"When you're going through hell, keep going."
        — Winston Churchill

   There really isn’t much more left to say about the sudden and violent downturn of the Georgia Southern football program.
    Over the last calendar year and some change, the Eagles have experienced losing and disappointment in almost every possible way. It’s almost as if the team must go through every conceivable way of failing before it can get back to winning.
    It started out innocently enough last September when the Eagles were beaten handily by a Western Michigan team that ended up in a New Year’s bowl. There was no shame there, but that loss gave way to a night in Jonesboro, Ark. where the Eagles won a turnover battle 5-0, only to find themselves punchless on offense and see a lead slip away in the final seconds.
    The negative momentum only picked up from there.
    There was a loss to Georgia Tech where the Eagles were out of contention almost before the first quarter ended.
    There was a 10-0 lead over Appalachian State and a frenzied Paulson Stadium crowd that watched Georgia Southern barely break 100 yards of offense and allow 34 unanswered points over the final three quarters.
    There was a nationally televised Thursday night game where an injury-riddled Eagle squad was forced to throw its true freshman, third-string quarterback into the fire. And of course there was a second consecutive loss against in-state rival Georgia State that — despite all of the Eagles’ troubles — was an objectively inferior team that once again got the best of its nemesis.
    The first month of 2017 has only seen things get worse as it started with blowout losses to ‘Power 5’ schools on either side of an incomprehensible loss to FCS New Hampshire.
But Wednesday night’s loss to Arkansas State may have been the weirdest circumstance of any of the Eagles’ 11 losses over their last 13 games.
Against the Red Wolves, Georgia Southern racked up 493 yards of offense. Its struggling option offense ripped off 333 yards on the ground. The usually shaky passing game connected on over 50 percent of its attempts, including a perfectly thrown deep ball for a touchdown.
The Eagle defense recorded five turnovers. It held a solid quarterback to just 12-of-26 passing, allowed only 1.9 yards per rushing attempt and even received the gift of two missed extra points.
And, in the end, it was never all that close. As evidenced by a rapidly-exiting crowd that only filled half of the stadium to begin with, Georgia Southern was all but buried midway through the third quarter and never closed the deficit to less than 11 points following the Red Wolves’ touchdown to begin the second half.
If Wednesday’s game could be summed up in a gesture, it was a facepalm.
On a night where so many individual plays went well for Georgia Southern, the overwhelming sense for any Eagle fan watching the game was that the team is still miles away from expectations and that — all positives aside — the game was never the Eagles’ to win.
That’s a weird and unsettling way to lose. And while the optimist would say that such a display is a sign that Georgia Southern is out of ways to mess things up, the realist looks at a maddeningly inconsistent team and struggles to see where anything improves anytime soon.
A home game didn’t help. A long week leading into the Wednesday start didn’t help. A full bye week and plenty of rest led to the Eagles’ worst result of the season.
It can be argued that the Eagles are more talented than some of the teams remaining on the schedule. But that didn’t stop the New Hampshire game from going sideways, or any of a number of last season’s debacles, for that matter.
Georgia Southern is caught in a weird sort of college football limbo.
The Eagles are far better off than many programs. Sure, the 0-4 start is nightmarish for fans, but there are programs that routinely go the better part of a decade without a winning season. Georgia Southern is also still firmly planted in the middle of one of the most fertile prep recruiting bases in the country. And the fans — even if angry at the moment — bring a passion and support that is long gone from some teams off to bad starts.
So, where does that leave the Eagles? They still have good players, they still have winnable games on the calendar and they still have guys playing hard and not giving up on the game or each other.
The question is simply whether the few shreds of hope can continue to endure and outlast the losing. It has to if there is to be a turnaround anytime soon.
Because if you find yourself in hell, laying down is no good way to escape.