Nick Fitzgerald was a known secret to high school coaches

Ed Dudley watched with dread on Oct. 18, 2013 as Nick Fitzgerald, then the quarterback at Richmond Hill in Georgia, warmed up his right arm in preparation for playing Dudley's Ware County team.

Fitzgerald completed 12 of only 29 attempts in the six prior games. But there he was as a senior, making the short throws, the long throws and the quick ones in preparation for a game against Ware County. At 6-foot-4 and 215 pounds, Fitzgerald was making it look easy — too easy for a guy his size.

Uh-oh.

“There’s a 6-foot-4 kid back there taking drops and firing the ball all over the field,” Dudley said. “So we were like, ‘Oh, my goodness, what are we going to do and how are we going to defend this guy?’

“We would panic watching him warm up, but luckily for us, he didn’t throw a whole lot.”

Fitzgerald completed 33 of 78 passes for 671 yards in his senior year, the only varsity season he spent at the position after playing as a wide receiver his junior year. He threw 11 touchdowns and four interceptions. Conversely, he ran the ball 178 times for 1,517 yards and 25 touchdowns.

The high school passing totals while playing in an option offense are surprising, given Fitzgerald’s success as Mississippi State’s quarterback. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

Unlike in high school, Fitzgerald posted gaudy rushing and passing numbers in 2016, his first year as the starter. He rushed for 1,495 and 16 touchdowns on 195 carries. The junior completed 196 of 361 passes (54.3 percent) for 2,423 yards and 21 touchdowns.

The Clarion-Ledger spoke with four of Fitzgerald’s opposing high school coaches to ask them: "Did you see this coming?"

The central question: Did opposing high school coaches ever think Nick Fitzgerald would become one of the SEC's best quarterbacks? 

“I knew that he was obviously a great player and a big-time talent. He was so big, I thought he might wind up being a tight end or something. But we saw him for two years. Once as a wide receiver, his junior year. Boy, his senior year, he was so hard to stop in that triple-option offense at Richmond Hill. He was quite a player and, really, just an exciting kid to watch unless you were the coach on the other sideline. That wasn’t a whole lot of fun.” — Ed Dudley, Ware County

“Well, he always had the size and the skill-set with his speed and arm strength. The competitiveness is what surprised me. We were pretty physical and we thought we could just keep pounding him and pounding him and pounding him and he would back down, but he never did. The competitive spirit he had when he played against us, and to see that at Mississippi State, is just a testament to who he is and why it has worked out for him.” — Buddy Holder, Effingham County

“I thought he was a good receiver and then they moved him to quarterback in their veer. He is a good sized kid that runs extremely well so that’s an SEC combination. I never thought of it, to be honest with you. I just knew he was a really good player. I was not sure if he would last at quarterback because of his size. Sometimes they move you to tight end or something like that when you have that size.” — Tim Adams, Jenkins

“You know the skills are there when you have a big kid who can run like that, but I always thought there was a chance he could switch positions when he got there, but he throws the ball too dang well. He wasn’t asked to do that a lot in high school, but when he did, he did it well. He was one of the best in South Georgia.” — Adam Carter, Bradwell Institute

MSU's Nick Fitzgerald no longer a final name in a list

Fitzgerald could, indeed, throw the ball.

“He threw the ball pretty well. My impression of guessing that he would be a tight end was just based on his size. He had a good arm. He didn’t have a whole lot of receivers to work with. I guess that was their missing piece and could be why he flew under the radar a good bit.” — Dudley

“He was more of an option-type guy so he did keep it a lot and he was such a good runner. But you always had that in the back of your head and the kids had that in the back of their heads. They were almost tentative on the perimeter because of his ability to throw the ball. He balanced a lot of that with how he can run.” — Holder

Fitzgerald’s season-high for pass attempts as a senior was nine, against Bradwell Institute. He completed five.

“He was an accurate kid. You would do things to stop the run and he would then just pick you apart. He could throw the hitch, he can throw the slant to hurt you and made big plays out of play-action.” — Carter

Similar to now, Fitzgerald’s game was running the ball and taking him down was no easy feat.

“Almost impossible to stop for three or four yards.” — Dudley

“We hit him and pounded him and he’d fall forward and gain 4 yards. Three plays, we hit him and they get a first down.” — Holder

“He was just tough to tackle. There were a couple of times we had him when they went for it on fourth down and he just makes yardage out of nothing. You look up when the ball is spotted and there’s a three-yard gain when there should’ve been no yards.” — Adams

"The biggest thing I remember is that it didn’t matter if we hit him at the line of scrimmage or not — he was getting three or four yards. You weren’t going to stop him for a loss unless they had some sort of snap exchange issue. He was going to fall forward.” — Carter

Ware County did the best job against Fitzgerald, limiting him to 14 passing yards (he was 1 of 4) and 73 rushing yards on 15 carries. 

“Going into that game, our philosophy was really to sell out and limit him to 100 yards rushing. We felt like if we could hold him to that and a touchdown or two, we could outscore them and win the game. We really wanted to force him to hand the ball off and get the ball out of his hands. We wanted Richmond Hill to beat us left-handed and not with the Nick Fitzgerald Show.” — Dudley

Fitzgerald had his best game against Bradwell Institute, rushing for 233 yards and three touchdowns on 22 carries, and completing 5 of 9 passes for 82 yards and a score. 

"It was a long night." — Carter

The high school coaches have company now — SEC coaches understand how hard it is to contain Fitzgerald.

“He definitely has proven himself. When you can play like that in the SEC that says a lot.” — Adams

“You run into a player like that and you just can’t stop him so you feel like, ‘What in the world am I doing wrong?’ But then you turn on the TV on Saturday and he’s having a lot of success so that makes you feel better.” — Carter

“It makes it a little bit easier knowing that somebody like that did beat you and it wasn’t no slouch, that’s for sure. We’re over here waving the pom-poms for him saying, ‘Hey, we know that guy.’” — Holder

Contact Will Sammon at 601-961-7116 or wsammon@gannett.com . Follow him on Twitter .