Georgia is undefeated and that’s unlikely to change after this game. It’s been a tough start to the season for South Carolina, though it managed to beat Kentucky last week for its first SEC win. Similar to last year’s result, the Bulldogs are -24.5 point favorites with an over/under of 52.5
While these teams met early in 2018 (41-17 Georgia win), they aren’t that much different. Georgia still has Jake Fromm and a dominant rushing attack, while South Carolina has the same mediocre everything. The Gamecocks won last weekend, but they’ve already lost two conference games by at least 20 points.
Georgia should be able to do what it wants offensively, similar to what Alabama did against South Carolina a few weeks ago. The main difference is that the Bulldogs will lean on their ground game between D’Andre Swift and Brian Herrien, who are both averaging at least 6.3 yards per carry.
Considering they ran for 271 yards in last year’s meeting, there’s no reason they can’t do the same, especially at home. And if that doesn’t work as well as expected, Jake Fromm can do the rest. He hasn’t been asked to do much this season, but he’s still completing 77.5% of his passes for eight touchdowns and no picks while also being sacked just once.
Nothing about South Carolina’s first five games suggest it will be able to stop Georgia from scoring at least 30 points with 40 in range. To cover, the Gamecocks will need to hit a couple big plays, similar to what they did when they scored 23 points against Alabama.
Unfortunately, that’s hard to bet on after they couldn’t do anything in their lone road game at Missouri, a 34-14 loss. Quarterback Ryan Hilinski has a long way to go, completing 61.1% of his passes for 6.3 yards per attempt.
They’ll likely want to run the ball behind Rico Dowdle and Tavien Feaster, but that won’t work as well as it has. Both those guys are averaging at least 5.8 yards per carry, but Georgia has allowed just 59.6 rushing yards per contest.
If the ground game doesn’t work as expected, it’ll be up to Hilinski to score and that could be trouble in this environment. Hilinski is also dealing with an elbow injury so if he can’t go, Dakereon Joyner is next in line and he opened the season as South Carolina’s third stringer. Joyner, a redshirt freshman, threw for 89 yards on 11 passes while getting sacked twice in a short appearance against Missouri.
The Bulldogs have covered in their last six conference games and the over has hit in their last four against a team with a losing record. The over is 5-1 in the last six meetings between these schools and the favorite is 7-2 ATS in the last nine.
Our Pick – South Carolina +24.5