Bolton's big day illustrates rare football IQ
During the 2016 and 2017 football seasons, Frisco (Tex.) Lone Star high school head coach Jeff Rayburn knew to expect a visitor to his office each Monday morning. The coaching staff would send players a scouting report on the team’s upcoming opponent on Sundays, and without fail, linebacker Nick Bolton would arrive the next day having already digested the report and bearing ideas for how Lone Star could stop its opponent’s offense.
Bolton, now a sophomore at Missouri, started at linebacker for the varsity team all four years at Lone Star, an impressive feat in its own right. But Rayburn said by the time he was an upperclassman, Bolton was as almost as much a part of the coaching staff as he was a player. Rayburn called Bolton “the smartest football player I’ve been around, at any position.”
“He would come in on a Monday morning after the game plan was sent to him on Sunday with questions, with answers and ideas,” Rayburn said. “That doesn’t happen very often. Throughout a game he would come back, whether it be between series or at halftime, and talk with our (defensive coordinator), who was his position coach, and they could have open, candid conversations about what Nick sees out there because the trust was so high and the belief in him to see things and diagnose things and help prepare the team.”
Bolton no longer helps craft the defensive game plan at Missouri, but the Tiger coaching staff still points to his intelligence as his defining attribute. His smarts earned him playing time in all 13 games as a true freshman last season and the starting weakside linebacker spot this year after Terez Hall graduated.
Saturday, fans finally got to see Bolton’s football IQ in action. In his second career start, Bolton turned in a historic performance in Missouri’s 38-7 win over West Virginia. He recorded seven tackles — including two behind the line of scrimmage — as well as two interceptions, one of which he returned 20 yards for a touchdown. He is the first Missouri player since Sean Weatherspoon in 2008 to intercept multiple passes and score a touchdown in the same game, and the first Tiger in the 21st century to record two interceptions and two tackles for loss in the same game. He was named the SEC defensive player of the week and to Pro Football Focus’ national team of the week as a result.
“To get two turnovers and one for a touchdown, that’s a heck of a day,” defensive coordinator Ryan Walters said. “He’s deserving to get player of the week.”
As rare as Bolton’s performance against West Virginia was, Bolton’s coaches and teammates were not surprised. Rayburn, especially, has been trying to tell anyone who would listen that Bolton could be a special player.
“Honestly, we expected this out of him,” Rayburn said. “We expected, no matter where he went, he was going to be successful because he’s going to put in the work and he is such a great talent.”
Despite Rayburn’s praise and Bolton’s high school production — he racked up 111 tackles as a junior and 130 as a senior, winning the Texas Class 5A District 13 Defensive MVP award both seasons — he flew a bit under the radar as a recruit. A three-star prospect, Bolton initially committed to Washington, but when he expressed desire to continue exploring other options, he and the coaching staff “went our separate ways.” Texas A&M showed interest but never offered a scholarship. It wasn’t until mid January of 2018 that Missouri extended an offer. Bolton committed just two days before National Signing Day.
It didn’t take long after Bolton arrived to campus for the coaching staff to start telling people they had gotten a steal. On Aug. 13, 2018, less than two weeks into fall camp, head coach Barry Odom mentioned Bolton as a standout true freshman. Almost every day after that, it seemed, some member of the coaching staff went out of his way to praise Bolton.
“As soon as he came in here he was a guy who stood out,” safety Khalil Oliver remembered. “He was a guy who everybody looked to and was like, alright, he’s going to play his freshman year.”
No surprise, linebackers coach Vernon Hargreaves said it was Bolton’s intelligence that impressed the coaches most. He said Bolton could “talk the language, like, immediately.” He compared Bolton arriving on campus to a student who already speaks Spanish showing up to a Spanish I class.
Bolton attributes his football knowledge to his film study habits and his father, Carlos Bolton, who played linebacker at Louisiana Tech from 1989 to 1993. Carlos coached Nick’s peewee teams and, even though he wasn’t an official member of the Lone Star staff, “coached from the sidelines” during his son’s high school career. Nick said his father taught him to soak up knowledge from every available source.
“Just watching film, picking up everything each and every day and just learning,” Bolton said when asked where his football IQ came from. “Learned from Cale (Garrett), learning from coach Hargreaves, learning from coach Walters, just soaking in everything, and just building my knowledge each day on the football field.”
Bolton’s smarts allowed him to get on the field sooner than most true freshman. Once he started getting regular reps, his consistent production allowed him to pass a couple more experienced players on the depth chart and secure the backup weakside linebacker spot.
“Like I tell those guys all the time, I don’t determine who plays,” Hargreaves said. “You do, by what you do. … When Nick got out there and I put him out there the first time a year ago, he started making plays. I can’t take him off the field.”
Bolton mostly played on special teams last season, though he was thrust into action with the first team during the second half of Missouri’s game against Alabama at Bryant-Denny Stadium. Hall got ejected from the game due to a targeting penalty, and Bolton held his own, finishing the game with eight tackles. The performance further amped up the hype created by the coaches’ praise during fall camp.
When he finally made his starting debut in Week One, however, Bolton and the rest of the defense faltered. Wyoming rushed for 297 yards as part of a 38-31 upset of Missouri. Garrett said after the game that he and Bolton got caught out of position at times, tricked by the Cowboys’ use of misdirection. Odom admitted the coaching staff had hoped for more in Bolton’s starting debut after seeing him impress in practice for more than a year.
“I was a little disappointed, I guess in a way, in his Week One performance,” Odom said, “because we had seen so much better than he played that Week One.”
Bolton responded by playing an “almost perfect” game against West Virginia, in Hargreaves’ assessment. He and Garrett repeatedly stuffed the Mountaineer running backs, holding West Virginia to 32 rushing yards on 30 attempts. Bolton showed his coverage ability as well, intercepting his first pass when West Virginia quarterback Austin Kendall threw wide of his intended receiver and the ball got knocked into the air. He put an exclamation point on the victory when he read backup quarterback Jack Allison’s eyes, undercut a pass and scampered 20 yards for a touchdown. His Pro Football Focus grade of 93.3 is the second-best for any Missouri defensive player since Odom took over as head coach.
After the game, Bolton joked that he has the best hands on the defense. Walters said the two picks were more illustrative of Bolton’s IQ.
“He understands leverage, understands angles, understands coverage and where his help is at, and that lends itself to knowing when you can pull the trigger and when you gotta stay and take care of responsibility,” Walters said. “It was fun to see his hard work and preparation show up on Saturday.”
There seems to be a sense that Bolton’s big game Saturday will be looked back upon as his arrival — the moment a star introduced himself to the fanbase. Odom said he thinks Bolton is “just starting to scratch the surface of the player he can be.”
You won’t find Rayburn disagreeing. After seeing Bolton’s rare football intelligence firsthand as the two discussed high school game plans, Rayburn wasn’t surprised to see Bolton’s breakout performance against West Virginia. He believes there’s no limit on how far Bolton’s smarts can take him.
“It could be the New England Patriots and Bill Bellichick’s system or it could be the simplest high school system that everybody runs,” Rayburn said, “Nick Bolton is going to be one of the smartest guys out on the football field.”