As year edges toward close, Muschamp promises more ‘creativity,’ solving predictability
South Carolina football coach Will Muschamp made the promise: more creativity.
It’s a one-word response and hope for reversing what is ailing the most basic part of his offense. He is a coach who believes in establishing the run, and since that hasn’t come to fruition of late, he aims to see some changes.
USC plays at Texas A&M at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
“Need to be more creative in the running game,” Muschamp said. “Need to look at different personnel groupings, some different formations to get to the same runs that we’ve been very effective with this season.”
This doesn’t necessarily mean tweaking the base schemes, but getting to them in different ways with more window dressing and illusion. The coach said that change shouldn’t be too hard, as compared to installing a whole new concept.
It’s a departure of sorts from the message Muschamp had been delivering earlier, saying the offense needed to pare down and focus on what the team did well. The team had been relying heavily on its pin-and-pull scheme, mixing a couple other looks in, some with Dakereon Joyner at quarterback.
One key reason for needing this is to get a level of balance back in the offense. They Gamecocks averaged 0.8 yards per play against App State and 2.6 in a loss to Tennessee. The Mountaineers stacked the box and blitzed through to disrupt things frequently.
But to get that to fully coalesce, they’ll need one other thing to come into place: some kind of downfield passing game.
“You become very predictable, obviously, when you don’t have a vertical threat,” Muschamp said. “Obviously we think Xavier (Legette) as a young player is very promising and he’s got a huge upside and is going to be a really good football player for us, but (he) just hasn’t done it consistently on our level and it certainly limits you as far as some of the run boxes you’re going to face.”
Bryan Edwards and Shi Smith, when healthy, provide some of that downfield threat. But Smith has missed the past two games and Edwards hurt his knee in the second quarter against App State.
Muschamp pointed out, with Smith sidelined, Edwards was also the only receiver the team had who could consistently win one-on-one battles in coverage. Without him, the team was often relying on screens or taking chances with a cast of Legette, a pair of former QBs, an inexperienced Chad Terrell and a walk-on in Trey Adkins.
The team is already without receiver Josh Vann and tight end Nick Muse. OrTre Smith is out this week, while Chavis Dawkins missed most of last week’s game. Edwards admitted there’s some frustration factor, but the team has to fight through.
This year, USC ranks 109th in yards per play and points per game against FBS competition.
Time is running short to solve things, especially against defenses that rank second (Clemson) and 41st (Texas A&M) in yards allowed per play.
So with two games left, the coach is promising to tweak, change and adjust in hopes of recapturing some of the modest offensive successes from early in the year.
“Different formations, getting into some different things, to get to some of the runs that have been very efficient,” Muschamp said. “Because you’re not going to create a whole new run game at this point in the season and we’ve been efficient against really good people of running the football at times. And we’ve got to get back to that.”
This story was originally published November 14, 2019 at 8:45 AM with the headline "As year edges toward close, Muschamp promises more ‘creativity,’ solving predictability."
