Washington Football: Untapped potential will help Jacob Eason’s draft stock

Washington football’s Jacob Eason has loads of talent and untapped potential, but the inability to put it all together could keep him from going early.

Jacob Eason was a five-star quarterback and one of the top prospects in the nation coming out of high school.

During his freshman season at Georgia, Eason flashed his potential but was overall very inconsistent and finished the 2016 season with over 2,400 yards passing with 16  touchdowns and eight interceptions and had a dismal 56 percent completion rate.

At the start of the 2017 season, Eason suffered an injury in the first game and was replaced by Jake Fromm and never got his starting job back and then transferred back to his home state and went to Washington.

After sitting out the 2018 season, Eason took over for the Huskies in 2019 and had high expectations. It was a mixed bag for the talented quarterback, throwing for over 3,100 yards with 23 touchdowns and eight interceptions. It felt like 2019 was a perfect encapsulation of Eason’s career: flashes of elite play, but not consistent enough to make his teammates better and help his team achieve big goals.

Eason has a ton of upside but teams should proceed with caution. Let’s take a look at his strengths, weaknesses and where Eason projects to be taken in the 2020 NFL Draft.

Strengths

Eason’s biggest strength is his elite arm talent. He can make any throw on the field and can stretch a defense vertically. He has prototypical NFL size at 6-foot-6, 230 pounds, and looks the part of what most NFL teams would want in their quarterback. He was a threat off of play action because his arm talent and teams had to honor the deep ball and the vertical threat that Washington would present with Eason under center.

Another intangible strength of Eason’s is the fact that he hasn’t reached his full potential and is not a finished product. If he could go and sit for a season or two and be coached and learn in a system that prioritizes throwing the ball down the field, he could fulfill that potential that he has.

Weaknesses

Eason’s biggest deficiency is his consistency.

At times, he flashes his ability, but other times he looks completely lost. For example, in the season opener against FCS Eastern Washington, he was 27-for-36 with 349 yards and four touchdowns. Just one week later against a really good California pass defense, Eason was 18-for-30 for 160 yards, no touchdowns and one interception.

Whenever Eason played good competition, he did not elevate his play and that really hamstrung Washington’s offense and the players around him.

Eason’s accuracy can be all over the place at times as well. While he did improve it to 64 percent last season compared to his 55 percent at Georgia, there were three games in 2019 where Eason had a completion rate below 56 percent, including a horrendous 44 percent against Stanford, which was a big reason they lost that game in a big upset.

While a lot is being made about how Eason has untapped potential and has elite ability, one has to question if that is being overblown and he is just being very overrated because of his arm strength and size.

Draft Expectation

Some team will fall in love with Eason’s arm talent and potential and talk themselves into thinking that they can fix his errors and make him a more complete quarterback. A team like Tampa Bay would be a perfect fit for Eason. He would get to sit behind Tom Brady and be coached by Bruce Arians, who loves to push the ball downfield with the vertical passing attack.

Projection: Late-second, early-third round