Jerick McKinnon had a busy morning on Saturday.

The rising sophomore quarterback took all of the snaps in the final third of Georgia Southern’s scrimmage at Paulson Stadium after backups Ezayi Youyoute and Russell DeMasi went down with injuries.

"I wasn’t really expecting that," McKinnon said of taking a majority of the snaps during the scrimmage. "But it was a good learning curve and a good chance to learn from a lot of film."

Starting quarterback Jaybo Shaw still is recovering from offseason surgery on his groin and did not participate.

Youyoute was banged up on the first play of the morning after a six-yard run but stayed on the field for the remainder of the session.

DeMasi was helped to the locker room after getting banged up late in the scrimmage after a 10-yard run that set up a 26-yard field goal by Luke Cherry.

McKinnon put on a red jersey and played each snap after DeMasi left the field.

"Typically we’ve always gone live on the quarterbacks," GSU coach Jeff Monken said of the team’s scrimmages. "We feel like it gets them to play at the speed we want them to. If they’re in a red jersey, they know they’re going to get tagged off, and a lot of times they’re not trying to make guys miss in the open field or they’re easing off.

"It’s unfortunate that we got two of them hurt, and that’s why we put Jerick in red there at the end. Just to make sure he didn’t get hurt, too, so we could finish the scrimmage. We’ll see how they are, and hopefully we’ll get those guys back."

Rising sophomore fullback Robert Brown, who led the Eagles as a true freshman with 1,004 rushing yards in 2010, did not participate in the scrimmage after sitting out of contact the prior week.