re: What went wrong with South Carolina this year?

Defense, particularly the line took a huge hit. We Lost pretty much the entire starting line to NFL previous year. 3 of our high rated defensive lineman recruits didn't qualify academically and another didn't win an appeal to an SEC rule requiring a certain # of semesters in Juco even though he had a year at Univ of Illinois under his belt. Then there was the loss in defensive coaching over the years. Losing Lawing to Florida I believe was a big reason for drop off in production of Clowney the year before and the pass rush this year. Deke Adams recruits well enough if they qualify but his defensive line coaching philosophy is suspect imo. On top of that we lost our two only experienced corners, as one attempted to get in the NFL early and the other transferred to Utah to play baseball. So we were playing mostly true freshman corners with a horrible defensive line and pass rush. Add that up and you got 30+ points a game for every opponent.