My first instinct when I kept seeing Stephen Nicholas pop up as a suggestion for this year’s Forgotten Falcons series was pretty simple: How could anyone forget about Stephen Nicholas?
That’s my own bias showing through. perhaps, because Nicholas was one of my favorite players of the Mike Smith era in Atlanta. A consistent contributor, useful special teamer and one of the team’s best defenders in that magical 2012 season, he was a very useful player and an easy one to like. The story of how Nicholas played a 16 game season while his infant son battled heart problems that eventually required a transplant is a story worth telling in and of itself.