South Carolina’s Shane Beamer just made a wild claim about Tennessee’s botched fourth-down play in Gamecocks’ win over Vols that deserves to be called out
A botched fourth down play prevented the Tennessee Volunteers from beating the South Carolina Gamecocks in Columbia this past weekend.
South Carolina didn’t beat Tennessee last Saturday in Columbia.
Tennessee beat Tennessee.
Nearly everyone outside of Columbia seems to agree with that take (including former Georgia quarterback Aaron Murray and former Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy).
There are plenty of plays to choose from where the Vols shot themselves in the foot and kept South Carolina in the game.
The biggest miscue was arguably the botched fourth-down play that gave South Carolina the ball back with a little over three minutes left in the fourth quarter.
If Vols quarterback George MacIntyre hands the ball off to tight end DaSaahn Brame, the Vols easily pick up the first down and it’s probably game over from there (we have more on what went wrong on the play later in this article….it’s not as cut and dry as it looked).
You can clearly see in the video that if Brame gets the ball, he easily has the first down by over a yard.
South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer, however, thinks the Gamecocks were in a good spot to make the stop even if MacIntyre hands the ball to Brame.
“I realize that they messed it up,” said Beamer. “But I can credit our crowd a lot on that one, too. It’s loud and they’ve got to communicate, and something happened where they didn’t quite execute the play like they wanted to, and we got a stop, which is a huge, huge, huge play.
“We wanted to move our front a little bit in this game and just let the crowd go to work. They double team Noah Clark right here. They kind of roll him out of there a little bit. [Justin Okoronkwo] is coming through there. Dylan Stewart is kind of falling back and even if he hands it off to this guy (Brame), it’s going to be a bang bang play right there.”
Umm no, Shane. It was clearly going to be a first down. South Carolina did nothing on that play to stop Tennessee. That was 100 percent the Vols stopping the Vols. It was an early Christmas gift for the Gamecocks.
What exactly went wrong on the fourth down play for the Tennessee Vols?
The general takeaway, based on postgame comments, is that MacIntyre simply missed the handoff to Brame.
It does appear that’s what ultimately happened, but I don’t think it’s cut-and-dry that MacIntyre just simply forgot to give Brame the ball. I think it’s a bit more complex than that.
Tennessee used that formation several times in the game against South Carolina.
And they did different things out of it each time.
The Vols used that formation three times on the goal line in the first half.
On second-and-goal, Brame was lined up as the offset fullback while defensive lineman Carson Gentle was lined up as a fullback right behind MacIntyre with running back DeSean Bishop lined up deep.
On this play, MacIntyre motioned Brame to the right and then handed the ball off to Bishop, who ran to the left for no gain.
On the next play, Brame and Gentle switched spots. MacIntyre appeared to send Gentle in motion, but Gentle stayed lined up to the left. MacIntyre handed the ball off to Bishop and he ran left.
Then on fourth-and-goal, MacIntyre motions Gentle to the right and then hands the ball off to Brame for the touchdown (this is what we believe the botched fourth down play was supposed to be).
On the first play of the fourth quarter, the Vols ran this same formation to pick up a fourth-and-one.
MacIntyre didn’t send anyone in motion on this play, and the handoff was to Bishop, who then ran left for an easy conversion.
South Carolina defensive coordinator Clayton White said this week that because Bishop easily picked up the first down on that carry that he chose to give Tennessee a different look when they lined up in the same formation on the botched fourth down play.
“David Bucey made a great open field tackle earlier on the same formation,” said White. “We misaligned it. We grinded through the adjustment with the iPad and made sure we got the front set correctly. And I think they tried to change it because we were set correctly. I don’t know, but we just know we got off the field. I don’t know what happened on their play to be honest with you. But I know we grinded like a mug to get that adjustment fixed. And maybe they tried to change it once we fixed it, and they got crossed up. But that’s not my concern.”
Here’s the look that South Carolina gave on the final fourth down play.
I think when Tennessee is in this formation the quarterback has two options at the line of scrimmage, and the check is essentially when he sends the offset fullback in motion.
But as we saw on the earlier plays, there are several different things that Tennessee does from this formation, so I think the options are different each time. Sometimes the offset fullback motions and it’s a handoff to the deep running back, other times the handoff goes to the other fullback.
I do think the ball was supposed to go to Brame. But I also can see how MacIntyre, a young player in that spot on the road for the first time in his career, maybe got crossed up. I don’t think that’s an indictment of him as a player. I think it was a tough learning moment that came at the worst possible time for the Vols. And I think he’ll grow tremendously as a player because of it.
It was the right play-call, and it would’ve won Tennessee the game. But a great play-call isn’t great without proper execution.
