I live in Vermont and am a proud USC grad…….thankfully UVM doesn’t have a football team…..after tonight I’d give my full support to them. This team is going to be destroyed by every team in the SEC……forget about a lucky win over UGA like last year.

Next Week:

UGA 45 USC 10

Another disappointing season ahead folks….hope you’re prepared.

Is Spurrier the guy who is going to make this an elite SEC team? Hell, I’m from Washington State. I have an idea for a good coach and recruiter. Mike Price. He was duped at Alabama. I’m almost at the point of taking another look at the coaching situation. Spurrier seems to have gone a bit soft, in my opinion.

I don’t know. I’m just a yankee married to an SC girl. I DO know that this is frustrating. I do know that.

… does need to be benched. Those two penalties that kept Vandy’s drives alive were completely inexcusable — he didn’t even try to hide them, just blatantly held and interfered. Those two penalties kept a touchdown drive alive both times, and neither one of them made any sense.

I missed most of the game, but after my wife went to bed, I turned it on for a while. I didn’t see the special teams faux pas, but the ESPN guys had plenty to say about them. The offense just didn’t give Smelly a chance with the bonehead penalties, and I counted at least two Vandy drives that could have been snuffed out with just an ordinarily competent defense. I can only think that Vandy somehow got into USC’s head.

I am not happy about this, but I do have to give Vandy credit — they really were opportunistic, and their offense move the football in the second half. Better luck next week.

I’m not ready to lose my faith entirely for next week, but I admit it’s looking a whole hell of a lot more bleak. Seriously, something has to be done about that O-line. It looked AWFUL this week, which sadly was foreshadowed last Thursday.

I’m thinking Kevin might have a point though, maybe the OBC and Carolina just aren’t a good fit. Hopefully he’ll use the rest of the season to prove me wrong, but I’ve been starting to wonder myself.

I keed, I keed.

No seriously. Vandy. [/merciless trolling while ignoring the fact that we lost to Vandy two years ago]

Here’s an outsider’s point of view on SoCar from what I’ve seen the last two weeks:

1) Serious deficiency at the skill positions. You have Mike Davis who is pretty solid. Kenny McKinley is good, but I would argue slightly overrated compared to his impact on the game. Jared Cook might end up all-SEC, but after those three, who’ve you got? Honestly, LeCorn and the Browns don’t scare me all that much. (By the way, please throw it to Moe Brown.) This might be addressed with some of the more recent recruiting classes, but that’ll take a couple years to really impact the offense.

2) Offensive line is inconsistent. I thought the pass protection was pretty solid for most of the game last night. Vandy got some pressure with blitzes, but for the most part, those blitzes were picked up adequately. The problem is that blitzes weren’t picked up at really crucial times. This goes back to their inconsistency. It could also be that the quarterbacks aren’t getting rid of the ball in a timely manner. Spurrier’s system is designed to have somebody open somewhere, and if the defense is blitzing, the likelihood of somebody being open is that much greater. Smelley (or Beecher or whomever) has got to find that open guy whether he takes a shot in the mouth or not.

3) Run the ball. Smelley was in a 5-wide set far too often. They had success running with Mike Davis, but it seemed like they abandoned the running game at times when grinding it out and pushing the smaller defensive line around would have been more productive. Maybe it’s just me, but without a running threat from the QB (24-yard scramble aside), a 5-wide set is just giving the defense an advantage.

4) Slow linebackers. It’s not that they aren’t good, but I think they make better defensive ends. Norwood is listed at 267. Brinkley is listed at 269. As a point of comparison, Georgia’s biggest linebacker is Darryl Gamble at 237. Florida’s biggest linebacker is SuperFreak Brandon Spikes at 245. Brinkley & Norwood are bigger than all but one DE on both Georgia’s & Florida’s 2-deep, and all but Clifton Geathers on SC’s 2-deep. The secondary is solid, the defensive line is pretty good, but the linebackers can be exploited by speedy tight ends/running backs.

5) Special teams = Heel of Achilles. This is kinda obvious to everyone who saw the game last night. Succop is still really good, but the protection has got to improve.

With all of that being said, South Carolina is still a dangerous team. The defense is capable of putting the clamps down on any offense they see. As a Georgia fan, I don’t look at South Carolina as an easy game by any stretch. Unless VermontGamecock has some information that I don’t have, I think 45-10 is beyond comprehension unless you are referring to penalty yards or maybe rushing yards. I see it more like 23-17 either way, with special teams being the deciding factor, much like it is every time these two teams get together. I just have to hope Georgia’s freshman kicker will come through when it matters.

As far as LB speed, I thought we did a decent job flanking their perimeter running game. I thought this would be the key to a good defensive performance, and it was for most of the game. Vandy got some yards on the ground, but for the most part we kept them from getting the big gains they got against Miami, OH. Vandy’s 24 points looks bad for our defense, but a lot of those points came from the short field they got due to the shoddy special teams play.

In the end, though, I was wrong about the LBs/DEs being key to a winning defensive effort. Instead, I should have worried about our secondary, especially Captain Munnerlyn. Munnerlyn’s penalties, both of which aborted chances to force Vandy to give the ball back to us, killed us in this game. And here I was thinking that we have a great secondary. Munnerlyn may be good most of the time, but last night he choked with the game on the line, and you can’t be great if you can’t pull through in the end.

If we beat Georgia again this year……great. We can all gloat in the fact that we, at least, had a part in making it almost impossible for them to go to the BCS championship game. This is basically all we get every year…….one or two lucky wins against the SEC powers. Last year’s Georgia game was a lucky win…….do you think we would have won if we played them later in the season? No. I have a hard time trying to understand why we can’t compete head to head with consistency in the SEC. We have a great coach. We have great recruiting classes. We have comparable facilities. We even have lower academic standards, compared to the other SEC schools, which should allow us to get the good players that can’t get into other schools. What is causing this regular breakdown? Maybe it starts with the coach. Spurrier carries himself with a certain swagger because he has won in the past……maybe this is being transferred to the players in a negative way. It seems that the players came into the game expecting to win….talking trash going back to last year. There was a lack of respect for Vandy as a team, there was a lack of concentration by the players (penalties and the special teams turnover), and there was a lack of pure desire to win. Every year under Spurrier we blow it….we get ranked, expect to win, and lose big time. Why can’t we be humble and play with heart……remember App. State last year? Lou instilled this in his players….that’s why we had a few good seasons…..we played with heart and didn’t expect anything…..and won. It seems to me that this team has too many ME’s and not enough US. If we go into the game next week expecting a repeat of last year we’re done. If we go into the game next week ready to play as a team and play with heart we might have a chance.

Losing to Vandy sucks, no doubt about it. We know first hand. As a matter of fact we should be on a 2 game losing streak to Vandy as well. But all is not lost. You still have 10 games to play. Things could come together any given week. Hopefully just not next week. :-)

One other thing, don’t underestimate Spurrier’s hatred for Georgia. I feel sure he’s been game planning for us since fall camp. He would love nothing more than to knock the dawgs off the pedestal and I guarantee he will exhaust all options to do so.