Is Jacob Eason starting to seize control of Indianapolis Colts’ QB competition?
he enjoyed maybe his best day as pro at Tuesday’s practice — one Ehlinger missed with an illness — and he outdueled Ehlinger yet again Wednesday.
Truthfully, Eason wasn’t quite as sharp Wednesday as he was the day before — his issues with holding onto the ball too long returned — but he still outperformed Ehlinger, who struggled through what might have been his worst day in camp.
Eason finished the day 7-of-9 and would have been 8-of-9 if Michael Strachan hadn’t dropped a beautifully thrown deep ball down the left sideline. He took one “sack.”
Returning from illness, Ehlinger mustered a lackluster 11-of-19 performance while taking three “sacks.” He salvaged his day late with a touchdown to Strachan during red zone work, but if you were scoring Wednesday’s practice like a boxing match, you’d have to give the round to Eason.
And that would make three “wins” in a row for Eason, who is proving just how resilient he can be. That probably shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, given that Eason has shown this same type of mental toughness before.
Eason, remember, injured his knee as a sophomore at Georgia and lost his starting job to Jake Fromm. Down but not out, Eason transferred to Washington and led the 2019 Huskies to an 8-5 record and a win over No. 18 Boise St. in the Las Vegas Bowl before entering the NFL Draft.
The ups and downs of the quarterback position are common, Reich said. How a young quarterback handles them is often telling of what kind of player he’s going to be.
“He came out here feeling good, feeling a little bit more confident and you could feel that on the field Tuesday, and you could feel it today,” Reich said after Wednesday’s practice at Grand Park. “That’s the kind of thing you have to build on and every quarterback goes through it. But then you’re going to go through that and then you’re going to hit another (bad) spell. Then you have to be able to bounce back from that spell. It’s all a part of the maturation process with a QB, but Jacob’s showing all the right signs.”
The Colts also have to be encouraged with the work Eason’s been putting in to address the issues that have been hampering him during camp.
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Eason knows he hasn’t been decisive enough with the ball. He knows he’s processing a little bit too slowly. He also knows that he’s naturally going to get quicker the more reps he takes. It’s been said a million times throughout training camp, but it bears repeating: Eason took hardly any snaps last season. As a third-string rookie in a year with a shortened training camp and no preseason, he hardly got a chance to play.