Defense looking to improve in all aspects after last season
In the SEC, South Carolina’s defense last season ranked last in total and rush defense and ninth in pass defense.
They gave up an SEC-worst 27.5 points per game.
Now, they must remedy that in hopes of returning back to the level they were at during three-straight 11-win season and competing once again for an SEC East title.
But to defensive end Marquavius Lewis, the pressure to win isn’t as great as people may think.
“I wouldn’t say there’s a sense of urgency, but we’ve all been through adversity,” he said Thursday at SEC Media days. “We all have the mindset to go out there and change the program around get it on the right path.”
The Gamecocks hired Will Muschamp, who’s spent his entire coaching career working with defense, in the offseason to remedy the porous problem on that side of the ball.
He’s brought in defensive coaches from Auburn (his most recent pit stop) and Georgia to help retool the Gamecock team that gave up a score 82.6 percent of the time in the red zone last season.
Now, the team will play mostly nickel, Muschamp said, with the implementation of a hybrid defensive lineman/linebacker known as the buck. Muschamp hired Travaris Robinson as the defensive coordinator this season.
Robinson helped implement the buck position at Florida and Auburn, and has spent the spring implementing that same system at South Carolina. The new system, Lewis said, stresses the mental part of the game and forces players to know their keys and assignments.
“We’re going to be tough, we’re going to hit hard," he said. "We’re going to be that thug guy on the football field rather than just going out there and playing. We want to be the tough dog.”
Lewis transferred from Hutchinson Community College last season and started all 12 games for the Gamecocks in 2015. He picked up 45 total tackles (26 solo), including three sacks.
This year, he’ll be the focal point of a pass rush trying to improve on the 20 sacks they amassed last season. That was good for tenth best in the SEC.
With no pass rush, the Gamecocks limped to a 3-9 finish, their worst record since 1999. After going through that, Lewis said the defense can turn a corner and be better, crediting his new coaches and scheme.
“I would think we are better for it because we have new coaches,” Lewis said. “With the new coaches they change the way we think and scheme things to become a better defense.”
South Carolina opens its season with two straight SEC games against Vanderbilt and Mississippi State, both of which ranked in the bottom half of the league in sacks allowed last season.
Lewis said he knows the team wasn’t great on defense last year and they need to be able to stop the run, but concluded saying it’s a new year and a new defense.
“Maybe we struggled a lot, but I guess that’s in the past,” he said. “What we’re trying to do now is be better in all aspects of the game, especially defense.”