South Carolina rallied around a motto to prepare for Saturday’s critical SEC East game with Georgia. Don’t flinch first.

“Whoever flinches first is going to lose,” safety Steven Montac said. “Can’t flinch, can’t soften up. Just got to be ready to throw punches every time we’re on the field.”
Tight end Jacob August perhaps summed it up more succinctly.
“Whoever flinches first (loses) the fight,” August said.

Both teams faced an opportunity to cave in the first half. Georgia stormed out to a 14-0 lead with a score by both the offense and defense, and that might’ve been a knockout blow for many teams. To South Carolina’s credit, it wasn’t. They responded to Georgia’s second score with an 11-play drive to pull within a score and got back into the game. The Gamecocks then dealt their own blow. One of Jake Fromm’s few errant passes was picked off, and South Carolina was in business just outside of Georgia’s 30. The Bulldog defense had just been on the field for over five minutes, and the South Carolina offense seemed to have found a rhythm on its previous drive. Had they punched it in from 30 yards out, they would have weathered Georgia’s early haymaker and leveled the game with momentum of their own and a frenzied crowd behind them with more than three quarters left to play.

It might’ve been the biggest series of the game for Georgia. The defense stiffened, held the Gamecocks to just one yard on three plays to keep them out of field goal range, and broke up a fourth down pass in front of the sticks. Georgia’s offense shook off the turnover and got back on track with a field goal. The game settled into a stalemate in the second quarter, and each team had survived a major shock to the system. Neither had flinched…yet.

Georgia eventually wore down South Carolina with points on four consecutive possessions. Much like the Rose Bowl, Georgia made the opponent pay for a special teams error just before halftime. In this case it was a short punt that left Georgia with only about 30 yards to reach field goal range. The Dawgs efficiently moved downfield, and Blankenship coolly reestablished a double-digit lead. Georgia, taking full advantage of winning the coin toss, scored a touchdown to open the second half. The Dawgs posted ten points between South Carolina possessions and turned a tight seven-point lead into a menacing 17-point advantage.

South Carolina broke down on the next drive. Jeremiah Holloman started things off dragging half the South Carolina defense past the first down marker. After a few Herrien runs, a South Carolina linebacker was beaten by Herrien on a wheel route and held Georgia’s tailback to prevent a big play. Another mental mistake followed as pass coverage failed to account for a wide-open Mecole Hardman on a blitz. Holyfield finished off the drive running through token resistance, and the rout was on.

I liked what Kirk Herbstreit had to say when setting up his prediction for this game: this was the stage on which the 2018 Georgia team could move beyond 2017. Georgia doesn’t have Chubb or Michel, but the running game could still put away an SEC opponent. There’s no Roquan, but the speed across the defense is able to contain a respectable passing game. Wynn no longer anchors the offensive line, but Georgia still goes, as we found out, two deep at left tackle. You’re starting to see incredibly talented younger players like LeCounte come into their own. Baker, Walker, and Hardman are emerging (have emerged?) as stars in their own right.

Much of our trepidation about the 2018 team – and this game – had to do with continuity. Could Georgia lose so much in production and leadership from an elite team and still perform at the same level? Could Kirby Smart get another group of leaders to buy into the message of focusing on the game at hand and avoiding distractions? No one doubted Georgia’s talent level, but the Austin Peay game revealed little, and we carried all of this offseason uncertainty into a significant early road test. Had Smart really changed things, or had he, like several of his predecessors, just had everything come together for one special season? If this game was the SEC East measuring stick it was built up to be, Herbstreit might be right: we can put 2017 to bed and begin to enjoy the 2018 team that’s emerging before our eyes.

• We had expected South Carolina to go up-tempo, and that was evident from the start. Rather than establish anything on the ground, the Gamecocks opened with five straight passes. Whether the tempo pushed South Carolina beyond their comfort zone or just early-game nerves, four of those five passes were incompletions. One should have been intercepted, and another was.
• We also anticipated South Carolina testing Georgia deep. Though they eventually hit a deep shot for their second touchdown, Georgia coverage and pressure didn’t allow for many longer pass attempts. Only one Gamecock had a reception longer than 20 yards. I know some Georgia fans were frustrated with South Carolina’s success passing across the short middle, but without much of a running game and longer passes all but shut off by the Georgia secondary, South Carolina couldn’t string enough of those short passes together to sustain drives.
• For the second time in two games, Georgia yielded zero return yards on punts or kickoffs. What a luxury to completely eliminate a variable from the game. Blankenship and Camarda neutralized his return threat, and that’s as important as anything Baker and the secondary accomplished against Samuel.
• Georgia’s offensive line depth went from the abstract to the very real when Andrew Thomas went down. True freshman Cade Mays stepped into arguably the most difficult OL position. He didn’t just hold his own – the line imposed its will during the third quarter. In the not-too-distant past, an injury to the left tackle would have meant some wholesale shuffling of the line and a few prayers that things wouldn’t implode. On Saturday Georgia kept the rest of the line intact, plugged in the next tackle on the board, and soldiered on. It’s good news though that Thomas’s ankle injury doesn’t seem to be long-term.
• The line depth wasn’t limited to the offense. Michael Barnett had one of his better games, and the rest of the line helped to render South Carolina’s running game fairly impotent. Georgia was content to rush four most of the day and drop seven into coverage to avoid big passing plays. It helped that one of those four often was Walker.
• The education of Tyson Campbell continues. He was victimized on both South Carolina touchdowns. On the whole though, Campbell held his own. He recorded four tackles and did enough against receivers not named Deebo Samuel to keep most of the South Carolina passing game short and across the middle. He’ll get another chance to show his progress in two weeks against the Missouri passing game.
• I’ve been tough on Holyfield and Herrien because of their importance to the long-term success of the run game. This was one of the first games in which they looked to be part of a three-(or four!) pronged attack rather than backups to Swift. Holyfield in particular ran with confidence and purpose, and Herrien’s coup de grâce was a wonderful combination of patience and blocking.
• Georgia continues to get the ball to speedy backs and receivers in space, and it couldn’t happen without outstanding perimeter blocking. Watch Ridley on Hardman’s first long play. Watch Simmons on Hardman’s opening score of the second half. Stanley made big improvements in this area a year ago, and he’s available off the bench.
• Are there areas for improvement even in a 24-point divisional win? Absolutely. Two stand out: first is pass blocking from the tight ends. We’d like to see them catch passes, but the majority of their work will always be blocking. It has to be more consistent. Second is pass coverage by the interior linebackers. We knew it would be a tall task to match Roquan’s skills in pass coverage, but that was an area South Carolina was able to exploit time and again. Fortunately they weren’t able to sustain many drives. These aren’t fatal flaws in the team, but they are soft spots that the few teams capable of matching up with Georgia might attack.