South Carolina football staff identifies one key issue ailing the offensive line

It’s no secret that Georgia overmatched South Carolina’s offensive line last weekend in Athens. By now, most of the country has seen head coach Shane Beamer’s post-game rant on the topic.

For much of the young season, USC’s O-line has been under scrutiny, grading poorly in Pro Football Focus’ pass protection rankings and struggling in consecutive weeks against East Carolina and the Bulldogs.

Beamer and his staff have defended the talent on the line, while acknowledging the need to improve. The 40-13 loss at Georgia exposed just how much improvement is needed.

A key area for growth? Communication.

“Saturday night was was not good in a lot of ways — us included as coaches,” Beamer said. “That place was rocking on Saturday night ... and we certainly had some miscommunication.

“We had a play where we had two guys blocking the run and we had three guys blocking the pass. And that can’t happen. That’s not good football. That starts with us as coaches, and that’s being able to communicate at the line of scrimmage and the quarterbacks being louder, getting plays in on time.”

With the Gamecocks now in the midst of conference play, USC can’t afford those kinds of mistakes on a weekly basis. The Gamecocks will welcome 3-0 Kentucky to Williams-Brice Stadium on Saturday night, and the Wildcats boast a defensive line nearly as massive and as physical as the one USC just saw in Georgia.

Beamer pointed to 6-foot-3, 278-pound Kentucky defensive end Josh Pascal as a disruptive force and compared 379-pound nose guard Marquan McCall to Georgia’s Jordan Davis in terms of physicality.

Offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield echoed Beamer’s thoughts on “miscommunication” as the source of much of the O-line’s struggles, saying the team has some cleaning up to do after just three games under a new coaching staff.

Satterfield added he takes some of the blame for those communication issues and not getting offensive plays in quickly enough.

“Like many coaches, I get distracted with plays and get distracted with stuff that’s important, but maybe not as important as the minor details of communication,” Satterfield said. “I probably let some things slide here and there, and it didn’t really get us the first or second game, like most things do. And then when we were really, really, really in the heat of battle, it popped us a couple times.

“And so as a coach, I’ve got to go back now I kind of look myself in the mirror and make sure that we’re practicing the right things within our system to make sure that communication is executed.”

Satterfield didn’t rule out changes to the personnel along the line, repeating the popular USC coaching staff mantra that competition is one of the cornerstones of the program. Against Georgia, sophomore Jakai Moore earned his first start of the season at left tackle, usurping senior Jazton Turnetine after a strong week in practice.

“I think we played all right, and honestly I feel like we can get a lot better,” Moore said of the team’s performance at Georgia. “Throughout this week, we’ve been getting a lot better just trying to get everything in task. That’s what it comes down to. We’ve got to get better.”

Satterfield said that the Gamecocks haven’t made any systemic or scheme changes in practice this week. Rather, South Carolina is directing its focus more toward the finer details.

“We’re cleaning up some stuff,” Satterfield said. “We still have our system we believe in. We have a great system. So we’re just working to hold people accountable, at practice we’re really, really making sure that the communication is clear and everybody’s on the same page. And thus far in the first couple of days of practice, you can really see a difference.”