The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
QBs put on a late show
Eason, Fromm flex throwing arms for a total of 607 yards.
Georgia’s Eason, Fromm exchange touchdowns in final minutes of close G-Day scrimmage,
Kirby Smart ATHENS — wanted a close game. He got his wish at G-Day on Saturday afternoon.
He also got a lot of late four-minute offense and two-minute offense reps for his two young quarterbacks.
Freshman Jake Fromm connected with sophomore Tyler Simmons for a 70-yard score with 3:48 to play. That gave the Red team a 22-16 lead.
Then came the counterpunch. Sophomore Jacob Eason led the first-team offense back with a 38-yard catch-and-rumble to sophomore tight end Charlie Woerner with 2:12 to play. The quick strikes underscored the theme of the day: Georgia’s quarterbacks would throw for a combined 607 yards.
But Fromm wasn’t done. He led the second-team offense to a game-winning field goal with 1:03 to go. Eason was unable to take the first-team offense down the field for the win.
Here are five things to know from Saturday: Impressive freshmen. Georgia, according to the experts, signed one of the nation’s top three recruiting classes in 2017. Well, three freshman made sure there was a pretty good opening act to the Bulldogs careers. Fromm and Jeremiah Holloman connected on several big plays. The biggest was their 42-yard touchdown strike with 10:56 to go in the second quarter.
Fromm, a freshman from Warner Robins, completed 14 of 23 passes for 277 yards and two touchdowns. Facing a fourth-and-12 late in the game, Fromm hit sophomore receiver Mecole Hardman for a 38-yard gain to spark the game’s final points.
Holloman caught three passes for 77 yards. Early enrollee Richard LeCounte III also led both teams with his nine tackles working with the second-team defense.
More stars. Eason went over the 300-yard mark and finished 16 of 36 for 311 yards and two touchdowns. He did throw an interception. The sophomore fed the ball to his first-string wideouts. Junior Terry Godwin caught five passes for 130 yards, and senior Javon Wims caught four for 96. On the other team, Simmons caught five passes for 114 yards, including the one touchdown. Ledbetter leads the defensive line. Jonathan Ledbetter was in the backfield, past his man, poised to make the big play — and then the whistle blew. The spring game rules prevented Ledbetter from being able to complete the sack. But it still counted.
Ledbetter looks like a potential force next season, when he’ll be a junior and probably a starter at defensive end. Ledbetter had the one sack in Saturday’s spring game, as well as splitting another tackle-for-loss and making five total tackles. He helped lead a defensive front seven that shut down Georgia’s running game, albeit one that didn’t use its top two guys. Questions looming. The first-team offensive line didn’t clear out much in the way of running room, and Eason was under duress more that he might have expected. Those five freshman defensive backs who will report this summer likely will get a look early because Fromm and Holloman both took advantage of some second-team defensive backs with foreign jersey numbers. Those matchups required both the fans and the press-box population to check their rosters to figure out just who got beat on a couple of occasions. How many showed up? This time Georgia didn’t call it 93k day, and it definitely wasn’t. Still, a lot of people were in attendance for the G-Day game. Georgia’s official crowd figure was 66,133. That was well short of last year’s full house, but was still the second-most all time. The attendance figure is an estimate by the school.
The lower section of Sanford Stadium was mostly full, with some empty areas. The middle section was about one-third full, while the upper section visible from the press box was basically empty, but a school official said the area above the press box had more fans.