GEORGIA SOUTHERN KEYS TO THE SEASON
1. Making the leap. Georgia Southern was a storied program at the Division I-AA (now FCS) level. The Eagles won a record six national championships and were runner-ups twice. They had national coaches of the year (Erk Russell and Paul Johnson) and national players of the year (Jayson Foster and Adrian Peterson).
But now the Eagles will be a small fish in the bigger pond of FBS football, where they’ll have to prove themselves against tougher competition. The Eagles need only to look across the state to see how rough the transition can be: Georgia State moved up from FCS to the Sun Belt in 2013 and lost all 12 games.
Georgia Southern has a lot more football history to draw on than Georgia State, which was 10-23 in three FCS seasons, but the Eagles figure to take their lumps while making the transition.
2. Finding a running back (or two). Running back Jerick McKinnon did it all during his four years at Southern, playing quarterback, running back, cornerback and returning kickoffs. McKinnon gained national attention when he scored the winning touchdown at Florida, and the Vikings selected him in the third round of the draft after he was a beast during combine testing and a pro day.
With McKinnon gone, the Eagles don’t have a clear offensive star or any running backs with much experience. Starter Matt Breida had one carry as a freshman in 2013, and backup Ean Days, a transfer from Illinois, missed the past two seasons because of injuries.
Junior college transfer Ken Thomas, a top performer during the spring, left the team after he was ruled academically ineligible, and Chaz Thornton also was an academic casualty. The position is so thin that L.A. Ramsby moved to running back from quarterback.
3. Building depth. During 2013, their first season of transition the to FBS, the Eagles were ineligible for the playoffs because they had more than the maximum of 63 scholarship players. They were picked to repeat as Southern Conference champions, but slid to a 4-4 finish in the league in spite of that advantage in scholarship numbers.
FBS schools are allowed 85 scholarships, and Georgia Southern is behind most of its league peers in developing the full complement of players who can play at the top level of college football.
“At some positions we have excellent depth, but at other positions the depth is a little suspect,” coach Willie Fritz said. “It’s yet to be seen, but I’ll probably play more freshmen than most people just because we need depth.”
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