Kenarious Gates came to Georgia as a last-minute throw-in with the recruiting class of 2010. Now, as a senior and the Bulldogs’ starting left tackle, he’s being asked to contain the player roundly identified as the greatest in college football.
He’ll have help. Ultimately, the entire Georgia offense intends to be involved in the task of corralling South Carolina’s Jadeveon Clowney. But there will be no single person on the Bulldogs’ roster more responsible for blocking the talented defensive end.
“I’m just going to treat it like I do every other game,” said Gates, a 6-foot-5, 327-pound senior. “It’s not just me as an individual. It’s a team. We’re going to do it as a team. We’re going to win as a team, we’re going to fight as a team and we’re going to work together.”
As everybody on the planet knows at this point, blocking Clowney is not a one-man endeavor. That’s true for any great pass-rushing specialist, of which there have been dozens over the years in college football. Georgia had a pretty good one leave early for the NFL after last season, and Jarvis Jones’ two-year production outpaced Clowney’s by a good bit (28 sacks and 44 tackles for loss to 21 and 35.5, respectively).
But few can compare with the 6-foot-6, 274-pound athletic dynamo that the No. 6 Gamecocks will bring to Sanford Stadium on Saturday.
Gates faced him last year — again, not exclusively — and got all he could handle. The final score was jaw-dropping — South Carolina 35-7 — but Clowney’s line was not: four tackles, two tackles for loss, one sack, no hurries. Perhaps that’s why Gates wasn’t ready to tab Clowney as the best he has ever faced.
“There’s a lot of talent out there,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good player. But I’m not going pick out an individual and say, ‘oh, he’s the greatest player I’ve played against’ because there’s a lot of talent out there that’s good as well. He’s a great athlete. He’s just one of them guys you’ve got to be disciplined against and don’t try to be perfect.”
There are numerous adjustments an offense can make for a dominant pass rusher such as Clowney, and the Bulldogs are expected to employ all of them Saturday.
They will slide protection to his side of the field, which means the guard protects the inside rush lane. They will keep in a tight end to double-team or “chip and release.” They will utilize running backs. They will employ a quick-passing game. They will run the football right at him.
“Those are the things that you try to do,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said Tuesday. “You can also sprint your protection to or away from him or move the pocket from time to time.”
Similar techniques have worked with varying degrees of success. There were four games last season in which Clowney did not record a sack, and he drew a goose egg Thursday against North Carolina.
The Gamecocks defeated the Tar Heels handily (27-10), but Clowney’s performance (three tackles, three quarterback hurries) drew criticism from the analysts calling the game for television. They thought he looked poorly conditioned and took off some plays.
South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier didn’t necessarily disagree with them, but he expects a better effort against Georgia. Clowney has three sacks and two forced fumbles against the Bulldogs the past two seasons.
“I think one thing he learned is that the camera is on him all the time now,” Spurrier told reporters at his news conference Tuesday in Columbia. “So he knows that, and hopefully he is ready to go. It was a hot day last week as we all know and it affected him, no question about it. Hopefully we can get him a little bit better prepared physically to go the distance against Georgia.”
Clowney singled out Georgia’s Aaron Murray at SEC Media Days in July as one of several quarterbacks he faces who are scared of him. Murray didn’t want to revisit the subject Tuesday, but he did say Clowney is one of the more dominant forces he has faced in terms of his ability to affect the game plan.
“The dude from Auburn a couple of years ago, (Nick) Fairley, that guy,” Murray said. “He was very similar in being able to affect the game.”
Georgia’s line will have to play better than it did a week ago when it allowed four sacks, a hurry and a fumble against Clemson. But Gates said he’s ready, and he won’t be alone.
“We’re Georgia,” he said. “We have a powerful offense. … We’re not going to run away from this player or that player. We’re just going to do what we do.”
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