Nichols pretty good on defence, too

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This article was published 08/08/2016 (3604 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With the first two stanzas of the redemption song this football team has been singing, there is no denying that Matt Nichols has been the primary catalyst behind it. His precision passing, his infectious enthusiasm and energy, and his — by all appearances — mastery of this multifaceted offence are but a few of the variables he has successfully introduced the last couple of weeks, that have resulted in back-to-back wins for the Blue and Gold.

While Nichols certainly has proven to be an inspiration to the two phases of this football team that he doesn’t play on — defence and special teams — it is the trickle-down effect of the offence he is running that has brought about the most compelling changes.

In the history of professional defensive football, the one universal constant throughout all the evolutions of the game is that no defence has ever made a mistake while sitting on the bench. In some of the best defensive groups I ever belonged to we prided ourselves on how well we played when we weren’t playing at all. The changes Nichols has brought about in this offence, thus far, have had a pronounced effect on his defensive colleagues.

Prior to Nichols’ last two starts, the offence was spending, on average, just over 27 minutes a game on the field. Since he has been at the helm, this has increased to more than 34 minutes a game, an increase of almost half a quarter. Seven minutes a game may not sound like a lot of time to you, but with a play clock that starts and stops, that can be the equivalent of two, if not three, offensive drives. If you subscribe to this theory of how defences are perfect while watching the game from afar, another half-quarter of sitting on the bench, not getting tired and not making mistakes should lead to a drastic change in results — and it has.

Prior to the last two games — otherwise known as pre-Nichols — when the defence was on the field for more than half the game, they were giving up an average of 455 yards a match. The last two games, when they were drinking Gatorade, toasting one another and digging splinters out of their posteriors, they surrendered an average of 376 yards a contest. Not quite the standard of the 2000 Baltimore Ravens — considered to be one of the greatest defences of all time — but an average difference of almost 80 yards a game, which is significant.

Yards surrendered can sometimes be influenced and affected by situational game day factors, though, so it’s always better to take a look at the points given up by a defence to get a better feel of how a unit has improved.

In the first five weeks, including the first win against Hamilton, this defence was allowing an average of 27 points against. Once again, since Nichols has started, and began hogging time on the field, this number has plummeted to a paltry 17 points a contest.

It’s amazing how much you can get better by doing nothing at all, isn’t it?

With 11 games remaining this improvement is far from chiselled in granite, but there’s no denying that 10 points, or essentially two scores a game, is exponential improvement.

While Nichols has certainly brought about significant change to the effectiveness of the offence he is running, and seems to have rallied the troops around the redemption song he has been singing, the best thing he brought to the table for this defence, is that he is letting them play perfectly a lot more often than they used to.

Doug Brown, once a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears weekly in the Free Press.

Twitter: @DougBrown97