Jacob Eason and the dangers of expectations

Seaside Joe 1207: Do the Seahawks have a diamond in the rough or is Eason getting too many chances based on what he was expected to become?

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Jacob Eason has already worn a lot of different jerseys for a player with an otherwise short and sporadic football career. He wore a Lake Stevens High School jersey during his teen years.

courtesy: @skinnyqb10 on instagram

Over his junior and senior seasons, Eason with a 21-3 record as a starter, throwing 75 touchdowns and nine interceptions. At the end of his final season at Lake Stevens, Eason was named the Gatorade National Player of the Year. The person to inform Eason of this honor was Seahawks linebacker Bobby Wagner.

“I’ll definitely keep in contact with him and see where he goes,” said Wagner. “Hopefully I’m still in the league when he makes it here and I’m able to help.”

Wagner had no idea that they would briefly become teammates one day. At the time of being named the Gatorade National Player of the Year, with a 6’6, 220 lb frame and “the quickest release I’ve ever seen,” according to his head coach, Eason had no idea that it would be under such lowkey circumstances.

“If you were going to design a quarterback in a laboratory, you’d build Jacob Eason,” said USA Today High School Sports’ Chad Konecky in the announcement video.

As the number one ‘pro style’ quarterback recruit in the country, Eason could have gone to Alabama and played for a team that had just won the national championship in 2015 (as well as 2009, 2011, and 2012). Not yet renowned for developing first round NFL quarterbacks though, Eason would have been following Jake Coker at the position, but he also would have been throwing to Calvin Ridley and O.J. Howard in his first season, as well as playing behind an elite offensive line.

Instead, Nick Saban started freshman Jalen Hurts in 2016 and Alabama posted a 14-1 record with a loss to Clemson in the national championship. In 2017, the Crimson Tide landed Tua Tagovailoa and he combined efforts with Hurts to go 13-1 and win another title—this time defeating Georgia in the national championship.

That’s where this story could have turned back to a story about Jacob Eason, but he may have hopped on the wrong horse.

It is hard to call it the wrong decision now, but Georgia caught a lot of heat for firing head coach Mark Richt during the 2015 season and it was a risky move that could have lost them one of the top quarterback recruits in the country. Instead, Eason confirmed his commitment to Georgia after they hired Kirby Smart—Saban’s defensive coordinator at Alabama since 2008—as Richt’s replacement.

High school superstar ‘pro style’ quarterback chooses to play for Georgia en route to potentially being the number one pick in the NFL Draft? It’s a story that anyone could have written without objection in 2016.

But whether you were following local high school football or not in the last decade, you know that it didn’t turn out that way for Eason despite winning the starting gig as a true freshman, just as Matthew Stafford once did in 2006 (and playing quite horribly that year, I might add).

Employing a similar spread offense to the one that he coached when developing a young Drew Brees at Purdue at the turn of the century, offensive coordinator Jim Chaney found much more success with running backs Nick Chubb and Sony Michel than he did passing the ball out of the “golden right arm” of Jacob Eason. Though Georgia started 3-0 in 2016, Eason subbed for incumbent starter Greyson Lambert and only threw 12 passes in a win over North Carolina, went 29-of-55 in a win over Missouri, and was 11-of-20 with an interception against FCS program Nicholls State.

And these were some of the good moments for Eason.

Though Eason did not throw many interceptions (8) as a freshman, that might have been somewhat preferable because at least it would have meant he was hitting somebody on the field. Following their 3-0 start, Georgia would lose four of the next five games and Eason was under 46-percent completions in three of those games, including a start against South Carolina in which he was 5-of-17 for 29 yards, one touchdown and one interception.

And that was the lone win during the five-game stretch.

Georgia would win their next three games to become bowl eligible, but lost their season finale to Georgia Tech 28-27 when 258 rushing yards by Chubb and Michel couldn’t overcome two interceptions by Eason.

The strange but all too familiar part of the story that year was that despite his struggles, many fans were still citing Eason as a future star and Heisman contender. Some of it is understandable, Eason was a true freshman and as I said, Stafford was one of the least effective starters in the country during his first year at Georgia. But as is often the case, because Eason was such a highly touted high school prospect, it seemed like even his faults were somehow strengths.

I don’t think there is any question that Jacob Eason is going to be a star. The true freshman quarterback certainly looks the part - 6’5”, 235 pounds, with a rocket arm and all kinds of swagger. The son of former Notre Dame wide receiver Tony Eason, he was the top rated pocket passer in the class of 2016 and a five star recruit. With offers from every major Division I program, it was a bit surprising that he chose UGA - more so when you consider he is from the Pacific Northwest with no ties to the Bulldogs or the south in general. But the offensive system and opportunity to play early eventually won out, even with Mark Richt’s departure for Miami. He was hailed as a savior and the second coming of the last great Dawg signal caller, Highland Park native Matthew Stafford when he arrived on campus, and drew comparisons from the time he first showed interest in UGA.

In that preview of Georgia’s upcoming Liberty Bowl matchup against TCU, for no apparent reason, the author (for the other school) still felt compelled to let everyone know that he too believes Eason was destined for stardom.

Jacob Eason is going to be a star. But the key to a TCU victory will be in limiting the damage from the run game and putting the pressure on the young Georgia QB.

That’s how deep the fear runs for many people that “Oh no, what if I don’t let the world know that I believe the consensus opinion too.”

But at that time, yes, there was still a possibility that Eason would develop into a football star. Just not at Georgia.

“Down but never out, next man up,” wrote Eason on Instagram, September 7, 2017.

As easily as “destiny” would follow around Jacob Eason’s consistently poor season, turning every bad decision into a comment about how that must be an important lesson for the 19-year-old quarterback that will serve him well in the NFL, so too would five-star freshman Jake Fromm get praised after he replaced Eason in 2017.

After completing one of three passes in the season opener against Appalachian State, Eason was pulled with a knee injury and replaced by Fromm for the rest of the game. Fromm would start against Eason’s “legacy school” Notre Dame the following week and by early November Georgia would be 9-0 without their expected starting quarterback.

A year ago, the glow of the camera lights was fixed on Eason, the rosy-cheeked, big-armed 5-star recruit who had come from suburban Seattle to be the program's next star quarterback.

Now the spotlight has moved two feet and one locker down to Fromm, a decorated recruit from the middle of Georgia.

When a few reporters eventually turned to Eason, the 20-year-old's face and voice were relaxed. His responses were quiet and calm.

"Things happen. That's life," Eason said. "Injuries are common. It's kind of one of those things where you can take it and you can be mad about it and sulk about it all season, but I took what happened, and I did what I could with it."

If you think I’m being hard on Eason for his struggles as a freshman, it is worth noting that Fromm played in virtually the same environment and was far more successful at the same stage in his career. And that’s Jake Fromm.

Had Eason played a decade earlier, he may have been given the same amount of rope as Stafford and eventually found his footing. Had Eason played five years later, he could have entered the transfer portal in 2018 and immediately been starting at another program that would have perfectly suited his strengths and potentially harnessed the talent that made him a prospect that every school-including Alabama-had wanted only two years earlier.

But instead of being the quarterback who would have been starting against Alabama in that year’s national championship (Fromm was stifled by the Crimson Tide and threw two interceptions in a 26-23 OT loss) or even FOR ALABAMA in that game (Tua famously entered and threw three touchdowns to lead them to victory), Eason was mapping out a future that could potentially still get him into the NFL.

And this is what is good about the transfer portal: Jacob Eason’s only options were to either stay at Georgia knowing that there was a younger player ahead of him on the depth chart, to transfer to a small program where no hiatus would be necessary, or to go to another Division-I school and wait until 2019.

That’s kind of some bullshit. It’s not good for Eason, it’s not good for the fans, and it’s not good for college football. I don’t necessarily think that these immediate transfers will change the fortunes of current prospects like Spencer Rattler or Kedon Slovis, but it is preferable to forcing a 20-year-old with talent to choose between three dead ends.

As many of you already know, Eason’s choice was to come back home to don yet another jersey.

Perhaps fearful that he wouldn’t get past Jake Browning at UW when he was choosing a school in 2015, Eason eventually did succeed after an underwhelming final two seasons in which Browning failed to replicate the scoring success he had with receiver John Ross in 2016. But after the Huskies had consistently flirted with top-5 rankings in 2016, 2017, and 2018, finishing each year in the top-20, Eason’s lone season as Washington’s starter ended in an 8-5 record amid a disappointing campaign for the offense.

After throwing 10 touchdowns in his first four starts (including four against Eastern Washington and three against a generous Hawaii defense), Eason had only 13 touchdowns and six interceptions over the last nine games.

Observe Eason on a micro level and you’re bound to come away impressed: “Look at this throw!” “Look at this game!” “Look these measurables!”

But step back for the whole view and Jacob Eason was far too removed from his status as a five-star recruit to still be seen as a potential NFL starter. Right? I mean… right?

You couldn’t be more wrong.

Eason decided to forego his remaining eligibility to enter the 2020 NFL Draft, and I don’t blame him for making the effort. He was what he was and because there’s never a shortage of people who believe they can turn “the stuff you can’t teach” into a premier player by… teaching them stuff… Eason could have just as easily decided to stay at Georgia and sit behind Fromm for a year and entered the 2019 NFL Draft because it really didn’t matter what he did over his three seasons in college.

Some NFL teams have wanted to give him a shot since he was 18.

Including the Colts, who drafted Eason with the 122nd overall pick in the 2020 draft. Only Joe Burrow, Tua Tagovailoa, Justin Herbert, Jordan Love, and Jalen Hurts were picked ahead of Eason.

Fromm was picked by the Bills in round five, once again placing him behind his former Georgia teammate.

During his rookie season in Indianapolis, Jacob Eason couldn’t have been more blessed with opportunities to learn from the best. The legacy there is Peyton Manning; his head coach was Frank Reich; his offensive coordinator was current Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni; his quarterbacks coach was Marcus Brady, who had worked with Andrew Luck only a couple years earlier; the starter was Philip Rivers; the backup was Jacoby Brissett.

Knowing he wouldn’t be pressed into action, and unfortunately being the victim to bad timing again (there was no preseason in 2020), all Eason had to do was listen.

"I feel very confident in the game plan each week, but by Saturday, Sunday I get to see what Philip is thinking, what Jacoby is thinking," Eason said. "The conversations back and forth between Frank, Nick (Sirianni), Philip, Jacoby and Marcus really everyday have – and having me as an observant, just kind of watching and analyzing what's going on — has been huge."

"Just being in a room with Philip Rivers and Jacoby Brissett, two guys who played a lot of football in the league – hearing how they break down a third-and-two to three call or hearing what their opinions are on a first and second-down play call … I don't say a whole ton," Eason said. "A lot of times I'm sitting back there taking notes, observing and taking it all in. I feel like that's where I'm at in my first year. But I understand where they are going with things. I like to figure out why they like this versus that or those kind of things. They do a great job of really communicating and breaking down, 'Hey this is why we like this and this is why we don't like that.' A lot of that stuff is really cool for me to experience and see, and I think the way they approach those meetings is very professional and diligent. A lot of those things I've taken away and grown from.

"I'm happy where my development is at," Eason continued. "We have a long season ahead and I'm going to continue to grow there. At this stage, I'm happy with where I'm at going into the bye week."

But when Rivers retired in 2021, rather than confirm that Eason was a promising player in development, the Colts traded for Carson Wentz. I know that doesn’t seem so damning, but you have to remember that a year in training for a player with “all of the tools” should surely be enough to at least give him a chance to compete if the coaches believe that he’s progressed at an acceptable rate over his first season. Indy’s response was to trade a first round pick to avoid having to start Eason.

In which case, they shouldn’t have done so for Wentz. Because as expected, Wentz’s status for the start of the 2021 was in doubt and that meant that Jacob Eason would be on-call early in the season—with Reich saying he had made the necessary progress to become an NFL backup.

“There’s no doubt [he's made progress]," Reich said to reporters Friday. "The other thing I like about Jacob is he doesn’t get rattled out there. Seems to be under control. You know, there’s always ways we can get better and things to get better at. He’s a young player and he’s made the progress that he should make and that he has made. So, that’s a credit to him."

There was even a chance that Eason would start Week 1 against the Seattle Seahawks, but Wentz made it back in time to lose that game 28-16.

However, it would be only a week later that Indianapolis was facing the L.A. Rams and Eason would have to make his NFL debut in the most extreme of circumstances: The Rams took a 27-24 lead with 2:27 remaining in the game and Wentz had exited with another injury. Eason’s first pass was incomplete. Eason’s second pass was intercepted by Jalen Ramsey.

Sports Illustrated @SInow

Jacob Eason enters the game for the Colts—and immediately learns not to try Jalen Ramsey 🔒 (via @NFL)

You must be thinking, “Oh well, that happens… He’s a young player and the Colts should still be happy with his development.” After all, Reich flat out told the media that he was happy with Eason’s development only a coupe of weeks earlier.

However, Indianapolis would add Brett Hundley to the 53-man roster shortly thereafter and then waive Eason on October 19. That’s how fast Eason went from being a developmental player on a QB-hungry roster who the head coach endorsed as the backup to landing on the waiver wire. And it was not because of one interception to an All-Pro cornerback.

But as has often been the case with Eason, there’s always another team that believe it can coach him up. And just like in 2018, that team was back home again.

Jacob Eason has been hanging out with the Seahawks for the last eight months and has unexpectedly found himself a lot closer to the starting position than he ever could have imagined when Russell Wilson was on Seattle’s roster.

At this time, there is no indication that Eason is even competing to be the Seahawks’ backup quarterback since we all assume that job will fall to the person who fails to start between Geno Smith and Drew Lock. That’s assuming that Seattle doesn’t also add another quarterback between now and training camp. However, it is possible that either Smith or Lock won’t be on the roster at some point this year, or that an injury could once again elevate Eason to a job on the team with more responsibilities.

In fact, there are few if any other situations in the NFL where Jacob Eason could be the guy who has the most potential of any quarterback on the roster. What other team could possibly send a tweet like this and include Eason as one of their three current options:

Seattle Seahawks @Seahawks

QBs 📸

(If you follow Twitter, then yes, you already know this tweet was probably timed by the Seahawks’ social media team as a response to Josina Anderson spreading Baker Mayfield rumors again.)

But when you see those three faces, it doesn’t seem that hard to imagine them in any order. Eason is firmly entrenched as QB3 and yet the assumed QB1 hasn’t been a Week 1 starter in eight years and the QB2 lost out to Teddy Bridgewater only a year ago.

If Seattle opens 0-2 or 2-4 and an injury happens, or finds themselves out of the playoff race by December, how much will it hurt to find out what they have in their 24-year-old third string quarterback with enough talent to keep him in football for this long in spite of having almost no on-field success since high school?

That’s a question that has led to Eason starting as a true freshman at Georgia, replacing Browning at UW, briefly backing up Wentz in Indianapolis, and entering a competition with the Seahawks. For the last six years, Eason has almost exclusively been a product of potential.

Will 2022 be the year that some of that potential turns into production?

Also, there is a NEW EPISODE OF THE SEASIDE JOE PODCAST! Me and Thad Wenatchee (@ThadIsRad) talked about the Seahawks for three hours, including stuff on Russell Wilson, Baker Mayfield, Geno Smith, the ceiling and floor for the offense/defense, and record predictions for 2022. You can watch it on YouTube or find “Seaside Joe: A football podcast” on your podcast apps to listen to the 3-hour(!!!) show this weekend!