Riley Nelson: A Football Player

Sometimes hype gets misspelled as hope. Jake just might be a victim of that typo. Heaps may always be spelled "Hype".

After Friday night's Jake Heaps debacle, he found himself on the sidelines, watching the greatest head of hair in Provo drive the big BYU ship 97 yards, capped off with a final touchdown so inspiring, it deserves it's own folk song!
Jake Heaps might be the next Ben Olsen; the greatest high school quarterback in his high school recruiting class who signs with BYU... and graduates somewhere else. 

And Riley Nelson... he might be to this and next year's football team what Brandon Doman was to the 2001 cougar team. Google it.

Sometimes a football team needs a "sometimes"

Sometimes in the middle of the 5th game of the season, when you are trailing an instate competitor you are supposed to beat just about every year, and you've already been blown out by your rival, you realize something that is sometimes hard to realize... 

Sometimes, you just don't have a great team.

When that moment hits it brings with it one of two things; The desire to give up and ice your knees, or that feeling of "whatta' we have to lose!? All we have left is our pride."

And that's when a team is ready for a sometimes. 

On Friday night at L.E.S., Riley Nelson became a "sometimes".

He isn't a precision passer, or a prolific proven starter from a huge high school all the way across the country. He isn't a fine tuned QB that has perfected his throwing motion with specialized quarterbacking coaches. Nope. Riley Nelson is a football player. And sometimes, a team needs a football player. A football player from Logan Utah!

A yard is earned, not given

Riley Nelson had a shot at being named the starting QB last year. He actually did take the first snap of the season, and won his first game... but he did so as a split QB with Heaps. Soon after that Nelson went down with an injury, and Heaps won over the starting job... as was expected.

Heaps went on to have a pretty impressive second half of the season against weaker talent, and solidified himself as a starter.

That is, until Friday late in the third quarter after four other games of playing at a high level of huge disappointment... he was benched for the football player from Logan.

It's been said (by a pretty good locker room source, as well as a trusted insider) that Heaps has been hard to follow as a leader. Leadership. It was something he felt he had earned over the last half of the 2010 season. He hadn't. He had earned respect, but was still a ways off from being called the leader of the 2011 team, and when he started to call out blockers and started to demand from grown men a level of perfection when he himself hadn't come close to it, he caused a division on the field.

Enter Riley. If you are looking for someone to give respect to, look for the back-up. He came from being a freshman starter at USU to being the back-up at BYU behind a kid almost 3 years younger. And still, works harder than just about anyone with a "Y" on their helmet.

Witnessing that Riley drive from the stands as 60,000 fans chanted "RILEY! RILEY!", was a football moment. A moment when I would go as far to say, a starting QB spot was earned. At one point he was hit so hard reaching for a first down his helmet flew off. He had a few passes, only one of which looked anything like what Heaps is capable of, but he did what was needed to win. 

He reminded us all what it takes to get an extra yard when it appears an extra yard just isn't there...

A football player making a football play.

The respect and the starting position goes to this BYU team's "sometimes"... Riley Nelson: The football Player.