Gainesville, you may have a divisional problem.
Entering the 2010 season, Florida was the odds-on favorite to retain their years-long stranglehold on the SEC East. Two games in? Don’t look now, Gators, but that’s the Ol’ Ball Coach’s visor is gaining fast in your rear-view.
Through one-sixth of the regular season, South Carolina has taken on the look of the best team in the SEC’s Eastern division. Not on paper, mind you; on the field, where it actually counts, is where the Gamecocks are looking like a team that’s in this race for the long haul.
In stark contrast to his past quarterback-centric ways, Steve Spurrier channeled a previously-unknown inner Big Ten football soul as his Gamecocks pounded Georgia, themselves a preseason East darkhorse, into submission in a 17-6 win.
And by “pounded Georgia into submission” we mean “they literally pounded Georgia into submission”. The Gamecocks ran the ball on 52 plays while passing just 17 times in the win. Again, 52 runs vs. 17 passes. In a Spurrier-coached offense.
Spurrier is apparently very aware on which side his ’10 bread will be buttered as true freshman Marcus Lattimore was the knife carving up a Georgia defense that simply had no answer in containing the running game. Lattimore carried the ball a Wannstedt-esque 37 times and averaged 4.9 yards per carry, with seemingly four yards of each of those carries coming after first contact.
On the flip side of the run game, USC held UGA to just 61 yards on 26 attempts. Punishing your opponent on the ground while playing stifling defense? Why, that’s positively Midwest of you, Coach Spurrier.
Meanwhile, in Gator Country, the offensive struggles continued Saturday.
Certainly, the 38-14 final looks pretty, even deceptively sexy, but the way the Gators performed throughout most of the win over South Florida was anything but. This is an eight-cylinder offense running on six at best, and Urban Meyer and his offensive coaching staff need to reach deep into the toolbox to fix what’s looking like a post-Tebow lemon.
Five turnovers by the opposition and that’s the margin in a home game? Yeah, something’s broke and needs fixin’.
As long as Florida keeps winning, though, and regardless of how they look in doing so, it’s the Gators’ division to lose, at least until they go head-to-head with the new darlings of the east. That opportunity will come Nov. 13 in The Swamp and is shaping up to be the game in that division this season.
The Gamecocks, even for all the two-games-in plaudits, still need to prove it on the field. Based on the first two games of the young season, though, it’s the 2-0 Gators that will have everything to prove come November if this offensive ship is not righted post haste.
