From a 3-13 season to a litany of off-field distractions (consequences, call-outs and concussions, to alliteratively name a few), it’s been easy to lose sight of Matt Nichols over the last few months.
It seems like a lifetime ago that Nichols was on the field, putting together a very pre-season-like first quarter against the Riders in June (five-of-seven passing for 88 yards and a pair of interceptions) when the Eskimos’ quarterback picture was forced into a finished work.
Trying to make a tackle on that second interception he threw, Nichols tore his ACL and ended the team’s training camp QB showdown. With the announcement that Nichols was out for the season, Mike Reilly became the team’s starter and the offence had no choice but to move forward.
As John MacKinnon wrote this past week, Nichols has been present with the team all season. He’s in meetings, he’s a voice in the locker-room at halftime, he’s still an extra set of eyes for Reilly. Most important, he’s rehabbing and getting his knee stronger for next season.
What next season holds for Nichols is the question.
As Nichols told Dave Campbell and Morley Scott in their pre-game show on 630 CHED on Friday night, his contract is up this season. Given how well Reilly has played this year and given the needs of other teams around the league (Ottawa has a few QBs to draft/sign and Winnipeg is in the market for a starter), our limited glimpses of Nichols over the last four years could be all we ever see of him in Eskimos’ colours.
Nichols made his intentions on the matter clear.
“It’s going to be a crazy offseason for the league, not just for quarterbacks, but every team is going to lose four guys I think,” he told CHED, referring to the upcoming RedBlacks’ expansion draft. “There’s going to be a lot of mixup. For me personally, I love it here, I’ve been here for four years now and I’d love to see this thing turned around. I’d love to be back in Edmonton and that’s my goal. It’s not something I can really totally control. Whatever happens this offseason happens, but I’d love to be here next year. “
When Ed Hervey traded for and signed Reilly in January, he spoke about recreating that Ricky Ray and Jason Maas dynamic, where both quarterbacks pushed one another to play their best. Considering everything Reilly has done this year to establish himself as the starter, it’d take Nichols coming into camp and playing lights out football to unearth what Reilly has built this year. Always a team-first guy, Nichols seems to realize the challenge in front of him
“I think I have a lot to offer here,” he said on Friday. “I’m only 26 but I’ve been in the league for four years. I think having that kind of competition makes guys better. I’d love to be back here and compete for a job.”
Kavis Reed was asked about Nichols when the team was in Regina on Oct. 11. He said then that stability at that position is crucial.
“Mike’s play has asserted him as the leader of this football team, as arguably the face of the franchise. Because of his performance he’s our starting quarterback,” Reed said. “I feel right now for the franchise moving forward that it’s Mike’s football team, it’s Mike’s job.
“You do not want controversy on the football team at any level. You never want it at the quarterback position because that is a position of stability.”
You wonder, though — I wonder, anyway — what would have happened this year if Nichols were healthy? Who would have won that QB showdown in training camp? Even if it were Reilly, when he and the rest of the offence struggled in the first few weeks of the season, how quickly would Nichols have been put into games? Remember back to Weeks 4 and 5 when Reilly looked shaky in losses to B.C. and Montreal. The team toyed with the idea of using Jonathan Crompton. He took over for Reilly in the second quarter in Montreal in Week 5 and showed he wasn’t ready for the speed of the game yet and the team had no choice but to tough it out with Reilly. Reed now looks at that second half against the Als as Reilly’s turning point in his development.
If Nichols were there, where would Reilly be right now in terms of his development? Conversely, if Nichols had struggled, how quickly would Reilly have gone back in? You never want to see injuries, but this one forced the Eskimos to stick with Reilly early in the season and he’s better for it now.
Here’s CHED’s full interview with Reilly from Friday, if you haven’t heard it yet.
Building warriors?
I went back and forth on whether to write about Matt Nichols or this very thoughtful column from the Washington Post’s Leonard Shapiro on how the media overlooks the violence in football while covering it.
There are two parts of this piece that jump out at me.
I covered the NFL over four decades dating back to 1972. Now semi-retired myself and five years removed from day-to-day football coverage, I have one main regret: not focusing more of my reporting and writing on the absolute brutality of the sport, particularly the painful post-football lives of so many players.
While a headline-grabbing injury like a concussion or spinal damage deploys all kinds of little red flags for me, I’ve grown desensitized to the everyday violence of football and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
Blown knees, hyperextended limbs, broken bones and the many lifelong-damaged vets that limp and ache and forget around us grease the wheels of this machine. And I get it, I know what it’s like to love a sport so much that you would put your body at risk rather than not play it (though to my detriment, basketball’s risks and injuries reside in a much more peaceful game-time atmosphere, even at its most competitive levels). I could poll every player in the Esks locker-room today and they’d all tell me the same thing: They love the violence of the game and they know the risks involved. And on some level I think all of us who watch, either as fans or media, know the risks too. But on some level we also love the violence and the carnage and the warriors that are celebrated for emerging from it. Shapiro said it better than I can:
The game is appealing and appalling at the same time. And I have no doubt that all of us, news media included, will continue to feed the beast, even if the beast keeps feeding on its own.
