2011 South Carolina Gamecocks

[cockysteeler]

Just wanted to see how many Gamecocks there are on here. Looking for predictions and perspective on the upcoming season.

[ActLikeYouCrow]

i like all the moves we've made to improve the team and i think it gives us hope we can not only take the east again, but win the sec championship game this time. the move of akeem auguste back to corner where he started the whole 2009 season and our pass defense was actually good was a great move. devonte holloman moves to spur where his skillset may allow him to be more of an impact player and it gives us a good 1-2 punch between him and allen with no dropoff between the two. shaq wilson returns at lb after missing last year, rodney paulk is now two years removed from his knee injury. damario jeffery moves over to wlb where his skills are better suited. safety is the lone question mark i have about the defense, we expect swearinger to be good, but noone else has any experience, will we see some turnovers forced and solid coverage out of those two safety spots.

i like the offense, lattimore and jeffery are all americans. garcia isnt going to win games on his own, but he's tough and when we dont ask too much of him he can be consistent. i think the oline will be solid, if watkins stays at tackle, we'll likely only have one inexperienced starter. depth is certainly a concern because none of the backups have any real game experience. we do have a couple of young guards we're high on in aj cann and ronald patrick as well as bringing in juco guard/tackle kaleb broome and switching kenny davis over to guard so we'll see. cunningham could see time in the hybrid fb/te role dimarco played last season. if he does then that will open up some playing time for one of the inexperienced tight ends. if he doesnt then it will come down to dalton wilson or matt coffee for the fullback spot. newcomers damere byrd and bruce ellington could provide some big plays on offense or at least on special teams.

for the schedule the @miss st and @ark games are probably the only ones i could see us not being favored. its not the toughest sec schedule, but its still going to be tough with 3 straight sec road games at one point and only 3 teams that didnt make a bowl last year so a potential for a slip up is there. honestly i'll be disappointed if we dont win at least 10 games in the regular season. the team has as good of a chance as anybody to win the sec based on last year, the returning talent, the incoming talent, and the moves we've made to hopefully improve the team.

[ActLikeYouCrow]

Going into the bye week we have three starters officially out for the season in LT Kyle Nunn, RB Marcus Lattimore, and CB Akeem Auguste. Auguste hasnt started a game this year and has only played in one or two so he'll be the one we'll miss the least. We've built up a lot of depth at corner. Our running back depth is so decimated we may go into the Tenn game with a true freshman starting and a walkon backing him up. Brandon Wilds has similar size and versatility as Marcus so he may be able to do some good things for us on a smaller scale. Ellington should help out in the run game as well. Nunn is a crushing blow because we were going to try and get through the year without relying on our true and redshirt freshman tackles.

I don't think the goals for the rest of the season have to change. We're 6-1 and we go into the bye week with a chance of getting at least one of our veteran running backs healthy for the stretch run and we're still good enough to make it to seccg. Connor Shaw has put up good numbers since becoming the starter and came up big in crunch time. The defense has put us in position to win every game this year whether its holding the other team under 20 points, forcing lots of turnovers, or scoring themselves. Beat Tennessee and go from there.