South Carolina Football: 3 takeaways from loss to Florida in Week 5

South Carolina football lost its second game in a row against No. 3 Florida. We examine what went wrong in our takeaways from the game.

The South Carolina Gamecocks traveled to Gainesville, Fla., to meet the Florida Gators and came into the game 1-3 against the Gators under head coach Will Muschamp’s tenure.

The Gators were 15-2 at home against the Gamecocks and they added another game to the win column when they defeated South Carolina 38-24.

The Gamecocks again started off strong, scoring a touchdown in their opening drive, but multiple dropped balls and a lack of defense kept them from finishing strong.

What’d we learn?

3. Offensive mistakes

There were too many dropped balls. End of story.

Collin Hill only posted 28-of-47 completions for 212 yards and two touchdowns. For the most part, Hill threw on target, but the ball was either tipped by the Gators’ defense, or when the ball did make it to the receivers’ hands, it was dropped. This most certainly was a huge part of the Gamecocks defeat.

It wouldn’t hurt for the Gamecocks to also rotate the quarterbacks, as Hill has said because of his prior knee injuries, he won’t be a rushing quarterback. He was left open most of the game, even though he was sacked four times, and ran the ball a few times when he was left with no other option. Shi Smith, who is Hill’s most reliable receiver was also the most targeted and there were several opportunities where a running quarterback could have moved the ball.

The Gamecocks owned the field on rushing yards, finishing with 117 versus the Gators’ 80 yards.

2. Defensive struggles

The Gamecocks’ defensive line couldn’t stop Kyle Trask and his offensive line. The Florida quarterback finished his game with 21-of-29 completions for 268 yards and four touchdown passes.

The Gamecocks were able to force two turnovers, one via an interception and the other a fumble recovery, but they were not able to stop the running game of Dameon Pierce or the passing game between Trask and leading receivers Kadarius Toney, Kyle Pitts, and Trent Whittemore.

South Carolina only posted 59 total tackles as a team, with five tackles for loss, three pass deflections and two sacks.

1. Game and time management

Just as in last week’s game against Tennessee, Muschamp made the questionable call to bring in Parker White to kick a field goal instead of going for the first down on a fourth and two situation. While White put the ball through the posts, it could have been seven points on the board instead of three and less of a gap.

The team also made the questionable decision to run off the play clock in the final minutes of the game when they were down by 14 points. When the time was of the essence and they needed to move the ball quickly, the let the clock run down on each play and rushed it, instead of making any pass attempts to move the ball further down the field, and potentially into the endzone.

The coaching staff and both the offensive and defensive lines need to get on the same page if South Carolina has any hopes of getting a win against a pretty difficult SEC lineup in the next eight weeks. As with the games that were canceled this season, there are a couple of games that should are “penciled in wins” when the schedule is released, but at this rate, South Carolina might not even pull those off.

The Gamecocks face Vanderbilt next week, who they have defeated 11 times in a row. Hopefully, it will be No. 12 after next week’s game.