Week 3 of the college football season brings us a Top 25 match up between the Georgia Bulldogs and South Carolina Gamecocks. Georgia is coming off of a bye week while South Carolina is coming off of a bounce back victory against East Carolina. These teams have been on different ends of the spectrum performance wise to start the year, and while one team is looking to continue it’s quest for the final four, the other is just trying to remain ranked.
After being blown out by Texas A&M at home to open up the season, South Carolina struggled to beat East Carolina by double digits. This is not very encouraging for a team that ranked in the Top 10 to open up the season and was a very trendy pick to make it to the SEC Championship Game. Primary concern for me has been the young and inexperience defense who was absolutely abused by the Aggies, which then allowed almost 500 yards of offense against ECU. South Carolina is a program who prides themselves on defense and so far this year it has been their Achilles heel. You can’t expect to win games consistently if your defense is giving up 450+ yards week in and out, it just isn’t going to happen. Another thing to watch for the Gamecocks is the health of their star running back Mike Davis. Davis gives the offense balance and he is one of the top backs in the conference. Against A&M he was sorely missed and it put the entire game on Dylan Thompson who has been a bit inconsistent the first couple weeks. As long as Davis is healthy, expect 20-25 carries for him and some touches as a receiver coming out off the backfield.
As for Georgia they are coming off a rather convincing victory against Clemson in between the hedges of Sanford Stadium. Unless you have been living under a rock lately you were probably you caught several glimpses of what a NFL running back looks like in Todd Gurley. Gurley ran wild against the Tigers to the tune of 198 rushing yards and to top it off he tacked on a 100 yard kick return. If you haven’t seen the video of Gurley housing the kickoff then do yourself a favor and YouTube it, guys his size shouldn’t be returning kicks or returning kicks for touchdowns. Hutson Mason wasn’t anything special in the season opener, but he didn’t have to be with the way Gurley was toting the pill. Mason just needs to take care of the football, take what the defense gives him and make sure he feeds the beast that wears #3. The thing that stood out to me about Georgia was how ridiculously stacked they are at the running back position, Nick Chubb and Sony Michel are both highly touted true freshmen who have already stolen carries from Keith Marshall. This team is going to pound the rock and wear you down over the course of four quarters.
This game can’t be any bigger for South Carolina. Win, you keep hope alive of maybe making a run down the line in the SEC, you lose and you can pretty much start talking about next year because you won’t be anywhere near the playoff. For Georgia a big win on the road keeps you in the playoff hunt and makes a case for you to be inside the Top 5, a loss probably sends you tumbling out of the Top 10 given what we’ve seen from South Carolina. In the end I think Georgia goes into Williams-Brice and picks up there victory, I think the Bulldogs will wear down USC’s shaky defense and Gurley goes for at least 125 yards on the ground.
Prediction: 35-21 Georgia
