101 Days of BC Football: Nigel Matthews, #2

Boston College has wasted no time in reappropriating Montel Harris’s old jersey number.

This year, it will be worn by a wide receiver named Nigel Matthews, a freshman newcomer to the 2012 Eagles football team.

We don’t have too many players from Georgia on the roster, but Matthews is one of them (though he was actually born in New Jersey, which goes well with the rest of this incoming class). There is conflicting information available about his pre-BC past: Rivals says he’s from Rome, GA and played for Rome High School, while BC says he’s from Dallas, GA and went to the Darlington School. Boston College’s information is correct, as one might hope. While playing football for Darlington, Matthews was an All-State first-team wide receiver as a senior, a year in which he had almost 900 receiving yards and 11 touchdown catches. He was one of the best players on the Tigers football team, but also on Darlington’s track team, where he qualified for the state championships in several events you’ve probably seen on the Olympics.

Matthews was a two-star recruit coming out of high school, and his only other offer was Air Force. Quelle surprise, Rivals lists Matthews’ combine time as being faster than what ESPN recorded. The former gave him a 40 time of 4.5 seconds, while ESPN measured him at 4.74.

He is not on the two-deep yet, and barring something very unforeseen, probably will not for the duration of this season. BC has burnt wide receiver redshirts in the recent past, but I would still expect that Matthews will redshirt in 2012. If he doesn’t, it’ll probably be a wasted year of eligibility because his playing time could be minimal with all of the other receivers available.