He’s sure now
In the first college football game he witnessed in person, Matt Nichols was almost forced to step under center and direct an offense about which he knew absolutely nothing.
It was an emergency situation that unfolded at San Jose State during Eastern Washington’s second game of the 2005 season, leaving Nichols, a freshman at the time, considerably ill at ease.
It didn’t seem to sit particularly well with his Eagles teammates, either.
Starting quarterback Erik Meyer was cramping up in the Bay Area heat and his backup, Chris Peerboom, had just injured his hand. As a result, Nichols, who was planning to redshirt, was ordered to get loose. While he was throwing on the sidelines, Rocky Hanni, the Eagles’ starting sophomore guard, wandered over to talk to his rookie quarterback.
“He asked me if I was scared,” Nichols recalled. “I told him, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘Me too.’ “
As it turned out, Peerboom shook off his injury and re-entered the game on the Eagles’ next possession, giving Nichols a chance to maintain his redshirt status.
Today Nichols can look back and laugh at the potential disaster that was averted.
“It was understandable,” Nichols said of the mutual lack of confidence he and Hanni shared in his abilities back then. “It was the first college game I’d ever been to, and I didn’t know the offense at all.”
Much has changed since then.
Nichols, after suffering through an interception-infested season as a redshirt freshman starter last fall, is quickly developing into one of the top young Football Championship Subdivision quarterbacks in the country.
Through five games, the 6-foot-2, 220-pound sophomore ranks No. 3 nationally in total offense with an average of 332.6 yards per game. He also leads the Big Sky Conference with a pass efficiency rating of 154.9 that includes a completion percentage of 63.1 percent (118 for 187), a conference-best 13 touchdown passes and two interceptions – 15 fewer than the 17 he threw in tying the single-season school record as a rookie starter last year.
Last weekend, in a 24-23 road loss to No. 1-ranked Montana, he staged his official coming-out party by torching the Grizzlies for 451 yards and two touchdowns through the air.
Standing calm and confident in the pocket, even in the face of Montana’s game-long defensive pressure, Nichols completed a school-record 37 of 59 throws and raised his season passing yardage total to 1,580 yards with six games – including Saturday’s 2:05 p.m. Woodward Field contest against Big Sky rival Montana State – remaining.
“He’s made great strides,” Eagles coach Paul Wulff said of Nichols, a former prep standout at West Valley High School in Cottonwood, Calif. “He’s as good a worker as we’ve ever had here. He’s passionate about the game and wants to be a great player.
“We knew he had some very good raw talent coming to us, and he’s grown, probably, as fast as we could have hoped, to this point.”
Ask Nichols’ teammates about the biggest change they’ve seen in their young quarterback since last fall and every one – including his former biggest critic, Hanni, points to his confidence.
“You look at game film from last year when he’s back in the pocket and he just doesn’t look comfortable,” Hanni said. “It’s like he really doesn’t want to be there. But this year, he’s staying in that pocket longer than most quarterbacks do, and I think that’s because he’s getting that kind of confidence all great quarterbacks have.
“Last year he didn’t have it, and you could kind of tell in the huddle. But this year, you can see he’s confident he can run this offense, even though we don’t huddle any more.”
The no-huddle offense, which was installed by first-year offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Todd Sturdy during spring practice, has proven to be an effective weapon for the Eagles this fall. Nichols, despite its complexities, seems to have wrapped his arms – and mind – around it completely.
Even during the loss to Montana, with a crowd of more than 23,000 doing its best to disrupt communications, Nichols made the no-huddle work with only a minimal amount of confusion.
“He’s handled it very well,” Sturdy said of his no-huddle strategy. “We put it in the first day of spring and kind of learned it on the run. He’s done a nice job with it.”
Sturdy was especially pleased with the way Nichols executed the offense against Montana – not just because of the difficult environment in Washington-Grizzly Stadium, but also because of the way he bounced back from a subpar performance in a 28-21 home loss to Portland State the previous weekend.
“He didn’t play very well the week before, and he knew it,” Sturdy said. “It says a lot about his character to come back a week later and play the way he did against Montana. Not everybody can do that.”
Nichols blames his ratty effort against PSU on his lack of preparation.
“The coaches were a little tough on me after that game,” he said. “They explained to me that I kind of reverted back to how I played last year. I wasn’t trusting protections, because I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been.”
As part of his self-imposed penance, Nichols spent an extra two hours a day watching film in preparation for Montana.
“The coaches reminded me day in and day out to just stay in the pocket and trust the protection,” he said. “And I helped myself out with all the extra film study, because I was ready for everything Montana did.
“Against Portland State, we were in good protections, but I kept changing them because I wasn’t sure. I was a lot more ready against Montana and didn’t really have to worry about checking (out of) so many protections.”
Sturdy continues to give Nichols plenty of rein when it comes to adjusting the offense on the fly. Sophomore wideout Aaron Boyce, who hauled in a school-record 17 passes against Montana, is convinced that freedom has played huge role in his classmate’s maturation.
“Coach Sturdy has been real good for Matt,” Boyce said. “He’s given him a little more freedom to see stuff and check out of things. It’s a freedom of “Hey, I believe in you. Now go make a play,’ and I think that kind of freedom has made Matt flourish.”
Even Hanni has become an unshakable believer.
“He’s still only a sophomore and he’s still young,” Hanni said of Nichols, “but he has definitely become a leader on this team. Last year, as a freshman, I think maybe he felt he really shouldn’t say much because he was kind of a young buck, still.
“But this year his leadership as grown immensely and he’s become a great quarterback.
“And the best thing is, he’s going to get even better.”