South Carolina allowed just 29 passing yards — the fewest in five years — in Sunday’s loss, but that wasn’t enough to stop the Georgia offense, as the Bulldogs averaged 6.5 yards per carry while racking up 326 yards on the ground.
Sony Michel led the Bulldogs with 133 yards while Nick Chubb ran for 121 of his own in addition to finding the end zone twice. Brian Herrien got some work in the second half, taking nine carries for 82 yards.
Will Muschamp and his defense expected a heavy workload for the Georgia backs, but the Gamecocks were unable to find any answers.
“Eventually you’ve gotta defeat a block, you’ve gotta get off a block and you’ve gotta tackle,” Muschamp said. “Which has been an issue here for a long time.”
As Muschamp said, tackling has been an issue for South Carolina all season long, prompting the new head coach to call his defense out after a loss to Mississippi State. The unit also struggled against Kentucky’s backfield, allowing 216 rushing yards in a road loss.
After Sunday’s game, South Carolina is allowing 222.7 rushing yards per game, ranking the team last in the SEC and 109th in the country.
The Gamecocks had a particularly hard time bringing down the 228-pound Chubb, who picked up a lot of yards after contact, especially on a 40-yard burst where he shed several tacklers. Chubb’s impressive performance was his 15th game with at least 100 yards at Georgia.
“He’s a very powerful back,” linebacker Bryson Allen-Williams said of Chubb. “He’s fast; his elusiveness kind of shocks you at times because he is a bigger back.”
The Bulldogs were finding holes in the defense right out of the gate, as it took Chubb and Michel just five carries to put together 64 yards on the opening drive as Georgia took a 7-0 lead.
“It’s frustrating because you what they’re going to do, and you know what you have to stop, and we didn’t stop it today,” Allen-Williams said.
Because of the success of the run game, Georgia was able to take the pressure off freshman quarterback Jacob Eason, who went 5-17 with a touchdown and an interception.
“They threw it 17 times. That was probably 17 times too many,” Muschamp said.
The players were confident that the defense would regroup during the bye week, and Muschamp says the team has been putting in the work all season.
“We just have to come back ... on our bye week and focus on the techniques that we need to improve on,” senior linebacker T.J. Holloman said.
South Carolina will look to plug the holes in the next two weeks of practice before taking on the Massachusetts Minutemen at home on Oct. 22. Massachusetts ranks 125th in the country in rushing offense (one spot ahead of the Gamecocks), as the Minutemen average 96.2 yards per game on the ground.