A bit more from Richt on displeasure with Ealey

There were more than a few eyebrows raised the other night when Mark Richt said this about Washaun Ealey, his embattled tailback.

““Washaun has a ways to go still to show me that he deserves to start or even play right now,” Richt said during his speaking tour in Augusta.

Richt was asked Thursday night in Macon to expand on that.

“The bottom line is we don’t have a tailback right now that deserves to start, in my opinion,” Richt told my colleague Mike Lough at The Telegraph. “We don’t have a guy that has proven he can do all the things that we’re going to ask that guy to do. Washaun is one of them.”

So it isn’t quite clear whether Richt meant Ealey was coming up short off the field – he was suspended earlier in the spring, and later reinstated – or just on the field. He missed most of spring practice with a hamstring injury. It could be both, although in Macon Richt emphasized his discontent with the tailbacks’ on-field decisions.

Richt said it was “consistency period. Hold onto the football. Block. Don’t stumble through a hole that’s gaping. Make a good decision and hit it, you know.”

Speaking before the entire crowd, Richt expressed similar frustration, according to Lough:

“All those guys have had ample time in my opinion to take a hold of it,” Richt said, pointing also to upperclassman Caleb King. “No one has. That’s been the most disappointing (thing for) me probably the last couple seasons is that, that position didn’t get solidified by somebody there who was capable.”

If you needed more evidence that Isaiah Crowell will be given every chance to start right away, there you go.