As a player, Jaybo Shaw helped return Georgia Southern to its winning ways.
Now Shaw returns to help some more.
The 23-year-old former quarterback crossed Eagle Creek this week in a new role — as a graduate assistant coach — as the Eagles opened preseason football practice.
He looked as if he could still run the option.
“Oh, no,” he said, laughing. “I don’t think my old body could take it any more.”
But count on Shaw to bring the same diligence and attention to detail to coaching as he displayed leading Southern to two FCS semifinals appearances.
Shaw, who will work on a master’s degree in sports management, joined the staff about two weeks ago and will help assistant Lamont Seward with the Eagles’ running backs.
“I’m just trying to learn as much as I can, get in the film room,” Shaw said. “It’s almost like I was a player, sitting there with coach Seward and the offensive coaches trying to figure out as much as I can.”
Shaw transferred to Georgia Southern from Georgia Tech when coach Jeff Monken got the job as the Eagles’ head coach.
Monken was transforming the team’s short passing attack to an option running game, and Shaw was an integral piece to Southern’s 2010 season, when the team improved from five wins to 10.
In 2011, the Shaw-led Eagles won the Southern Conference’s regular-season title for the first time since 2004.
“He’s a special kid, a special man,” Monken said. “I think he’ll be able to provide some leadership differently than the rest of our coaches can because a lot of these guys are really close to him.”
It wasn’t an easy decision because Shaw already was coaching with his father, Lee Shaw, at Rabun County. The Wildcats advanced to the Class AA state playoffs last season after winning only three games the previous season.
“It was a hard decision to leave him, but this is the place I want to be,” Jaybo said. “This is where my heart is. This is the place I call home. It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”
Two weeks as a collegiate coach have provided a good coaching education already, he said.
“You realize how much work is put in, outside of the players working,” Shaw said. “You see all the other things, whether it be the support staff or the full-time coaches, all the things that go into making a successful program. That was eye-opening.”
Georgia Southern senior quarterback Jerick McKinnon said he learned from Shaw as a backup in 2010 and 2011. Last season, McKinnon put that knowledge into use when he moved into the starter’s role.
“I learned how to manage a game, being vocal, voicing your opinion, watching film, learning to understand the offense inside out from the five offensive linemen to the wide receivers,” McKinnon said. “I just tried to pick his mind and learn as much as I could.”
And while Shaw will work with the fullbacks and slotbacks, he says he’ll always have time to help McKinnon or the four other quarterbacks in camp.
New technology: The Eagles began practice with new equipment designed to protect players from concussions. Georgia Southern is the only collegiate football team in the state to use the Helmet Impact Telemetry System (HITS), which measures and records every hit to the head during practices and games.
In 2011, the school received a $385,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study concussions.
Georgia Southern has equipped 40 helmets with the Riddell HITS system. There are six sensors inside each helmet that measures the severity of a hit to the head. A typical impact in football lasts about 15 milliseconds. In that instant, measurements from the sensors will be transmitted in nearly real-time to a laptop computer being monitored on the sidelines of all practices and games.
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