Head Coach: Clay Helton is entering his 4th season as the head coach of the Eagles with a 20-19 record. Helton is slowly improving the program with last year’s 8 win season being his best yet, he also notably led the Eagles to a win over Nebraska in 2022. Before he was at Georgia Southern, Helton was at USC. This year, Helton looks to continue to take this program a step forward.
Program Outlook: Georgia Southern is a historically good program, they only know winning here. Of all programs that were in FCS at one point Georgia Southern is 2nd to North Dakota State all time with 6 FCS Championships. At the FBS level Georgia Southern came in with immediate success but the program hit a challenging stretch where they needed to figure out life beyond the option offense to remain a top one in the Sun Belt. The Eagles are still a top contender, but are on the search for more conference titles.
How does the 2025 Roster look?: Georgia Southern ranks 44th in the country returning 60% of their production per Punt and Rally’s returning production rankings. Key players for the Eagles starts with QB JC French, he showed a lot of promise in his first season as the starter, and he’s a good runner as well. French’s next step is to cut down on interruptions. Georgia Southern lost their top back from last year but this is a program that knows how to produce running backs, OJ Arnold is next in line and David Mdabinga is a speedster who will factor in. Slot receiver Josh Dallas is back and so is Dalen Cobb, but there were losses elsewhere at receiver, fortunately Helton has done a good job navigating the portal for receivers once again. West Georgia transfer Dylan Gary and WKU transfer TE River Helms are particularly fascinating but Cobb is the leader of this unit, he could have a big year. The Eagles offensive line had some struggles last year but there’s a lot of experience back, that continuity could do wonders. The defense will be led by the secondary, corner Chance Gamble is a great one and he has a good running mate in Tracy Hill. Safety Justin Meyers is really good and Antonio White (Rutgers) was a fantastic portal pickup. LBs Davon Hicks and Brendan Harrington are both good players who will lead that unit. The defensive line is anchored by a MASSIVE tackle in the 360lb Latrell Bullard and Georgia Tech transfer Uche Iloh. Davion Rhodes was their best pass rusher last year but they’ll need more guys to step up in that regard. Fortunately there are seasoned vets like Jacob Ferguson and Da’Shawn Davis who could end up stepping up.
Screenshot from FBSchedules.com
2025 Schedule Thoughts: Georgia Southern will face a challenging schedule this year. It’s headlined by a couple West Coast trips to open the non-conference slate at Fresno State and USC. The USC game is particularly fascinating since Helton was there previously. They also face defending CUSA champ Jax State. Maine is a FCS team that sat a little outside the playoffs last year. The Sun Belt schedule is deep, the Eagles draw Southern Miss and Arkansas State from the West division. Southern Miss is no longer an easy draw and Arkansas State is potentially a top team in the West. The schedule has its challenges but doesn’t make it impossible for a run at the conference title.
Final Thoughts: 2025 is a huge opportunity for Georgia Southern, the Eagles have all the right pieces in place to return to the top of the Sun Belt. The keys for this teams are to cut back on turnovers, it’s been a major issue that has held this program back in recent years. 22 was still too many last year but was a significant improvement over 2023, they’ll need to take another step forward there.
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