teams issues people were having so we’re going to concentrate again in Tuesday’s practice with a lot of those situations that come up.
Offensively we communicated better. I thought we were very much improved in our assignments and I thought we executed better. We used crowd noise a lot like it’ll be in the stadiums in the Southeastern Conference this year.
I thought for all the communication to perform and the execution to be better, I don’t know if we had a procedure issue. I think we had one receiver move during a third down period but other than that, it was really good.
Both quarterbacks played extremely well, both Ryan and Collin. We have not made any decision on that as far as the quarterback is concerned. We’ll continue to work through that tonight and into tomorrow and even look at Tuesday’s practice. We don’t officially start on Tennessee until Thursday. Both guys did a really nice job. Both guys command the offense. Our first six possessions offensively we had five touchdowns, so that says a lot there.”
There were some critical mistakes on defense: a critical pass interference on third down, which should have never happened. If you’re in the right leverage and stay on the right leverage we’re getting off the field. We had two busts from the safety position on touchdowns.
Again, things are certainly correctable but disappointing in your third scrimmage to go through that. I thought offensively guys came out with energy and juice. I think our team learned a little bit of a lesson defensively because we didn’t come out with energy or a lot of juice and it showed.
We’re not going to play in front of 80,000 people this year. You can’t rely on anything externally to get you excited. It has to come within, has to come from the unit and has to come from the team and yourself. You have to be a self-starter. I think fortunately it wasn’t September 26 and some of our defensive players need to learn that.
It’s not very good starting the scrimmage, but on a positive note responded in the second half. In situational work we were good. Hopefully we learned a lesson as far as that’s concerned.
We had Ernest Jones back and he scrimmaged about 30 or 35 snaps. It was great to get Ernest back, but we need to be better on that side of the ball.
I talked about special teams, but I let Jammie Robinson handle all of the punt returns. He made really good decisions. He and Jaycee will continue to battle for that as far as the first game is concerned.
We need to punt the ball better and need to be better in our protections in punt. That will be a huge emphasis on Tuesday. We kicked the ball well as far as field goals and PATs with Parker and we protected than we have before.
Kickoff coverage looked really good as far as guys that showed up and guys that showed they aren’t necessarily ready for September 26. We’ll continue to make some of those decisions as we move forward.
We came out of the scrimmage clean as far as injuries are concerned. We’ll get Spencer Eason-Riddle back on Tuesday off of his knee he’s been slowed coming back from on that ACL from last fall.”
