Running back rivals bringing Canadian pride to every game
Ex-roommates Messam and Harris getting job done for respective teams
You can call them ratio breakers.
You can call them two of the best running backs in the league.
You can call them keys to their respective football teams’ hopes in 2016. You can also call them paid. They say timing is everything, and there’s no doubting Andrew Harris and Jerome Messam both timed last season’s 1,000-yard campaigns perfectly as they entered this past off-season in search of new contracts.
Both knew where they wanted to be, too.
Harris, a Manitoba native, had ideas of bolting the Left Coast for home, further enticed when a lucrative three-year contract in the neighbourhood of $175,000 per season was tabled by the Winnipeg Blue Bombers back in February.
Meanwhile, Messam, after being traded to the Calgary Stampeders last October, never wanted to leave Cowtown, and GM John Hufnagel obliged on the eve of free agency with a two-year contract in the range of $130,000.
One more thing you can call Harris, 29, and Messam, 31, is two players with a whole lot in common, as they entered the CFL together as B.C. Lions in 2010.
“We were roommates,” Harris recalled Wednesday at Investors Group Field. “We kind of came up through the ranks together and competed in the same backfield, so I’m happy that he’s found a great home in Calgary and he’s doing well. We have a good relationship.”
Messam, heading into Thursday’s Week 5 meeting with the Bombers at Investors Group Field (6:30 p.m., TSN, News Talk 770), is on the same page.
“We talk on the phone, we text and he’s a great player,” Messam said. “He’s come a long way in his career and he’s developed. I’m just glad he’s been given an opportunity to prove he’s worthy of starting in this league.
“When we were both in B.C. together, he was playing receiver, but we had a deep, young backfield. We had Jamall Lee, Andrew and myself, and we also had a couple of American guys, so it was a loaded backfield.”
Despite a massive difference in themirror—Harrisstands5-foot-10 and 210 pounds, while Messam checks in at a robust 6-foot-3 and 263 pounds — their skill-sets are, actually, similar in a way.
“Well, he’s 60 pounds heavier than me, I think,” Harris laughed.
“He’s a lot bigger and more of a pounding back, but still very fast and explosive. Me, I’m probably more finesse and skilled in the receiving aspect, but he can still catch the ball, too. We definitely have a lot of traits that are similar, one being that we’re both Canadian, but as far as the game, I think, we attack it a little bit differently.”
When Jon Cornish called it quits in December, it left Harris and Messam as the lone remaining Canadian starting running backs in the CFL. One thing that comes along with being a backfield ratio breaker is the dollars a player like that can demand.
Even though Harris (1,523) and Messam (1,503) finished one-two in yards from scrimmage last season, there’s a huge discrepancy in the cheques the former backfield mates will cash.
We kind of came up through the ranks together and competed in the same backfield, so I’m happy that he’s found a great home in Calgary and he’s doing well. Andrew Harris on CFL rival and friend Jerome Messam
Messam has a theory on that. “I think Winnipeg wanted to buy a ring this year,” Messam said.
“He’s from there and hat’s off to him, he got the money. Huff does things a little bit different, but I’m still going to work hard and prove it’s not about the money or whatever. On paper, he’s making more, but I got some bonus money, so I’m not trippin.”
Attrition at the running back position, as well as the stockpile of American ballcarriers looking for an opportunity, makes it much harder to invest big dollars in a Canadian running back rather than allocating that cash to, say, a national offensive lineman.
The running back has to be worth it.
“I think it depends on the player,” Messam said. “If the coaches feel you can have a big enough impact to affect the ratio, it’s huge. Like I said, it depends on the player and what the organization wants to do because ratio is huge in this league. I think a Canadian tailback definitely helps things out.”
The Stampeders would move to an American at running back if Messam ever went down, and the Bombers might choose to do the same if they lost Harris.
Economics, as well as a dearth
They’ve got top-end speed, they catch the ball well, they’re physical, they’ve proven they can do it week-in, week-out.
of Canadian running backs, make it tough to roll out a 100 per cent Canadian backfield in a salary cap world.
“If you do have a starter, you want a backup, and that’s been one of the challenges,” Stamps head coach Dave Dickenson said.
“In our opinion, we’ve just got a little bit more of a luxury that we can play both.
“It’s not only the starting Canadian. If you want that to be a Canadian position, you’re paying a backup 100-plus, and it’s tough to pay backups that type of money.”
That’s why Dickenson doesn’t view Messam and Harris as difference-making Canadian running backs that bring ratio relief.
Just good ones that help win football games.
“They’ve got top-end speed, they catch the ball well, they’re physical, they’ve proven they can do it weekin, week-out,” Dickenson said.
“To me, they’re just quality tailbacks.”