Stanzi battles for backup quarterback spot
Former NFL quarterback says it has been ‘really fun’ learning nuances of the CFL
When Ricky Stanzi looks around him at Calgary Stampeders rookie camp, he might easily feel like he’s the old man of the group.
Instead, Stanzi says the whole experience has him feeling like a kid again.
“A lot of yoga, a lot of hydration, take care of your body and get some good rest,” Stanzi said with a laugh after being asked if he’d discovered a fountain of youth. “I feel younger, yeah.”
Stanzi was signed to a rookie camp contract by the Stampeders a couple weeks ago and has clearly caught the eye of the team’s coaching staff with Dave Dickenson saying a couple days ago that the University of Iowa Hawkeyes product has a shot at backing up Bo Levi Mitchell.
At 29 years of age, he’s the oldest player on the rookie camp roster and has taken a long road to the CFL.
After finishing up a career at Iowa that saw him win three Bowl games, Stanzi was selected in the fifth round of the 2011 NFL draft by the Kansas City Chiefs and bounced around the league.
It was only recently that he began considering the idea of giving the CFL a try and Stanzi seems to be relishing the challenge of giving the Canadian game a shot.
He had to start the learning process from scratch, though.
“Right when I first started to see that this was going to be an opportunity, it was go on YouTube, go on Google, what are the rules?” Stanzi said. “Simple stuff like that, just watch a couple games, just kinda see the tempo of it and it’s a blast to watch, it’s an awesome game and it’s been fun to learn.
“Talking to the point of being young again, I do feel like a rookie. You come in and 29-year-old rookie, yeah, but you’re definitely learning a new game. It’s still football, but at the same time there’s a lot of things you have to adjust to and have to take into account.
“That’s fun, though, to learn something new and put your mind to work and then go out there on the field and put it into reps. It’s very satisfying as a football player.”
Stanzi still has a lot to learn if he’s going to earn the Stampeders’ backup job or even get the call to be the team’s third-stringer.
Second-year Calgary native Andrew Buckley and CFL veteran Mitchell Gale are both fighting for the same jobs as well and they’re certainly more familiar with the nuances of the Canadian game.
Things like the faster play clock and the bigger field are going to take time for Stanzi to get used to, but so far he says the biggest challenge has been getting used to having 12 players on the field during a play instead of the 11 that are allowed by the American game.
“The 12th man and the motion (before a snap) to me have become more of a factor than the 20-second clock and the dimensions, but at the same time it makes this game really fun,” Stanzi said. “When I look out on the field and I’m thinking 11 (players), it shows itself as one picture to me, but when you have 12 it’s, ‘Who is that guy?’”
Nobody was expecting Stanzi to have fully adjusted to CFL football by the first day of rookie camp and the coaching staff’s decision on the backup QB spot likely won’t be made until the final days of preseason.
For now, though, it sounded as if Dickenson was pleased with what he saw from Stanzi.
“We’ve definitely got more to do,” Dickenson said. “I feel like the skill set is there, make sure that he gets the cadence, get the process going, at least that was good. As far as the reads and throws, we’ve got lots of work to do there.”