Moving the Chains with Jack Veltri: The good and bad from South Carolina’s first win

coming into today this morning there was so much excitement hype energy was through the roof new quarterback New Era South Carolina football a chance to redeem yourself from finishing five- seven last year a clean slate a chance to get back on the right track and get back that momentum from the 2021 and 2022 Seasons Under head coach Shane Beamer and for a little while on Saturday it seemed like maybe the season was going to get off to the worst possible start playing Old Dominion a sun Bel school you know the sun Bel has had their fair share of upsets over the years and old dominions no exception to that beating Virginia Tech twice since 2018 it looked like for a Time the monarchs were going to go out here and pick up another win over a FBS group of or power four team but South Carolina despite all of its flaws tonight came out Victorious winning 2319 in the season opener here at Williams Bry Stadium on Saturday night and before we get into any of the bad cuz obviously there's a lot of bad and I'm sure you guys want to hear about it let's get into a few of the positives first off they got the win that's the important part you know B time South Carolina was winning in this game and then the monarchs came back we're leading in the fourth quarter and it took a great defensive performance to leg out a victory tonight you got to give credit to South Carolina's defense they were the story of the night forcing four turnovers two of them came right behind me here deep in Old Dominion territory and led to South Carolina being able to punch in uh the ball with two nice runs one from rocket Sanders a few yards out and then Lenor cers in the fourth quarter which would ultimately be the difference in a 23 to9 Victory but that's about as far as the positives from this game go you had flashes at times but overall it was just a mess and offensively speaking I think that's where a lot of the issues reside Lenor sers like I said making his first career start as a red shirt freshman for this program taking over after Spencer Rattler did such a great job helming the quarterback position for the last two years for the Gamecock but tonight he looked like a freshman making his first career start and it was not pretty I mean to put into perspective he you know threw for well under 200 yards and you know I think he only completed maybe nine to 10 passes and he just looked like there were times where he had receivers and we'll get to the receivers in a in a secondz that's a highlight to talk about but it just looked like him and the receivers were never really on the same page and you see times where he's making throws and they're just off the off the Mark um his best throw of the night in my opinion wasn't even a completion he threw a real bomb I don't even know how long it would have gone for but it would have been a touchdown he throws it over the back shoulder to Jared Brown and Brown had it right in his Bread Basket but dropped it and that was just kind of the the story of the night was that Sellers and the rece receivers just couldn't get on the same page had some nice throws later in the game but overall it was really just a mixed bag and he ran 22 times for 102 yards uh with a touchdown his longest run was 34 yards and part of it was the fact that the pocket collapsed at times and he just took off and ran and there's a lot to get into with this with this offense but it it does start with him not his best performance certainly could have been worse um but you got to move forward and this is the starting point for him and how the rest of the season could go now the Run game was pretty good rocket Sanders nice game 24 carries 92 yards on the ground no pitch count had a long run of 21 yards looked very solid the rest of the night offensively the offensive line I don't think it was as bad as it is made out to be a lot of you guys are going to go out there and say this offensive line is piss poor whatever the case might be but it really was just the perimeter blocking in my opinion that was the issue um there were some gaps created at times that allowed rocket Sanders and other like Lenor sers to run for nice gains but um the perimeter blocking on the outside you weren't really able to do much some of those guys up front Kamar Bell Josiah Thompson they had their struggles this is a group that obviously is coming off a really bad season last year I think they're going to get better from this game but um it was a start that they had some moments where they looked all right and Shane Beamer did say that with the receivers Beamer was pretty blunt about it I mean they got to be a they got to be able to block that's the thing and I think with the receivers and the reason for they're not being a good connection with sellers out there tonight is that they're not one they're not creating separation I think that's just number one number two they're not blocking well enough I think that's another thing that Beamer did point out and really just called out honestly for what it is they just weren't blocking one off tight ends included that's why you really didn't see many of the tight ends involved in the passing game tonight like you might have expected but yeah I mean thenone these receivers have their opportunities they drop some passes I mean it's just a it's just a a recipe for disaster when you're not able to do what you can at receiver and this is really not much of a surprise because if you go back and hear what D loggin had to say a few weeks ago he said this is going to be a buy commmittee type of product at receiver and they don't have a true number one that's basically what he said and no one's been able to really separate themselves in that receiver room so you see it reflected out here tonight when Jared Brown drops a good pass and he doesn't make any big plays in the receiving game I mean Dre Jacobs was your leading receiver two catches for 59 yards but it was really a disappointing night from the receivers at least to me they had some moments like I said I think everyone had their moments but overall just not a great night for the offense but the defense again stole the show tonight Dylan stor phenomenal Kyle Canard electric odonald Fortune had a pick uh late in the game to seal it Jaylen Kilgore had a nice interception off a tip pass that went off an old domion receivers hands and right into his with under 2 minutes to go and that essentially sealed the game looking forward South Carolina heads to Lexington next weekend to play Kentucky in what will be a massive SEC match every game in the SEC is huge but this one specifically because these are two teams that you know if you win this game next week it's like okay you're starting off potentially two and 0 we don't know how Kentucky's looking tonight but we you're looking at it from the perspective that one of these teams could go two and 0 and that puts you on the right path to getting off to a good start to the year but also looking towards Bowl eligibility potentially so that game kicks off at 3:30 uh eastern time next week on ABC in Lexington I will be there along with some of my colleagues over at Gamecock central.com so be sure to stay locked in for all that I'll be going Live on YouTube tomorrow so be sure to stay tuned for that as well I'll be breaking down a lot more from what I saw tonight and moving forward and then it's on to Kentucky so that's going to do it for all right now be sure to stay locked in the Gamecock central.com like I said until next time I'm Jack Bel