Nick Evers has a chip on his shoulder that is here to stay

He’s tall, good looking, smart with a quick grin that could charm someone who lives north of the Arctic circle into buying a bag of ice. Not the kind of guy you would think walks around with a chip on his shoulder the size of his native Texas. The chip sitting so prominently on Nick Evers’ shoulder serves as a reminder that he can’t ever stop working nor can he stop learning.

“You can’t ever think you’re already there, that you’ve arrived,” Evers said this past Friday at Piesanos in Gainesville as he relaxed before the Friday Night Lights event. “Once you start thinking like that, you’re done. You have to believe you’re really good because you’ve put in the time and the work to prepare for this moment, but when you start thinking you’ve got it made, someone’s going to come along who’s worked harder than you. So I keep working harder and keep trying to learn the game. There are people out there who doubt me now … there will always be people who doubt you. So I have that chip on my shoulder and it tells me the way to shut the doubters up is to keep working harder, keep learning more and never give up. No matter how good I might get in the future, the chip stays right where it is, right on my shoulder, and it’s a big one.”

It’s that chip on his shoulder that made Nick Evers one of the high risers at the recent Elite 11 showcase on the Left Coast. He started the week with three stars attached to his name, ranked in the lower half of the 20 quarterbacks selected to attend the week of competition and learning. When it started, Evers was ranked the 26th dual threat quarterback by 247Sports.com, 9th by Rivals.

Once the competition began, however, Evers began a spectacular rise that saw him pick apart the rankings. He finished in the top eight in every workout, was spectacular in the accuracy gauntlet competition where he threw six in a row through the target bullseye, and impressed everyone with his ability to quickly grasp a new concept. When the week ended, Evers was the No. 3 quarterback in the Sports Illustrated All-American rankings, trailing only Clemson commit Cade Klubnik and Texas commit Maalik Murphy. Among those trailing Evers were No. 4 Devin Brown (Southern Cal); No. 5 Ty Simpson (Alabama); No. 6 Quinn Ewers (Ohio State); No. 7 Conner Weigman (Texas A&M); No. 10 A.J. Duffy (Florida State); No. 12 Walker Howard (LSU); No. 15 Drew Allar (Penn State); No. 16 Tayven Jackson (Tennessee) and No. 20 Jacurri Brown (Miami), who all started the week ranked higher.

Evers earned his fourth star at Elite 11 but most of those aforementioned quarterbacks still have a higher ranking according to 247Sports and Rivals. That is like heaving a couple of 50-gallon gas cans onto the fire that is already raging within Nick Evers.

“Do I think about it?” he asked in response to a question about the lack of respect given by the two major pay for info recruiting services. “Sure I do, but all it does is make me work harder. I can’t control anything other people think, but I can control how hard I work.”

He can also control who’s going to be directing his path in college. He had 25 offers and had just finished a visit to Georgia when he committed to the Gators. Evers will be the first to tell you the other schools that were recruiting him did their best to highlight their advantages but that paled when he compared it to Florida’s combination of academics, family atmosphere, coaching staff and learning to play quarterback as taught by Dan Mullen.

He's well aware of the Mullen legacy when it comes to quarterbacks. Mullen proteges Alex Smith, Chris Leak and Tim Tebow were a few years ahead of Evers’ time, but he relates to former Mississippi State and now Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott and Kyle Trask, who made the Heisman podium last year and will apprentice under Tom Brady at Tampa Bay.

“Look at Dak Prescott and Kyle Trask and the way he [Mullen] transformed them,” Evers said. “Those guys weren’t 5-star recruits but look at how he turned them into NFL quarterbacks. I want a coach like that who sees your potential and knows how to get the best out of you. Playing in the NFL has always been a goal of mine, ever since I started playing quarterback. Everybody has a dream and I think Coach Mullen is the missing piece for me in this process.

“When you add it all up, Florida had everything for me. I had a checklist. I wanted great academics and Florida’s right up there. I wanted a family atmosphere and it’s there. People really do care about you here. Another check. Coaching staff … they’re all working together, helping each other … [Quarterbacks] Coach (Garrick) McGee … Coach Mullen. Florida’s got it all.”

Mullen has earned his reputation as a genuine quarterback whisperer who doesn’t go with a cookie cutter approach. He has a quarterback-centric offense that is like an amoeba in that it changes shape with the skills of each particular quarterback. Just look at how Mullen has adapted to each personnel change.

Working for Urban Meyer at Bowling Green, Mullen took a 240-pound sledgehammer best suited to be a single-wing tailback in Josh Harris and turned him into an effective passer. Alex Smith was 2-4 as a passer the year before Mullen got hold of him at Utah. Two years later, Smith was the first pick in the NFL Draft. Mullen designed an entire offense around non-runner Chris Leak and with Tim Tebow as the stand-in runner, won the national championship at UF. Tebow and Mullen teamed up for the 2007 Heisman and 2008 national championship. Prescott was offered as a linebacker at Alabama. He went to Mississippi State to play quarterback for Mullen and now he’s one of the highest paid players in the NFL at Dallas. Prescott’s successor at Mississippi State was Nick Fitzgerald, whose best two offers other than MSU were Mercer and Samford. He’s the all-time leading rusher among SEC quarterbacks with 3,607 yards.

At Florida, Mullen made Feleipe Franks respectable and then turned Kyle Trask into an NFL second round pick. Not bad for someone [Trask] who hadn’t started a game since he was a freshman in high school.

Evers comes to Florida with excellent credentials, ready to walk down whatever path Mullen and McGee lead to become the best he can possibly be.

“I think I’m fairly well-rounded because I can run and do a lot of things, but my real strength is when I throw,” Evers said. “I’ve got a good arm, good accuracy and strength, but there’s so much more to it than just throwing a football. You have to know how to make good decisions, know when to throw and when to pull it down and run, know who you throw it to and why. It’s understanding the big play isn’t always there so you take a 5-yard or a 10-yard pass because it moves the ball down the field.

“It’s making good decisions. It’s reading a defense and knowing when you need to check down and what you check down to. What’s the defense telling you? It’s knowing what throws you can make and the ones you can’t make. There are throws I can get away with in high school that I won’t be able to do here because the DBs are so much better in the SEC than I’ll ever see in high school. Being great in the SEC means you process information in a hurry and you make the right decisions. This is why it’s going to be great working with Coach Mullen and Coach McGee. It’s a learning process and I’ll have the best teachers.”

It was sitting in a film room with Mullen that made Evers know he had found THE GUY when it comes to making him a better quarterback. It took only the time he spent at UF getting to know Mullen and the other coaches that home was going to be Gainesville once he leaves Flower Mound High School in Texas.

“When you start watching film with him and he starts showing you how the play is developing and who’s going to be open and why he’s going to be open, you start thinking this guy [Mullen] is from another planet when it comes to football,” Evers said. “He sees the whole field and knows every weakness and where you’re going to have success if you get the football to the right guy. You watch how he’s doing something now that’s setting up something two or three plays later, like he’s setting everything up for a big play. It’s amazing and if you’re his quarterback and you’re willing to listen to him and do what he says, he’s going to take you to a whole new level.”

But it’s more than just football and that has everything to do with why Nick Evers is a Gator through and through, doing his best to help the recruiting effort so Mullen brings in a powerhouse class.

“Coach Mullen and the whole coaching staff, sure they want to develop you as football players so you’re the best you can be, but they want you to be the best you can be as a teammate, in your classwork, as a person,” Evers said. “You come here and you’re going to get a great education, you’re going to go from being a boy into a man, and you’re going to leave here better than you were when you started. That’s what I’m telling guys who we’re recruiting – you can go other places that promise you all kinds of stuff about football, but you come here and the coaches are going to make you a better football player and a better person. Better here than any other school I talked to.”