Well, it's finally almost Saturday again, which means time for Auburn football again. This time we hit the road to the state of South Carolina for the second time this year to face the 'Cocks. Somewhat new, and sometimes improved.
Argument for why South Carolina will win:
Here's the deal, USC is a vastly improved team defensively, however they're not nearly the caliber of the iron clad defenses that you'll find at the top of the SEC Western division with Bama and LSU. They do have their issues. Their run defense is not that great. Navy isn't the best example to point to, as they are a triple option team and it's just a different world altogether, offensively, from anything they will face. They did a good job shutting down the Vandy running game as well, much of that was because of how unbalanced Vandy's offense is/was. They have no passing game whatsoever, so that allowed USCe to stack the box almost the entire game and just trust that their secondary could cover the Vandy WRs. And they did. That will be Auburn's main battle to fight, we have to remain balanced enough to establish a solid running attack. If South Carolina can key in on the run and they don't have to worry about Trotter unleashing the deep ball, it's going to be a long night for Michael Dyer & Co., as well as the Auburn OL.
Then comes the issue of Auburn having to stop Alshon Jeffery and Marcus Lattimore, certainly not an easy task with this young bunch we have on D. I'll start with Lattimore, who is a top 2-3 Heisman contender at this point in the young season. He is an absolute trainwreck at RB, but he also has good cutting ability and has excellent hands out of the backfield. Auburn did a fantastic job of shutting the USCe run game down early last year, and eventually they abandoned Lattimore altogether (as Spurrier has been known to do). However, this isn't last year's Auburn defensive line. We are loaded with young talent on the interior DL, but they're young. USCe has a veteran offensive line that loves running the football. I believe that our DTs have the ability and talent to combat the Carolina gameplan of running Lattimore, but for that to happen they're going to have to play with much more anger and aggression than what we've seen so far. Plain and simple, if the DL does not get push up front in both the running game and in getting pressure on Garcia, Auburn will lose by 20 points.
On to Jeffery, he might have the best hands in the game. He would be starting for most NFL teams right now. Here's the issue with him, he's not in as good of shape as he has been the past two years. He is listed at 229 lbs on the USC depth chart (insert rolling smiley face). If he's 229 then Cam Newton was 290 lbs. Alshon was every bit of 260 lbs entering the season. He may have lost some of that weight just getting back into playing again, but he's also lost some of his explosiveness as well. He does not get off the line nearly as quickly or aggressively as he did in the past two campaigns. The problem is, even this version of Alshon will be able to run wild on the Auburn defense if he's getting 10-15 yard cushions every play. We have to find someone who doesn't mind getting in his face and getting physical with him if we're going to force Garcia to be perfect.
Argument for why Auburn will win:
It's South Carolina. C'mon man. It's them, ya know, that team that hasn't beaten Auburn since the 1930s in Birmingham. The only team that South Carolina has still failed to get a win against since 1992 when they joined the SEC.
Auburn simply has recruited better athletes on both sides of the ball. Now, South Carolina has certainly done much better at getting premiere athletes since Spurrier has taken over (as evidenced by Gilmore, Jeffery, Lattimore, and Clowney), but certainly not as many as Auburn has gotten in the past 3 classes. While Auburn may not have the experienced pieces that we had last year when we beat USC twice, we still have the exact same coaching staff that came up with that same gameplan that absolutely crushed them in Atlanta last year. If Gus Malzahn decides to take the training wheels off of Trotter and really lets Dyer run the ball 25+ times, I feel we have a great shot of putting up some serious points, particularly with USC's struggles they had against the ECU offense.
The other reason is the much maligned Stephen Garcia. It might actually benefit him to pop open a few cold ones before the game, if he's been clean and sober all year, because he has made horrible decisions with alarming consistency so far. This is exactly the type of performance that Auburn has to get from him if we are going to be able to stop Lattimore. The only issue is, USC is playing at home and Garcia will be able to feed off of that raucous crowd that is clamoring for revenge after losing to Auburn twice last year, including a blowout loss in their first ever SEC Championship game. The upside for Auburn is, those same crazed fans will turn on Garcia in a heartbeat if he starts making the same decisions he has made so far this year. They're already unhappy with his results so far, so a poor early showing against a team you want revenge against may just be the antidote needed for an angry group of Cocks.
What will happen:
In my opinion, I feel that Garcia will look very sharp early, hitting the passes that Auburn is giving him as we try to stack the box and make Garcia beat us. USC will get out to an early lead of about 21-7, but Auburn will fight our way back into the game and get within a TD at 24-17 after Garcia makes a few mistakes that our offense is able to take advantage of. However I feel that we'll maybe end up coming up just a few plays short and possibly drop this game on the road. (but I sure as hell hope I'm wrong)
Predicted Score:
31-28 USC
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