Georgia Southern narrowly escapes with win over Gardner-Webb, 30-25

If Georgia Southern’s nail-biting win over FCS Gardner-Webb is any indication of how this season is going to go, it’s about to be a frustrating one for Eagle fans.

Southern’s supposedly solid secondary was torched by Bulldogs’ quarterback Bailey Fisher to the tune of 315 yards and three touchdowns as the visiting team nearly was able to pull off the upset over an Eagles squad that were 28-point favorites coming into this contest.

As a unit, GS allowed a total of 416 yards to Gardner-Webb, which will need to be cleaned up immediately if this team doesn’t want to be abused on a weekly basis by the talented offenses in the Sun Belt conference.

On the other side of the ball, despite new offensive coordinator Doug Ruse taking over the unit still looked disjointed and out of sync for many of its drives. A lot of that can be presumably chalked up to the lack of experience at the quarterback position: Amare Jones started for the Eagles in this one but seemed unsure of his decision-making on pitch plays and some handoffs.

On the plus side, GS assured fans that despite J.D. King not playing in this game, it would still be able to run the ball effectively, as each of Jones and Logan Wright went over the century mark on the ground. Once it was all said and done, Wright had accumulated a game-best 178 yards with a score, while the interim quarterback had 100 yards on his own.

On the topic of the quarterback spot, Cam Ransom may be the future of the position for the Eagles; heck, if this season takes a turn south and this team isn’t playing for anything of value, he may be the present.

Ransom showed nice accuracy and zip throwing the football, finishing with 90 yards and a score through the air while completing 61 percent of his passes. If this year is a lost one for Southern, the freshman may be able to make these games at least tolerable to watch, even if the wins aren’t there.

All-in-all, Georgia Southern looked a lot like the team that was forecasted to win just 4.5 games by Vegas betting odds this year, and was picked to come in last in the Sun Belt East by many sports media outlets. If things are not shored up immediately, it’s going to be an ugly year for the team in blue.