I think the entire idea of how we approached this season changed a great deal with the loss. From what I can surmise, from the beginning of the year we knew that we would have a very efficient and possibly explosive offense on our hands. So we looked to minimize the defenses presence in the games. Gmac is the perfect guy to execute that type of game plan; be efficient, make no mistakes, keep the offense rolling and eat a lot of clock. Over the past handful of games the lumps that the defense was taking pushed the offense to go more conservative in an attempt to control the game a little more, and that diverted us from looking at taking some deeper chances down the field. We became a dink and dunk offense with little down-field capability. Along comes South Carolina, who plays an absolute lights-out game against us and puts up a quick 21 points, forcing us to play a more risk based game when weren't prepared to do so and they sink us.
Joe Paterno has a saying "when you win, you're never as good as you think you are, and when you lose, you're never as bad as you think you are." I think it's kind of fitting for this week, we got a dose of reality, people are catching up, it's time to work harder and pull the trigger when the opportunity is there. Meanwhile all is not lost, there is great potential for this team, now they have to realize that potential. Gmac is currently the best equipped QB on the team to quickly turn the corner and get things righted, he may not be the most physically gifted as AJ, but he's a champion and there really isn't a bigger intangible than being a champion. Hopefully the whole team gets it, and maybe this setback was needed as Bigdaddy51200 said to give them that kick in the a** that you have to get out there and earn the wins.