Kalen DeBoer calls them “gimmie kicks.” The head coach’s philosophy has always been to give his kickers as many opportunities from short-distance attempts early in the season in order to get them in a rhythm and build up their confidence.
That’s the plan anyway. Alabama’s big-play offense prevented that transition for Miami-Ohio transfer Graham Nicholson in his first season with the Crimson Tide this year.
Nicholson, who earned the Lou Groza Award last season, didn’t even attempt a field goal in Alabama’s first two games. He pushed his first attempt wide right from 46 yards out at Wisconsin in Week 3. After hitting a 28-yarder against Georgia two weeks later, he didn’t get another attempt until the Week 8 loss against Tennessee, where he went 1 of 2, coming up short on a 54-yard try before hitting the target from 35 yards out.
Since then Nicholson has been perfect, connecting on two field goals against Missouri as well as one last week against Mercer. Now it seems like the graduate kicker is finally finding his rhythm.
“Getting that first one is hard, and it took him a long time to get that first opportunity,” DeBoer said of Nicholson during his weekly radio show on Wednesday night. “It isn’t his fault. We were just scoring touchdowns and the opportunities didn’t present themselves the same way.
“He has been just steady since Day 1. We see him every day in practice. I think he’s getting more and more comfortable in our stadium in particular.”
DeBoer called the two kicks Nicholson made a Missouri “critical to Alabama’s 34-0 win over the Tigers. The first of which came from a season-long 47 yards out as the kicker helped the Tide put points on the board to cap off the game’s opening possession. From there, Nicholson helped a struggling Alabama offense get some momentum by hitting a 39-yarder to put the Tide up 6-0 late in the second quarter.
“Thought [the 47-yarder] was a big kick for us right there to get three points on the board,” DeBoer said. “And then he came back and did it again.”
While kicking isn’t DeBoer’s expertise, he said he still makes an effort to monitor his kicker’s reps during practice in order to get a good feel of what affects them and what went wrong during misses.
“A kicker might miss a kick in practice, and if you really weren’t paying attention, you might just think it was him,” DeBoer explained. “Well, it might have been the snap or the hold or something else. There’s other moving parts to that part. It might not solely fall on the kicker missing in practice, and you can quickly some thoughts about, ‘Well, he’s not in his groove right now,’ when really there were other factors that played a role in it.”
As for Nicholson, DeBoer believes he’s finally found his rhythm and should be able to return to his award-winning form to close out the season.
“He’s mentally strong,” DeBoer said. “He’s got a lot that he’s done in the past that he goes back to that gives him the confidence he has. You still got a new place and you gotta kind of reprove yourself. He’s done a good job of doing that.”
Last season, Nicholson made 27 of 28 field-goal attempts and 35 of 37 extra-point tries. That included an NCAA-record streak of 25 straight made field goals. Through 10 games at Alabama, he is 5 of 7 on field goals and has made all 48 of his extra-point tries.
