Nichols eager for fresh start
As media members arrived to hear from new Toronto Argonauts quarterback Matt Nichols on Monday morning, a few of them stood in small groups around the BMO Field locker- room. There were the usual off- season pleasantries and inquiries about the source of various suntans. With 15 minutes to go until Nichols was due to arrive, a couple of television broadcasters spoke with a new guy wearing a blue suit. Perhaps a new PR staffer; the Argos have undergone a lot of change in a short time.
You probably see where this is going. It was Nichols. Early for his own media introduction, Nichols, absent the football pads and the eye black, cuts a hilariously unassuming figure for a professional athlete. He is listed at 6- foot-2 and 211 pounds, but that must be with a couple of fistfuls of change in his pockets.
But his non- imposing physical presence is also kind of fitting. Nichols is an accomplished CFL starter, but even during his most successful years with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, he was more likely to make the safe throw than the spectacular one. The game- manager tag was applied to him, as a pejorative, and he showed up for a media session last spring in a white cap that said Game Manager on it. It was a gift from his wife.
He may have embraced the label to disarm those who would wield it as criticism, but after Nichols suffered a season- ending shoulder injury last season — while leading the league in passer rating and leading Winnipeg to a 7- 2 record — the Blue Bombers traded for Zach Collaros for the stretch run. All he did was pilot the Bombers to their first Grey Cup win since 1990, and when Winnipeg had to choose a quarterback to be their starter in 2020, they went with the guy who had been a Bomber for a matter of months over the guy who had been their starting quarterback for four-plus seasons.
It had to hurt.
“It helps to have a positive personality,” Nichols, 32, said on Monday, adding that he was grateful for his years in Winnipeg. He offered a what-can-you-do take on the whole affair, a CFL title that also came at a personal low point. “I kind of got injured in a contract year and they decided to move on.” Insert shrug here.
It also helps that he wasn’t unemployed for long. The Argonauts were on the phone almost as soon as his release from the Bombers was official, and he has spent the past week meeting with general manager Michael ( Pinball) Clemons and new coach Ryan Dinwiddie.
“It was a relief that within moments I was getting phone calls from them,” Nichols said. I’m sure it was pleasing. Two minutes on the phone with Pinball would leave anyone smiling. The subsequent conversations, he said, “have got me really excited about the possibilities.”
One of those conversations was with Ricky Ray, who was an established starter in Edmonton before he was bumped by a new guy, and who landed in Toronto in 2012. That worked out OK: Ray won two Grey Cups here. Nichols went to Ray’s house in California — they are both from the small town of Redding — and talked about what it would be like in Toronto. Nichols said he wanted to know where the good splash pads and playgrounds were — he has two young daughters.
Nichols said Ray had good things to say about his time in Toronto, although it is unlikely he took much convincing. Once Collaros signed in Winnipeg, Jeremiah Masoli re-upped with Hamilton and Ottawa traded for the rights to Calgary’s Nick Arbuckle, the Argos were the only CFL team left in the market for a would- be starting quarterback.
And so, Nichols is in Toronto, and he has not only the job of turning around a team that went 8-28 over the last two seasons, he’s tasked with, maybe, leading the Argos into something approaching relevance in this market.
You wouldn’t necessarily pick a game manager to be that guy, although Nichols said he didn’t bring the hat with him to Toronto.
“That whole thing,” he said, “for some reason you get this negative term for winning a lot of football games.” (He is 45-28 as a CFL starter.) But it is evident that he doesn’t love the phrase.
“Whatever labels they want to put on me, I care more about the hundreds of texts I got when I was released by Winnipeg, from teammates and guys I’ve played with five years ago, about how they appreciated me and my leadership,” Nichols said. “That’s what matters to me, you can label it whatever you want.”
Wins, for a franchise that has had so few of them recently, would be a start. If the Argonauts and the CFL are ever going to be a thing again in Toronto, a couple of years of strong play has to be the foundation for whatever they can build on top of it. Nichols, just by falling into their lap, gives the new-look Argos a proven CFL quarterback of the calibre they have not had since Ray’s early days in town.