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Georgia Southern was utterly embarrassing in all three phases of football on Saturday and took a beating at the hands of UL-Monroe by a score of 44-25, leading to Southern’s first conference loss of the season.
The Eagles were attacked early and often by the air attack of Warhawks’ quarterback Caleb Evans, who cleared 337 yards passing and a pair of scores on just 13 completions as Southern turned back the clock to 2017, a time when its defense was incomprehensibly bad and the offense had zero identity.
I had been beating the drum all year going into last week against Appalachian State that the Eagles cannot just sit out the first quarter/half of every single game it plays and expect to win.
ULM took advantage of GS’ passiveness and Scot Sloan’s porous defensive playcalling early and what felt like an insurmountable 27-10 lead by the half.
Shai Werts was simply the worst he has been all season, rushing for a whopping 3 yards on 12 attempts while the Eagles were more than happy to escort ULM’s players to the end zone whenever they decided to play “defense” or whatever you would categorize it as.
Quite simply, Chad Lunsford and his staff did not get the team prepared for the task at hand, which is an absolute failure when you consider how well the team had been playing this season up until this week, and the fact that he is a rah-rah type of coach whose main job is to get the team motivated and not overlook opponents.
The Warhawks were happy to take full advantage to the tune of 575 yards offensively, including running back Derek Gore who finished the day with 114 yards rushing and a score.
I don’t really know what to take away from this game other than it will be difficult to trust the Eagles in any contest for the rest of this season. Up next for the Eagles is a Troy team that has found it footing with new quarterback Sawyer Smith over the past two weeks, and if Southern chooses to play like this, they might as just skip attending the game altogether.