How adding reigning Lou Groza Award winner Graham Nicholson impacts Alabama

On Sunday night, Alabama landed a commitment from the reigning Lou Groza Award winner Graham Nicholson, who’s transferring over from Miami (Ohio). Now, some fans are wondering what impact that will have on the Crimson Tide in 2024. I’m here to tell you that it could be a game-changing addition for a number of reasons.

Over the last half decade, Alabama fans have grown accustomed to quality play at place kicker. No, that wasn’t always the case under former head coach Nick Saban. Quite the opposite, in fact, but Hoover (Ala.) native Will Reichard more than stabilized the position during his five-year stint in Tuscaloosa.

Was he perfect? Well, no one is perfect, but Reichard will go down as one of the best players at his position in school history. He is the all-time NCAA Division I scoring leader after posting 547 points in his career, after all. Now he’s off to the NFL after exhausting his college eligibility, which has created a significant void at the position.

The expectations for a while now have been that second-year place-kicker Conor Talty would be next man up, as the On3 Industry Rankings had him rated as the No. 4 player at his position for the 2023 recruiting cycle. Many thought Reichard could leave after the 2022 season, so at one point last year, there was even a chance for Talty to see immediate playing time.

Instead, Reichard returned to school for one more season, pushing Talty into a redshirt year. But even this spring, the former St. Rita (Chicago, Ill.) High School standout has struggled to take hold of the starting job. Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer said earlier this month that the competition was open with others such as Upton Bellefant and Reed Harradine competiting for the job.

“At the kicker position, it’s kind of everyone’s had their days. Both doing really well and they’ve been pretty consistent for the most part. We had a windy day a couple of days ago, a couple of practices ago, and struggled a little bit, right. But those are great learning moments and really trying to push through and today was a pretty good day,” DeBoer said back on April 10.

“Today was a really good day– making all their kick, really didn’t have any long field goals except a session we had early on where we were trying to challenge them for five minutes. But they’re all just keeping their head down, literally like they need to, and doing a good job there. It’s really an open competition there for a lot of guys take advantage of.”

Then on A-Day, we saw walk-on Upton Bellefant get the first field goal attempt while both he and Reid Schuback went 1-for-1 on attempts (from 23 and 27 yards out, respectively). Talty, on the other hand, missed his one and only attempt, but to be fair to him, that was from 45 yards out. Still, anyone watching was left confused on where Alabama’s kicker stands going into the heart of the offseason, and now we have an answer.

His name? Graham Nicholson. The impact of this addition cannot be overstated with the transition to a new coaching staff. We know DeBoer’s offense is in scoring position a lot, but you won’t see any unit convert every successful drive into touchdowns. So in other words, you need to have someone who can knock down kicks consistently.

Last year, DeBoer had Grady Gross as his kicker at Washington. He totaled 117 points, which tied for 13th-most in college football (ninth-most amongst kickers). In comparison, Reichard posted 121 points this past season, which was good for ninth-most overall and sixth-most at his position. Nicholson wasn’t far behind either player, as he put up 116 points (No. 16 overall, No. 12 amongst kickers) of his own.

Here’s the thing though… Nicholson converted a whopping 96.4% of his field goal attempts while going 27-of-28. His lone miss was from 49 yards out, too. Otherwise, he made 10 of his 11 attempts from 40 yards out or more, including a long of 52 yards against Bowling Green. Reichard missed three attempts total (22-of-25), and Gross missed four (18-of-22).

Now, it should be noted that Reichard had far more attempts from 50-plus yards than Nicholson and Gross combined. Those two had just one between them, which was that 52-yarder from Nicholson. Reichard, on the other hand, had five attempts from 50 or more yards out, and he converted all of them. So this isn’t to say that Nicholson is better than Reichard necessarily, but this is about as good of an option as Alabama could’ve asked for in a replacement.

Not only that, but you also have to think about how an effective kicker complements a dynamic offense like the one we’re expecting to see under DeBoer. Scoring points creates momentum, and Alabama should have a lot of drives finishing in either touchdowns or field goals (ideally touchdowns of course, but field goals keep momentum alive too).

In many ways, the offense-kicker combination is the equivalent of a punter to a defense. Getting quality play out of both of those elements creates a lethal combination. The same can be said for a dynamic offense and a strong kicking game. In fact, we probably weren’t talking enough about any concern at the position prior to the addition of Nicholson. He could eventually serve as one of the final pieces to a championship puzzle, but there’s more than needs to be determined before then.

At the very least, Alabama’s place kicking duties seem to have been left in reliable hands after Reichard.

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