Path to the pros? EWU receivers past and present praise Efton Chism III for skill set, work ethic, toughness
Soon after he completed a decorated four-year run as an Eastern Washington receiver in 2005, Eric Kimble turned his focus to doing something a handful of former Eagles had done with varying levels of success: make a pro career of playing football.
This was 19 years ago, and at that point the most prominent Eagles-turned-pros were offensive linemen, guys like Ed Simmons, Trent Pollard, Tom Ackerman and Michael Roos.
Bob Picard had been a sixth-round NFL pick in the 1973 draft, and Lamont Brightful had made it three years in the NFL from 2002 to 2004 as a returner before playing a few more years professionally overseas and in Canada.
But when Kimble signed a free-agent deal with the Miami Dolphins in 2006, being a receiver from Eastern Washington didn’t come with the associations it does now, with names like Nsimba Webster, Kendrick Bourne and Cooper Kupp.
So when Kimble got to Miami, head coach Nick Saban told Kimble to watch Dolphins slot receiver Wes Welker. Like Welker, Kimble was also a return man, and the Dolphins had designs of using Kimble in a similar role down the road.
“When I watched Wes Welker, he played differently than anyone else on the field,” Kimble said on Wednesday. “He was the Energizer Bunny. He was not the fastest guy, but he was just going 100 percent all the time.”
Kimble wasn’t the fastest guy, either – he ran 4.5 40-yard dashes while other guys did so in 4.3 – but Kimble learned that some of those faster players had a weakness: they didn’t have the motor to sustain that speed when it came to actual football plays.
“When I got there and I started going up against guys of that level, my expectations were that the guys were going to be dominant, but it was the opposite,” Kimble said. “That’s one thing I noticed that was much different from college: a lot of players who are really good in the NFL, it’s their preparation and it’s their consistency and discipline.”
That, Kimble said, is what separated the great NFL players from the ones who didn’t last.
Which is where Efton Chism III comes in.
Though their names are both scattered across EWU’s record book, Kimble has never met Chism. But he knows what Chism is up against as the Eagles senior wide receiver wraps up his college career in a couple weeks – Eastern (3-7, 2-4 Big Sky) hosts Idaho State (5-5, 3-3) this Saturday, then goes to Northern Arizona (6-4, 4-2) to close out its season on Nov. 23 – and turns his attention to gaining the attention of the NFL.
“If Efton continues to work hard and build on his skill set, I don’t see any difference (between Chism) and anyone in the FBS going to the next level,” Kimble said. “It’s a matter of discipline, consistency and how well you know the game and how well you know yourself. What are your weaknesses? And if you learn that piece and start improving that way, you can be just as good as anyone else.”
Fortunately for Chism, teammates and coaches have been saying those same things about him for 4 1/2 years. Nolan Ulm is one of them.
Ulm has witnessed firsthand Chism’s habits and abilities almost daily since they joined Eastern Washington in the same high school recruiting class in 2020.
Without hesitation, Ulm can list off Chism’s skills as if he’s reading them from a mental scouting report: He catches everything. He’s incredible running after the catch. His change-of-direction skills are elite. Few people in the country can do what he can from the slot position underneath a defense. He’s a very hard blocker. He plays his tail off.
“He’s always been a dude,” Ulm said. “The biggest thing that makes me believe he is NFL ready is he’s doing all the little things now at a pro level. He wants to go play in the NFL and he’s going to do it because he wants to do it and it’s the only plan he sees. There is no Plan B for him.”
On the cusp of Kupp
During the football season, and even during much of the offseason, Chism spends the majority of his waking hours around the Eastern Washington athletic facilities. Most of those are focused on football, but Chism is also often at other Eagles sporting events once his football commitments are done for the day. Last spring, for example, he made the trip to Corvallis to watch the EWU women’s basketball team play Oregon State in the NCAA Tournament.
After a junior season in which Chism caught 84 passes for 932 yards and eight touchdowns, Chism could have transferred and played his final year elsewhere. But he has said multiple times since then that he had more incentives to stay than he had to leave, and he reiterated that this week.
“One of the reasons I came back and be an Eagle again was I wanted to leave my legacy and be in that conversation, to hopefully get my picture and my name on the wall someday when I am gone from here,” Chism said. “Those are the small things no one can take away. Those are the personal things that I’m proud of.”
Kimble’s best statistical season with the Eagles came in 2005, when in 12 games he caught 87 passes (then a single season program record) for 1,419 yards and 12 touchdowns.
Ten games into this season, Chism has already topped Kimble’s receptions total (those 87 he had are now the eighth-most caught by an EWU receiver in a single season) and is on the cusp of completing one of the greatest single seasons ever by an EWU receiver – even including the four put together by Kupp.
He has 95 catches, trailing only Kupp’s totals in 2014 (105), 2015 (114) and 2016 (117). If he keeps up his pace of 10.9 catches per game, he would at least pass Kupp’s 2015 total.
He’s less likely to finish with one of the program’s top-10 single-season totals in receiving yards (he has 1,035) and receiving touchdowns (11), but he also won’t have the benefit of playing multiple playoff games this season (though he does get a 12-game regular season instead of the more usual 11).
Chism’s career numbers won’t match Kupp’s – no other Division I receiver’s have – but Chism has already passed Kimble for second on the program’s all-time receptions list with 321, and he is on pace to get close to Kimble’s career receiving yards total of 4,140. So far, Chism has 3,576. (Brandon Kaufman’s total sits between them with 3,731.)
The performance Chism has put together this season is all the more impressive considering just how much attention he’s received from opposing defenses.
Cody Hawkins recruited Chism out of Monroe High School when Hawkins was on the coaching staff at UC Davis. Hawkins became Idaho State’s head coach before the 2023 season.
Similar to Ulm, Hawkins can rattle off a half-dozen skills that separate Chism from the rest of the Big Sky’s receivers.
“You could see it on his high school film,” Hawkins said this week. “He’s tough. He understands the game. His releases continue to improve. He’s small but he’s explosive, and he’s technically sound, enough to where he’s going to beat man-to-man, and if it’s zone (defense), he’s going to fill the void.”
The challenge in stopping Chism, Hawkins said, is that even if you double him and take away two directions – left, right or upfield – Chism is good enough to find the open third direction. Hawkins credited EWU offensive coordinator Jim Chapin for giving Chism the freedom to pick and choose his direction so that he can find that open third when the other two are taken away.
“He’s just a stone-cold baller,” Hawkins said of Chism.
Ulm looks at Chism and boils down his skill set to one description: the flow.
“When he gets on the field, he’s in the flow. Every single time,” Ulm said. “That’s his superpower. He gets in and there’s nothing else. There’s only the game and the ball.”
Film junkies
Chism grew up a Seahawks fan, so he still tries to catch as many of their games on TV as he can. But he’s also a student of the game, and so he likes to watch other teams, too, mostly to watch the receivers.
Sometimes he will say to himself, I could do that. I could make that play. I could make that catch.
But just as often he’s not trying to justify his merits as a pro receiver. He’s just trying to learn.
“Even if I can’t see myself in that spot, I will think, ‘how would I do that if I was in his shoes?’ ” Chism said. “I can definitely see myself in those shoes doing those things.”
He’s drawn to some receivers more than others, like Houston Texans slot receiver Tank Dell. Chism first noticed Dell two years ago when he was a senior at the University of Houston, and so he went all in, watching almost every catch Dell made his junior and senior year of college – nearly all 199 of them.
“I know what I am good at, and I know what I am bad at,” Chism said. “It’s a big revolving door that I am always learning, always throwing new pieces in, always trying to get better.”
In that way, Ulm is similar to Chism: He’s always looking for ways to get better.
If anything, Ulm takes it up a notch.
When Ulm arrived in Cheney he noticed he was struggling with one-on-ones in practice, and so he thought there was no one better to learn from than Kupp. So, Ulm went to work. He made cut-ups of every one of Kupp’s one-on-one plays, including every game snap and as many from practices and scrimmages that he could find.
Ulm estimated it as “thousands of hours” of film. It’s all organized in folders.
So, if anyone can claim to be an expert on Kupp, Ulm’s got to be one of them.
“It’s just fundamentals,” Ulm said. “Coming off the ball, there’s no wasted movement. His speed mechanics are incredible. He knows how to navigate space with a defender, shifting the defender so he’s able to slip and get vertical. He knows how to react in every situation. He’s so good with his hands.”
Ulm can go on.
He doesn’t say that Chism is Kupp. That’s just not something people around EWU are willing to say, considering Kupp’s perch atop the FCS record books and his achievements at the NFL level, including a Super Bowl MVP award.
But there’s no doubt that the sentiment around the EWU football program is that Chism exhibits many of the traits Kupp did.
“His process is second-to-none,” EWU wide receivers coach Jeff McDaniels said last month. “He’s a professional in every aspect.”
‘All in the mindset’
Chism has a long way to go still in his journey to the NFL.
But unlike Kimble, Chism has a series of role models he can point to, players like Kupp, Bourne and Webster who have reached the NFL and made their mark in it.
After last season, Chism said one of the reasons he stayed at Eastern was because he didn’t see any reason why a receiver from Eastern couldn’t make the NFL. Kimble agrees.
“It all comes down to effort and how much work you really want to put into it,” Kimble said, “because I saw guys drafted No. 1 but they couldn’t do a thing in press coverage. I came from (the FCS). I expected guys to press me. That was the perception: that somebody from Eastern Washington should not be able to get a first down on that guy.”
But, at least in practice, Kimble could.
Kimble’s career in the NFL only lasted one year. In 2006 he injured his Achilles tendon, missed the season and then saw Saban leave for Alabama, along with much of the Miami Dolphins coaching staff.
Kimble tried to latch on with the Seahawks, and then he briefly explored a career in the Canadian Football League. But ultimately, he decided to move on with his life and use his college degree. He now works in IT in the Seattle area.
Still, his experience in the NFL was formative, and it changed his outlook on what it takes to make it in the NFL.
It’s not really about talent, Kimble said. More than anything, it’s about work ethic as well as the willingness to identify weaknesses and then systematically eliminate them from a player’s game.
“It’s all in the mindset,” he said. “That’s why I say to everyone, anyone can make it as long as you put in that effort and that grind.”
In a little over a month, Chism will head to Florida to turn his full focus to training for the all-star games, scout visits and workouts for would-be NFL draft picks. He’s excited for it all.
But he still has two more games as an Eagle, and he’s not about to skip over those.
“One of the best decisions I’ve made in my life was to be an Eagle and to stay an Eagle,” he said. “No one can take away from me being that true EKG and an Eagle for life.”