South Carolina Grades

Great Win. One of the best of the CMR era at Sanford Stadium. LSU in 3 weeks will be a similar challenge. Basically two off weeks leading up to it is huge. 3-1 at the end of September and everyone should be pleased. QB:A Murray played one of his best games ever. Looked more confident than normal and didnt really throw one bad ball. Give a lot of credit to Bobo. Very little long drawn out play action plays with a whole bunch of quick hitters. RB:A A big reason for Murray's big day was obviously Todd Gurley. Best back of my lifetime at Georgia. Marshall is dynamite in space and had a couple of huge plays and Douglass was nice down the stretch. WR:C+ JSW has come out of nowhere to be awesome. I thought he had no chance of scoring on the long TD but his speed was ridiculous. There were 3 legitimate drops and brings the overall grade down. OL: C Easily better than Clemson but nowhere near where I thought they'd be. Gurley being great made them look good and Murray's ability to get out of the pocket led to some big plays. Did a pretty good job with Clowney but once again Bobo has to get some credit for that. The most disappointing unit through 2 games. DL: B- Sterling Bailey had the best game of his career and Garrison Smith played as hard as anyone on the field. Ray Drew finally made some plays. However, little pass rush without the help of linebackers and all those names thrown around in camp, few have shown up so far. LB: B Herrera has been really good so far. His lack of speed shows sometimes but he is always around the ball and makes plays (Shaw fumble). Jordan Jenkins is and will continue to be a factor. Floyd looked really good at times and really inexperienced at others(missing Shaw on 3rd and long with under a minute in the 1st half). He will be a good player though. Wilson got exposed. Was run over and around on a number of occassions by both Carolina backs. The problem with this group is that the #2's inside are true freshman. DB: D- On Saturday, they were as bad as we thought they could be. Langley was the glaring weakness but JHC looked slow, lost, and scared for a huge portion of the game. Moore played a lot in the 2nd half just because he would be where he was suppose to be. Matthews has a looooong way to go. The size and talent is obvious. Its not his fault that he has to be out there but he has to get a whole lot better. Connor Norman played a good bit again so that says something. Very surprised Sheldon Dawson didnt get at least a crack. ST: A- Only reason for the minus is the dropped snap by Barber. However, he kicked off great and the onside kick was my favorite play of the day. Hats off to Beless. Absolutle awesome job by a high school 2nd teamer. Still need to do better on returns. I don't think we have the best guys back there on punt and kick return. But I'm okay with Gurley never being back there. The offense won't play to this level every game. But I also think the defense will get better as the season progresses. The secondary is very bad right now but would benefit tremendously from a better pass rush.