Ealey/tailbacks update

Neither of the following is a certainty. But after speaking with Caleb King and running backs coach Bryan McClendon on Tuesday, you do get the feeling that:

- Carlton Thomas is going to get more carries than expected on Saturday.

- Washaun Ealey is on track to return for the South Carolina game.

When Ealey was suspended for what Georgia said was a minimum of one game, King seemed set to be the primary ball-carrier against Louisiana-Lafayette. After all, King was named the starter (by a nose) over Ealey, hours before the arrest.

But everyone keeps having nice things to say about Thomas, the 5-foot-7 scat-back who carried 22 times for 92 yards last year.

McClendon granted that King will get more carries than he would have if Ealey was available. But the assistant coach added that Thomas has had a very good camp.

“You’ve gotta reward Carlton. Carlton’s been practicing good the whole camp, been getting better the whole camp,” McClendon said. “So you wanna make sure you reward him with the ample amount of playing time that he rightly deserves.”

King also said that he was rotating at practice Monday and Tuesday with Thomas, in almost the same way that he had been with Ealey.

As for Ealey, I don’t think I’m burying the lead, since head coach Mark Richt said on Friday there was a good chance the suspension would only last one game … as long as Ealey took care of business.

Whatever that business is, McClendon said Ealey is doing it.

“He’s been doing a good job of doing everything we’ve asked him, to this point,” McClendon said. “Now there’s still a lot of days from now until that first game, or now even until that second game. So who knows what could happen until those days. But up until this point, he’s been doing everything we’ve asked him to do and doing it the way we’ve wanted him to do it.”

King said Ealey has been taking an active role at practices, trying to “hype everybody up.”

“I know he’s mad he can’t play the first game,” King said of Ealey. “But I know next week he’ll be ready, or the following week he’ll be ready.”