South Carolina 47, Vanderbilt 6: Embarrassing

• Tennessean: Vanderbilt football suffers worst blowout of season to South Carolina
• The State: Clamp Down: South Carolina defense powers Gamecocks past Vanderbilt
• Greenville News: South Carolina football routs Vanderbilt 47-6, keeps bowl hopes alive
• VandySports: Quick thoughts: South Carolina 47, Vanderbilt 6
• Vandy247: Vanderbilt football stomped by South Carolina as losing streak continues
• Tennessean: Clark Lea disgusted with Vanderbilt football’s loss to South Carolina
• AP News: Rattler throws for 3 TDs as Gamecocks win 15th straight over Vanderbilt 47-6
• Vanderbilt Athletics: Dores Downed at South Carolina

I’ve been a Vanderbilt fan since 2006, give or take, and while I’ve seen a lot of times that Vanderbilt lost by a lot — many if not most of those were simply a result of being overmatched. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve been truly embarrassed by Vanderbilt football. The Missouri game in 2020, UNLV in 2019, Temple in 2014, Wake Forest in 2010.

And this.

It’s one thing to be bad and overmatched, and it’s quite another when I’m ambivalent about whether guys are playing hard, whether guys want to be there, whether the team has quit. One of the good things, I guess, about being a Vanderbilt fan is that it’s rare that Vanderbilt straight up quits on a season. Everybody else in the SEC can remember at least one team that went 4-8 or 5-7 that was clearly mailing it in in November and aside from maybe the 2020 team (which had a bunch of guys opt out toward the end of the season) or 2010 (when everybody knew toward the end that Robbie Caldwell was not going to be retained), can we even think of a team that did this? Rod Dowhower’s final game was a 14-7 loss to Tennessee at the end of a 2-9 season when Woody Widenhofer made Peyton Manning look like an average quarterback. This just isn’t a thing that happens.

And actually, for a little over a half, this looked like a coaching disaster more than anything else. Vanderbilt had two scoring chances that resulted in no points thanks to failed fourth down conversions; on the second one of those, on the first drive of the second half, Joey Lynch drew up a pass play on 4th and 5 at the South Carolina 18 that had nobody going beyond the sticks. Vanderbilt also elected to punt on 4th and 7 at the South Carolina 46 with under a minute left in the first half. In the meantime, as Vanderbilt’s offense produced 97 yards and a 27.6% success rate on 29 attempts, a clearly-healthy AJ Swann watched from the sidelines, and Clark Lea addressed this decision in the postgame press conference by actually saying “he gave us a chance to punt” in reference to Ken Seals.

But, hey, cryptic tweets after the game.

This is a disaster, and it’s time to call it a disaster.

(The final score, by the way, was inflated by three late South Carolina touchdowns off a blocked punt and a couple of fumbles in the fourth quarter. This was still an embarrassing performance long before that.)

I still have my doubts that Clark Lea is going to be fired after this season; but at the very least, Joey Lynch needs to go. I could make an argument for retaining Nick Howell, but I won’t argue if you think he needs to go too. This can’t keep going on.

Individual Stats

Walter Taylor also played but didn’t attempt a pass. The combined performance of Taylor and Seals, again, makes you wonder what in the hell AJ Swann is doing on the sidelines. As for Seals, well, this was a performance that served as a reminder of why he was the backup. It didn’t help that his offensive coordinator was making boneheaded play calls.

Under normal circumstances, Vanderbilt’s two leading rushers being a true freshman who’s taking a four-game redshirt, and a redshirt freshman quarterback, would have you thinking good things, only they’re not — because the latter probably shouldn’t be playing (at least, not at quarterback) and the former had 38 yards on 12 carries, not exactly a performance that inspires confidence. Sedrick Alexander didn’t have a good day, either.

I’m not going to harp on the Will Sheppard situation much — the season is lost and he’s pretty clearly not going to be on the team next season, so I don’t mind the coaching staff giving up on him. Jayden McGowan barely being used in the offense is much more of a mystery.

Defense

Vanderbilt’s defense was actually playing pretty well before the dam burst about midway through the third quarter — and, really, I almost think they looked at the pathetic performance by the offense and said “oh, so that’s what we’re doing.”

Anyway, I think Langston Patterson and Bryce Cowan have the potential to be stars.

What’s Next

A bye week followed by a trip to Knoxville to end the season on November 25, time and television network to be announced presumably tomorrow (I doubt anyone’s exercising the six-day option for that crap.) And then... it’s over.