What will it take for Nichols to shake the No. 2 label?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/08/2016 (3653 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It is exceedingly rare in pro sports for any athlete — let alone one in the seventh year of their career — to elevate and shake loose from what personnel managers have deemed them capable of. Yet that is exactly what it appears Matt Nichols is doing.

In spite of winning five games and losing only two as a starter in Edmonton, it wasn’t hard to decipher the depth of attachment they had for him, when they were willing to depart with his services for a conditional seventh-round draft pick. At the most important position on the field, that is about as close as you can officially come to getting something for absolutely nothing.

When Nichols arrived in Winnipeg in 2015, there were two things that became abundantly clear — he was an immediate upgrade over anything else the team had in its stable in the quarterback position; and once Drew Willy was healthy, Nichols would immediately be relegated back to the bench. While going 2-5 as the injury fill-in here in 2015, Nichols had some shining moments and displayed some grit and resiliency while pulling out a couple of victories. But there was never a moment’s hesitation over who the starter was going to be going forward.

Even after a training camp in 2016, where several sources confirmed that he out-played and out-performed Willy on a regular basis, Nichols was still, almost automatically, demoted to the dutiful, serviceable backup who was only here as a stop-gap in case everything went horribly wrong, again.

Nothing was broken this time around, but things still did go awfully through the first five games of 2016. At 1-4, Willy rarely looked comfortable in the new offensive system, surrounded by upgrades at running back, receiver, and on the offensive line. Almost a third of the way through the season, it seemed like the competent and prolific offence many were expecting had actually regressed since Marcel Bellefeuille left town and there was no hope in sight. Until, of course, Nichols got another shot at becoming something that few thought he could at this stage of his career.

It could not have been easy to make the switch, when for all of Willy’s career here, he looked to be significantly superior to Nichols in almost every conceivable measure of a starting pivot.

Since Nichols wasn’t exactly new to the game, few thought he could rewrite the narrative and be anything other than a relief, change up pitcher for the rest of his career. Even now, with three consecutive wins under his belt, you still can’t find anybody willing to officially name him the No. 1 pivot, possibly because many believe he is playing above his pay grade and will regress to the norm soon. When you’ve invested in another starter, both financially and emotionally to the degree this team has, these are no longer designations to be trifled with.

It is true that two out of three of Nichols’ wins so far have come against back-up quarterbacks who have significantly less experience than he does, and that we will learn more about the sustainability of his performance after upcoming road games in Montreal and Saskatchewan. Yet all signs point towards Nichols evolving professionally at a time in his career when players are not thought to be capable of change, or of rewriting their own script.

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

Twitter: @DougBrown97