Kirby Smart sees bowl prep as big opportunity for Jacob Eason
By Andrew Olson
Published:
For Kirby Smart’s first bowl game as a head coach, the extra practices will focus on fundamentals in the beginning.
“The early practices are developmental practices,” Smart said at the Liberty Bowl press conference in Memphis, per UGA Sports. “We want to get fundamentally better. We want to use them like spring practices, but change it up a little bit for the players so they can enjoy it, have them compete against each other.”
The period of downtime and extra practices could prove valuable to the development of true freshman Jacob Eason. Smart thinks the quarterback will benefit greatly from the bowl prep.
“Every rep he gets, every mental rep he gets, every walk-through rep, every live rep, 7-on-7 he can get … seeing coverages, seeing multiples, seeing different pressures … I think it’s really important for him,” Smart said.
The first-year coach also said that the young quarterback understands that this is a critical period to make improvements before his second spring practice in Athens.
“He gets that,” Smart said. “He’s spent a lot of time in the last couple of weeks in the film room looking back at the year, looking at the good things he did, the bad things he did.”
Eason (192-of-349, 2,266 yards, 14 TD, 8 INT) and the Bulldogs (7-5) will look to end the 2016 season on a high note Dec. 30 against TCU.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
