Sunday mornings are never good after a South Carolina loss in football, whether in London, England or Columbia, South Carolina.
On reflection, it was the first time this year we were truly outplayed on both sides of the ball, (we should have beaten Auburn) so hats off to Arkansas. South Carolina fought hard but Arkansas had the pedal to the metal all night long and were stellar across the board. The Hogs mixed up their offense and kept the pressure on Carolina for a hard fought defeat for us in Fayetteville.
Arkansas quarterback Tyler Wilson was impressive, throwing for 299 yards and more importantly, spreading his targets across seven Arkansas recievers who averaged 15 yards per reception. He picked apart our secondary with ease and moved the ball all night. Our special teams were terrible, allowing an average of 44.5 yards of returns. We turned the ball over four times, you can not do that in the SEC and expect to win. Connor Shaw played well but just could not get any support from the offensive line. I hope for a speedy recovery for him and his concussion, that was a nasty hit. The rushing game was abysmal, with Arkansas again dominating the line of scrimmage.
I agree across the the board with Flounder and his “Quick Postgame Impressions,” so no need to rehash there – we were simply outplayed.
Going a step further….
Let’s put it under our belt and here we are 7-2, 5-2 conference. I do not want to be the first to hear the fat lady singing, but our hopes of winning the SEC East look grim to say the least. After Georgia’s performance (albeit vs NMSU) we have to: 1. get past Florida and 2. rely upon Georgia loss. I think Sun-Tzu said in the Art of War – “Hope for Sunshine, but build dikes for the flood.”
We have a home game against the Gators and they squeaked by an ever improving Vanderbilt this weekend as well so there is a strong chance for a win there. Again, as my best friend is a Gator so this coming game is personal and I think we have our work cut out for us. I’m more concerned with UGa getting the loss at some point. Please college football gods…make it happen.
USC starting quarterback Connor Shaw is getting some callouses now and I think will learn from this tough road loss and become a better quarterback due to it. Three tough games on the road and we won two out of three. Rewind to August and most of us thought that is what would happen.
Now we have three at at home, so we need to get down to business with Florida. Coach Spurrier needs to get a little bit more creative on the offense – Shaw is an effective passer and scrambler but the offensive line needs to hold a few seconds more to let bigger plays develop. We cannot have the “fade back, find no open recievers, and panic scamble” each play from Shaw. Work the short passing game more like we saw in the second half.
In summation, we lost, lets move on. Looking forward to Florida and hope that Allen, Holloman and Shaw get well soon as they are key players to getting back to Atlanta for the SEC championship.
