GA News: OnlineAthens - With Jacob Eason competing for UGA job, a look at performance of true

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From OnlineAthens.com
July 27th, 2016 11:52 AM

During his senior season at Lake Stevens (Wash.) High School, Jacob Eason kept tabs on how Josh Rosen, a hotshot recruit fared as a true freshman starting quarterback at UCLA.
“I think he exceeded a lot of expectations,” Eason said on signing day in February when he was the prize of Georgia’s class. “He had a great first year. I’m excited to see where he goes, too. He’s going to do some damage in the Pac-12.”
Eason, like Rosen, enrolled early and has a chance at Georgia to do what Rosen did: win the starting job. Rosen was rated as the No. 12 overall player in 2015 by the 247Sports Composite. Eason is No. 5 in 2016 and is competing with Greyson Lambert and Brice Ramsey.
With Rosen starting all 13 games, UCLA went 8-5 last season. Rosen threw for 3,688 yards and 23 touchdowns with 11 interceptions. He ranked 55th in the nation in passing efficiency, which was fourth among true freshmen quarterbacks last season in FBS. Two--Boise State’s Brett Rypien and Washington’s Jake Browning--were in the top 50.
In the last 10 seasons, Southern Cal’s Matt Barkley and Baylor’s Robert Griffin III were among 10 true freshmen quarterbacks ranked in the top 50 their first seasons in passing efficiency.
None of those freshmen played in the SEC.
“You look over the history of the league, it hasn’t happened very often,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said about the difficulty of freshmen quarterbacks to win in the league. “Especially when you’re talking about the first game of the season. …I’ve always said I thought the SEC was a defensive league when you look at the top 10 defenses and offenses in the country, we usually have more defenses than we do offenses. It’s tough on any quarterback but it’s really tough on a true freshman to come in and do that. I certainly think it can be done, but you’ve got to have good surrounding cast to do that, but hypothetically, it’s a challenge for sure.”
The only true freshman quarterback from the SEC to finish in the top 50 in the nation in passing efficiency in the last 15 seasons was Florida’s Chris Leak in 2003. He became the starter in the fifth game for a Gators team that went 8-5, 6-2 in the SEC.
Georgia’s Matthew Stafford in 2006 ranked 86th in the nation in passing efficiency with seven touchdowns and 13 interceptions. One spot behind him was Georgia Tech’s Reggie Ball.
Mark Richt, the former Georgia coach, last week remembered the 2006 game against Colorado when Stafford got benched with 3 minutes left in the third quarter. He had passed for 76 yards, completed 8 of 16 throws with two sacks and a lost fumble.
Joe Cox rallied the Bulldogs with two touchdown passes for a come-from-behind 14-13 win in the fourth game of the season. Georgia was favored by 27.
“We were struggling,” Richt said. “Part of the reason is our guys just couldn’t catch the ball. The more we weren’t executing, the harder he’d throw it. Finally, we were like, ‘Put Joe in there and see if he can lay one in there.’”
Stafford regained the starting job later in the season and held onto it for the rest of his college career.
Asked how hard it is for a true freshman to start at a power conference school, Richt said: “I think it depends on how good the team is around you. The better run game you have around you, the better receivers you have that can separate and the better you get protected and all that, I think it all comes into play, but in that league you’re going to run into some games that are highly, highly competitive, physical. The game’s going to be faster than he ever dreamed it would be. It is a little surreal to go into some of those venues and deal with the crowd noise. Just the whole thing.”
Richt recruited and got a commitment from Eason and made a much-publicized trip to Washington state after the Auburn game last season to visit him.
“If he does become the guy, it’s just hard to go through the whole thing unscathed, but I think he’s going to be a great one before it’s over,” Richt said.
Now the head coach at Miami, Richt’s quarterback situation this year isn’t a worry.
Junior Brad Kaaya enters his third season as a starting quarterback and is considered one of top pro prospects at the position for the 2017 draft.
He threw for 2,962 yards as a true freshman in 2014 with 25 touchdowns and 11 interceptions and was 22nd in the nation in passing efficiency, but said there’s a lot of challenges starting right away.
“One thing is experience,” Kaaya said. “You don’t really know how the rhythm of the game goes. One thing that really shocked me at first was all the TV timeouts. It seemed like every time my freshman year when we’re about to go out on the field, I’m feeling good, I’m feeling warmed up and there’s a TV timeout right before I’m about to go out and we have to wait five minutes.”
Winning over his teammates also was something he had to check off.
“Especially when you’re in the locker room with a senior driven team,” he said.
He said he gained that respect by “just playing, playing good. Taking shots. Taking hits. And just being consistent.”


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