Smart money’s on Nichols

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/04/2017 (3438 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You could make a case there is no team sport in which the “team” part is more important than football.

Offence, defence, special teams — if you don’t have all three phases going, odds are you are going to lose on any given night.

Add to that the fact you’ve got 12 players on the field at all times in the Canadian game — sometimes 13 if you’re playing in Regina — and that’s an extraordinarily large number of moving parts that all have to be operating more or less at peak efficiency in order to put a win up on the board.

At the same time, you could also argue there is no team sport in which the performance of one individual — the quarterback — has a more single-handed impact on the final outcome.

Defence is smothering? Great. Got that kicking game working? Awesome. Running game has traction? Super. Quarterback threw three interceptions? You lose, most likely.

The New England Patriots, for instance, are the most successful team in pro football and there is no doubt they have a fine organization under owner Robert Kraft and head coach Bill Belichick.

But take QB Tom Brady out of the equation and I’d argue Kraft is just another billionaire charlatan and Belichick is, well, the guy who got fired in Cleveland.

You can see this theory at play closer to home in the way hall of fame QB Anthony Calvillo for years made former Montreal Alouettes GM Jim Popp and head coach Marc Trestman look a lot smarter than they actually are.

Popp and Trestman were thought for years to have some magic elixir that unlocked success in the CFL, only to have it revealed after Calvillo retired that their only secret was they had one of the best QBs in the history of the CFL playing for them.

Remove Calvillo from the equation and the Als under Popp became a train wreck and Trestman became a guy who couldn’t hold a job in pro football for more than one year at a time.

(We’ll see how smart Popp and Trestman are now that they’ve been reunited this season in the perpetual tire fire that is the Toronto Argonauts organization.

Find success in Toronto, on and off the field — and do it without Calvillo under centre? That really would take a couple of geniuses. Colour me skeptical).

All of which brings us to the opening of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ mini-camp at Investors Group Field today and the official coming-out party of Matt Nichols as the team’s latest starting quarterback and salvation.

Last year at this time, of course, Nichols was still playing the supporting role behind Drew Willy, whose image was plastered on billboards all over town as the team tried to sell him as the man who would lead the Bombers out of a championship wilderness now in its second quarter-century.

We all know how that turned out: Willy stumbled through a 1-4 start to the 2016 season and lost his job to Nichols, who promptly led Winnipeg on a seven-game winning streak and guided the club to an 11-7 finish and within striking distance of a win in the West semifinal.

Willy, meanwhile, was shuffled off to Toronto.

Flash forward a year and the same Bombers triumvirate that was so convinced Willy was this team’s future — CEO Wade Miller, GM Kyle Walters and head coach Mike O’Shea — is now looking for a do-over in the person of Nichols, who was handed a new contract in the off-season that carries through 2019.

So why should long-suffering fans believe this time will be different? Why should they believe Nichols will give them a reliable, elite and long-term presence under centre the likes of which this team hasn’t had since Khari Jones was traded in 2004?

Great questions, and the season hangs on Nichols providing the right answers, beginning with mini-camp this week.

If Nichols puts up numbers even close to what he did in a career season last year — 327 completions in 471 attempts for 3,666 yards, 18 touchdowns and nine interceptions — a team with a defence upgraded in the off-season should challenge again next November.

There are a lot of reasons to think Nichols is more than capable of doing just that.

To begin with, the Bombers are giving him an opportunity to succeed this season the likes of which he hasn’t had in a very long time.

It’s worth noting the last time Nichols headed into training camp as his team’s No. 1 man, he was 23 and preparing for the senior year of his standout, record-breaking four-year run as the starting QB at Eastern Washington.

History has recorded that Nichols had a phenomenal final season at a school that has become a bit of a CFL quarterback factory and he still holds school (touchdown passes) and conference (career passing) records that not even Bo Levi Mitchell — the current Calgary Stampeders QB who followed Nichols at Eastern Washington — could touch.

You know how some athletes seem to wilt in the spotlight? I’m thinking here of the way Winnipeg Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck’s game regressed this year after he traded a backup role in which he shone, for the starter’s job in which he didn’t.

Well, there’s another kind of athlete — the guy who is unremarkable in the shadows but then one day gets his big chance to take centre stage and rises to the occasion.

Nichols’ success as a starting QB, a role he first took over in Grade 2 and continued uninterrupted through college, suggests he might be that kind of athlete. The Bombers are betting the franchise on it.

My years at the racetrack tell me it might be a good bet. In horse racing, a great betting angle is finding an overlooked horse that has “back class,” which can be anything from some long-forgotten fine breeding to a horse who once raced against elite company now slumming it.

You’d be surprised how often back class rises to the surface and Nichols has back class from his years in Eastern Washington in a way that Willy, for instance, never did.

Now, before we start planning the route for a parade a day or two after the final Sunday in November, it is worth noting there are also some flashing caution lights when it comes to Nichols.

For starters, those numbers he put up last year are wildly out of whack with his career CFL stats. Prior to last season, he’d thrown 25 picks against just 30 TDs in three seasons as a backup and part-time starter.

That wide disparity between Nichols’ numbers from last year and his previous body of pro work would leave open, the stats gurus will tell you, the very real possibility his performance regresses this year.

Then there’s his history of injuries in the CFL — he broke his leg in the 2012 playoffs and then promptly tore his ACL the following pre-season to end 2013 before it even started.

Now, you could argue those are freak, one-time injuries rather than regular occurrences. It’s worth noting the torn ACL in 2013 happened while Nichols was trying to tackle a defender after throwing an interception, lending even more credence to the idea a successful — and healthy — Matt Nichols is a Matt Nichols who protects the ball the way he did in Paul LaPolice’s conservative offence in 2016.

Nichols isn’t flashy the way Ottawa’s Henry Burris was. He’s not going to single-handedly break a game open like Edmonton’s Mike Reilly can. Also, he doesn’t have the athleticism of, say, B.C.’s Jonathon Jennings.

But you know who else didn’t have any of those characteristics? Tom Burgess — and he just happened to be the Bombers’ QB back in 1990, the last time this team sipped from a Grey Cup.

Blue-collar. Workmanlike. Underrated.

They’ve worked for the Bombers in the past.

And always work for Winnipeg.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @PaulWiecek