As we’ve all heard, Kirby’s let Jacob Eason run with the ones this week. And for all the hyperventilating about whether that means Eason’s been anointed as the starter, and the speculation about how Smart’s trying to be coy to keep the upperclassmen from transferring, I think there’s a larger point that’s been overlooked.
Freshman Jacob Eason got more first team work this week (while also spending more time with the second team and less with the third). Smart said that was to get more practice reps with the starters since he didn’t go with the No. 1 unit at all in the spring.
“It was a situation where we wanted to try catch him up and evaluate him and get him more reps so we could continue to evaluate the other two and the other two would continue to go but they would also be with the threes some,” Smart said.
The five-star recruit from Lake Stevens, Wash., showed that “he’s growing as a player,” Smart said. “Just the cumulative effect of the reps, it doesn’t matter what offense you’re in, the fact that the other two have been in a college system for three and four years, it puts them in an advantage from the standpoint of dropping back and making decisions, seeing coverages. We’re trying to catch him up to speed and get him some reps and find out what he can do. How he’s responded, I think he’s done a good job of responding to it. He’s had an opportunity to make more plays and also an opportunity to make more mistakes. He’s done both. He’s got to continue to improve there.”
Quite simply, the coaches know that reps matter. And in and of itself, that attitude is a vast improvement over what the quarterbacks were saddled with all of last season.
“We’ll continue to go down this quarterback road until we figure it out,” Smart said. “I can’t tell you anything, update you right now because I want to reserve judgment until I watch the tape like last time.”
I don’t profess to know who gets the final nod, or even who gets weeded out soon, but I feel pretty good about where the coaches appear to be headed. If nothing else, that’s a reason to feel more optimistic about where 2016 is starting over where 2015 finished.
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So, was Eason given the reps to prepare him to start or to remove him from consideration? I think the answer is yes, to both. Cheney and Smart know what they have with Lambert and Ramsey and wanted to give Eason one last chance to win the job before unwrapping the red shirt. Smart will not set a precedent of starting a freshman his first year as head coach unless he has to. And he doesn’t have to. That’s what I believe.
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Barring some type of injury, I would be absolutely stunned if Eason red shirts this year! My sense is that Eason may not start the UNC game, but they will rotate him in for a series or two early in the season to let him get acclimated. If he isn’t the starting QB by the end of September or early October, then we’re going to be in for a long season. Lambert is either really good or really bad with very little consistency and Ramsey is extremely prone to big turnovers and bad reads. Maybe Chaney can turn things around for them with his offensive scheme, but we need Eason to play in 2016 in order to have him game ready by 2017.
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“If he isn’t the starting QB by the end of September or early October, then we’re going to be in for a long season”…don’t know exactly how you get there, Chi-town. If he’s not playing, wouldn’t it mean that Lambert or Ramsey or both are playing well? If he’s starting, it would tell me that it’s out of desperation, or because he is head and shoulders above the other two…which would have probably already be apparent. What am I missing?
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I thought about that logic after posting the comment UD and you’re correct. However, I think Eason is by far the most talented of the 3 QBs and will give us the best chance to win once he gets some game experience and becomes more comfortable with the offense. Based on what we saw from Lambert and Ramsey last year, I’m not very encouraged if he can’t beat them out at some point.
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One tiny thing, Ugly-D. Eason enrolled early specifically for the benefit of going through spring practice. And he got exactly z-e-r-o snaps with the #1’s for his trouble. The first two weeks were focused solely on Lambert and Ramsey for some misguided reason, so Eason needed his fair share to, in CKS’s words, “catch up”.
Something smells a lot like giving players with seniority a little extra love. Very Richt-like, but it is what it is. The best QB will play regardless.
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There is essentially nothing I can guarantee about the 2016 dawgs. We’ll wear red helmets. We’ll play glory, glory. Kirby will be out head coach. Uga will roam the sidelines. Eason won’t redshirt.
Those are the certainties.
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The inevitability of Fromm combined with us not knowing how mature and patient all parties involved are, it’s too hard to accept the notion that Eason might get red shirted. If Eason red shirts, then Fromm probably has to, and both of them have to resist the NFL for one year more than maybe they would like. On the other hand, what I’m saying here may be the best possible plan of action for those involved. Problem is, it’s pure agony for all us observers.
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#QBrepsMatter
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#AllRepsMatter
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“Repetition aids learning!”? Turns out my dad was right all these years?
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“After 48 hours of film review, we have decided to keep Eason getting more reps on the first team……..until the end of 2016 season, LOL. But we have not made a decision who will be the starter until probably………”
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Barring injury, Eason is not redshirting. Period.
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Unfortunately, “reps matter” cuts both ways. If they are not 90% sure they are starting Eason or if he’s not getting at least half the snaps against UNC, then is CKS not setting up either QBGL or QBBR up to be unprepared for UNC?
Both the veterans have college snaps, but this system and many of these receivers are new to all of them.
Hard to know what to do, and hard to know if more snaps fixes QBGL and QBBR ‘s issues in any event.
My armchair guess is CKS will give the start to Lambert and give Eason three series that are pretty well scripted.
If they roll Lambert out there I hope he takes the field with Chubb so our less polite fans don’t know whether to boo or cheer so they clam up. Given what he’s been asked to do, given his personal limitations / skills, I think QBGL and also QBBR have shown humility and are both DGD’s, however this plays out.
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My armchair guess is CKS will give the start to Lambert and give Eason three series that are pretty well scripted.
Smart doesn’t strike me as a two qb guy, and what you describe is just that. What happens if Lambert struggles, and Eason is ineffective? Do you keep putting Eason in, just because you’re trying to get him ready for the inevitable?
We all want the best qb out there running the offense. I think that’s what this past week has been about. Determining whether Eason is the best option we have. Maybe he is, we don’t know. But if he’s not, why damage the kid by planned series of snaps that aren’t working?
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Because the more snaps he gets, the more they start working. That’s sort of the point.
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That logic would say that Lambert is All SEC by now. Apparently reps don’t make you better.
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The truth is that he probably is better now than he was at Virginia. But now he’s playing better competition, so he looks the same? Maybe?
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ACQBCD thinks CKS splits reps between QBGL and QBJE while QBBR (DGD that he is) gets LTFO. IMHO, OCJC may have a different POV from CKS and will roll w/ QBJE in the CFAKC against UNC in the ATL. YMMV, of course, but the game is coming up PDQ, so hope we find out ASAP.
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Great points Senator. I have said all along that the coaching up grade will be emence. He us looking for the players that give us the best chance to win reguardless if you are a freshman or senior. Go DAWGS
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Right because Richt didn’t win any games and made it a point to not play the players that gave us the best chance to win.
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I can’t see Smart wasting high quality reps because he feels sorry for a player who ran with the 3’s in the spring. Sounds more like they have made the decision that Eason is playing sooner rather than later, and he needs reps with the center so he can take snaps under center.
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This ^^
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Right on the money Doug!
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I didn’t take from it that he’s getting the reps because he feels sorry for him. I took it that he’s getting the reps because they want to make damn sure that they’ve taken an equal look at all three options before making a decision, and until this point, they had more material with Lambert and Ramsey than they did Eason.
All of that is to say, I don’t get the idea that Kirby or Chaney inherently want Eason to win the job. There’s no doubt he’s talented and that lends itself to them being unable to ignore him, but I think they just want SOMEONE to win the job, regardless of who it ends up being.
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Exactly.
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I don’t really buy the argument that Kirby is trying to keep the upperclassmen from transferring. Where’s Grayson Lambert going to go? Some other D-2 school with his graduate program? And for what purpose? At this point, I think it’s readily apparent that he’s not going to the NFL. If he still has hopes of that, I don’t know that a second transfer after losing his job isn’t exactly going to make a GM salivate. And Ramsey? If he fails once again to earn a job, at some point you start to wonder if he’ll ever be more than a backup at Georgia.
I know that we need depth for practice and also insurance against injuries. Losing either of those guys would be a bad thing for Georgia. Still, I feel that if Kirby knows who his starter is at this point, the only reason he’s not saying so is for some perceived advantage that it may or may not give Georgia against UNC.
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Eason is starting and will be the guy this year barring injury.
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I just appreciate that they are treating the reps like they matter. They understand they need to get this team ready.
And I hope that the offensive coaches all tailor a game plan to suit that player.
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Quite simply, the coaches know that reps matter. And in and of itself, that attitude is a vast improvement over what the quarterbacks were saddled with all of last season.
Tell me how this is different from last season at this point in time? Richt was down to Lambert and Ramsey and neither could fully separate from the other. At the beginning of Fall Camp, your top wish was that with two weeks to go, Kirby would have picked a QB and give that one the majority of the reps. I’m reading that the freshman is getting 1st team reps because he did not get those in the Spring, but GL and BR are still in the mix. KS has got the same problem picking that Richt had, but can at least throw the freshman superstar into the fold to see if anything better might come out of it. Same problem, fresh eyes but no better answers. Richt went with GL because he protected the ball. Kirby may choose the same to be safe, or take a risk on Ramsey or Eason because of the upside. If reps really mattered, the whole team would already know who is taking the first snap in the UNC game and be practicing accordingly, no?
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Get back to me after the Florida game…
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do we have a good option QB that can play the WLOCP?
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If we, God forbid, have two ugly losses, key injuries and look anemic on offense heading to Jax, I don’t expect the QB taking the most #1 reps up to that point to be getting them during that bye week. Despite the deranged syndrome critics, Richt did know how to manage QB’s and simply could not get a solution beyond GL winning ugly last year. I’ll give Kirby/Chaney as much credit for being able to find a way to win, whatever it takes, but possibly whiffing on a decision at least once in trying to find the right formula. At least Eason gives us a better chance of improving vs. Bauta, so Kirby has that in his favor. Everything else looks like a wash right now.
I just hope this doesn’t lead to Eason’s first game being in Jax, but if the SECe is on the line, and things are just like last year….
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I share your skepticism.
At the end of this whole process – the QB guessing game through most or all of August – I come away with one major impression: The coaches (last year and this year) don’t care who’s playing QB as much as everyone else does. And this makes sense to me from the perspective of CKS. I mean, look at what Alabama did last year with “Who the hell is our QB? We have no idea.”
I feel like CKS just isn’t that worried with naming a starter before week one, or even week two or three. Why would I say that? If he thought it was important he would have already done it. And I don’t buy the BS that they (coaches and press) throw out in a situation like this about not being in a hurry to name a starter because they don’t want to tip their hand to their opponent too far before game day. You don’t play mind-games with your QBs and offense as a whole in order to prevent your opponent from knowing who to prepare for.
UNC’s defense just isn’t going to prepare much differently for any three of our potential starting QB’s. If one of them was Johnny Manziel or Tim Tebow, maybe. But none of them are.
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Another ‘reason to feel more optimistic about where 2016 is starting over where 2015 finished.” Is that we have basically traded in Faton Bauta (a former 3 star recruit with overrated athleticism) for a legitimate 5 star in Eason who has more raw talent than the combined 2013 & 2014 qb depth charts.
Let’s just hope Chaney can translate that talent into production.
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2014 & 2015 *
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