Experienced Matthew Stafford has advice for Jacob Eason

ATHENS -- The comparisons of freshman quarterback Jacob Eason to now Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford are inevitable.

Both players were five-star quarterbacks among the best players in the country -- Stafford had a 99.75 composite from 247 and was the sixth-rated player in the country, Eason had a 99.73 and is the fifth-ranked 2016 prospect. Both players came from a long way from home to enroll early at Georgia, Stafford from Texas and Eason from Washington. And both carried the weight of being potential true freshman starters, entrenching themselves in a quarterback battle weeks into their college careers.

While the comparisons are stark, Stafford doesn't necessarily believe that Georgia's newest member of the quarterback room should be drawing those comparisons.

"I wasn't very good," Stafford joked. "He's a super-talented kid. As far as comparisons go, everybody's their own player. I'm sure he's bigger than I am, probably throw it farther than I can and all of that kind of stuff."

But while Stafford doesn't necessarily see the comparisons as fair, he can definitely relate to being in the position Eason is in now with much of the weight of the future of the program being thrust on his shoulders all while trying to manage adjusting to college life.

"It wasn't always easy," Stafford said. "I had a bunch of ups and downs, especially my freshman year, but it was worth it. ... Everybody's different, everybody has different vision of how their college career goes. But for me, I wanted to play as soon as I possibly could, so I came in early. That was difficult, at times, leaving all your buddies back in high school, that kind of thing, and being far away from home. It was worth it for me. I'm sure it will be worth it for him."

Stafford sees one major obstacle that Eason will have to deal with that Stafford faced on a much smaller scale, the spotlight. With the rapid evolution of social media, privacy is nonexistent.

"That's a heck of a spotlight to be under, for sure," Stafford said. "There's no such thing as privacy anymore. Especially now. I thought it was that way when I was coming out. It was like the first flip-camera phones were coming out and, you know, anywhere you went a picture could be taken and you could be asked for (one), whatever it was. It's only intensified.

"It's tough for those guys to make the right decisions all the time and it's something that, it's not going to go away. If he keeps playing football, and all of those guys do, and they play at a high level, it's only going to get, the spotlight is only going to grow, something you have to learn to adjust to and get used to."

While college freshman Stafford can relate to a lot of what Eason is going through, so can NFL rookie Stafford. When Stafford arrived in the NFL as the first-overall pick by Detroit in 2009, he was joining a team that hadn't won a game in more than year and had a new coaching staff. Not only were the hopes of the Lions being put on Stafford's shoulders, but the city of Detroit was leaning on him, as well.

While Georgia's 2015 season wasn't 2009 Lions bad, it was definitely full of tumult, ultimately ending head coach Mark Richt's tenure. In the same way that Stafford held a lot of pressure to revitalize the Lions, Eason will be expected to do the same for the Bulldogs.

"It's a big responsibility at a young age," Stafford said. "But for me, and throughout the seven years I've been in the NFL, the biggest thing that I can take away is (to) control what you can control. Because there's a lot of variables that you can't. People are going to like you, they're going to dislike you for whatever reason. I wore my hat forwards today so people like me. If I wear it backwards, people don't. Just little things.

"You can't control that. You just go be yourself and just go try to be the best football player you can be. You do that and the rest will take care of itself."

This story was originally published March 25, 2016 at 9:58 PM with the headline "Experienced Matthew Stafford has advice for Jacob Eason ."