Why South Carolina LB Stone Blanton’s game-saving pick-6 had nothing to do with luck

Dawn Blanton said a quick little prayer.

She knew the situation. Second and 11. Two minutes left. South Carolina up by three.

The Gamecocks needed a stop. A miracle. She held her breath as Jacksonville State snapped the ball. From her seats on the east side of Williams-Brice Stadium, Dawn couldn’t see what happened. But she felt the eruption. The screams. The pandemonium.

Something good had occurred, she knew that. Then Dawn saw her son — South Carolina linebacker Stone Blanton — racing down the field.

“I saw Stone just flash across the 45 and the 50,” she said.

As Stone darted down the field, closer and closer to becoming the Gamecocks’ savior, Dawn began whaling on her husband. There was too much excitement — it had to escape somewhere.

“I played sports all through high school, ran a military school, was in the military, (U.S. Army) Ranger School and all that,” said Shane Blanton, Stone’s father, “and I think I got beat up more during the interception because she was beating on me.”

Back home in Jackson, Mississippi, Stone’s oldest brother, Shane Jr., watched his brother’s greatest athletic moment on a 14-foot projector. He was looking at his 3-year-old daughter dancing in front of the projector screen when he glanced up and saw his brother with the ball.

Wait, he thought, Stone has the ball?

“Then I grabbed my wife,” Shane Jr. said. “‘STONE’S GOT THE BALL!’”

Unlike his parents, Shane Blanton Jr. — the oldest of the four Blanton boys and seven years Stone’s (the youngest) senior — had the luxury of a television remote at his disposal, which meant he could rewind ESPNU and watch the play “more than I care to admit,” Shane Jr. said with a chuckle.

To watch it live was to quickly think about the big-picture ramifications. That play sealed South Carolina’s 38-28 win. It kept hope alive for the season. Kept the Gamecocks bowl dreams afloat.

As one fan screamed while Stone trotted around WIlliams-Brice Stadium postgame: “You saved the day, buddy. You saved the day.”

He’s right. But to appreciate what Blanton did last Saturday, it takes a few viewings, a few different angles.

You see Stone react a blink after the snap, turning his hips left and sprinting to a spot. He knew what was coming. Knew the Jacksonville State running back was going to leak out up the sideline expecting the ball.

How did Stone know what was coming? How did he know where to be? How did he make one of the biggest plays of this South Carolina season? He explains it in the most rudimentary way, as if telling someone the gas pedal makes the car move forward.

“When they came out in FSL (formation sideline), Trey (open), gun closed, I knew that we were going to get the wheel route because it was a crucial time in the game,” Stone said. “That was the play they had in their play book that they ran.

“I saw it three times on film where they’d line up in FSL — that’s just a formation to the boundary — and they would leak the back out. … I didn’t even run to the flat because I knew I’d get picked. I didn’t even look at the running back. I was just meeting him at the spot.”

Duh.

Despite the uncanny football knowledge, the sophomore is still learning, still developing. He was thrust into action last season, seeing limited reps at linebacker but found the field more after an injury to Mo Kaba. That is not an easy spot for a freshman.

“He was called upon to step up and he has felt the pressure of that,” Dawn said. “He’s loved it, but it is a lot to take on that role entirely.”

He was solid in his first year as a Gamecock, recording tackles in a half-dozen games. But, Stone knew he needed to boost his speed to better accumulate to the SEC.

So he spent the summer fending off anything that wasn’t chicken, rice or dumbbells — and it worked. He scaled down to 10% body fat and did speed training that has him hitting over 20 mph on the GPS tracking.

“He dropped probably 10 pounds of fat and gained about 10 pounds of muscle,” said his dad.

None of this is a surprise to his parents. Dawn and Shane never needed to hound their youngest son about his work ethic, never needed to wake him up early or drag him to practice. When he was a freshman in high school, Stone used to rise at the crack of dawn, hop in a golf cart and cruise a mile and a half to the Country Club of Jackson gym.

After racking up 125 tackles and 26 tackles for loss as a senior playing for Madison-Ridgeland Academy, Stone — who was originally committed to play baseball at Mississippi State — decided his calling was football and his destination was South Carolina.

He did not enroll early, arriving on campus late in the summer. And, in Columbia, Stone no longer had a golf cart. So he improvised.

“He slept in the building all during fall camp,” Shane Blanton said of his son. “He said, ‘I don’t miss anything if I’m here.’ They called him crazy but that’s just who he is.”

“That’s just how committed he was,” Shane Jr. said. “He was really wanting to insert himself into this new environment and he did.”

He crammed months worth of learning into a few weeks, spending night after night talking with veteran linebackers or analyst Trey Money or defensive coordinator Clayton White or anyone who could help him grasp every intricacy of the new scheme.

At this point, Stone is a borderline expert on the Gamecocks defense. He still spends a ridiculous amount of time sitting in the USC linebackers room watching film, but the knowledge is there.

And when knowledge sinks in, instincts come out. He thinks less and reacts more. So when trying to figure out how Stone saved South Carolina’s season, one probably has to go back over a year, to when he made the football complex his home.

Next USC football game

Who: South Carolina (3-6, 1-5 SEC) vs. Vanderbilt (2-8, 0-6 SEC)

Where: Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia, S.C.

When: Noon Saturday

TV: SEC Network

Stream: ESPN.com and the ESPN app

Line: USC by 13.5