Messam harbours no ill will for Stamps after move to Riders
Jerome Messam seems WINNIPEG happy.
Ask him about his time with the Calgary Stampeders, and the Canadian running back has nothing but great things to say about the two-plus seasons he spent at McMahon Stadium.
Ask him about his departure from the team, and he insists there was absolutely nothing acrimonious about the Stamps’ decision to allow him to explore free agency, or his own decision to sign with the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
If you were hoping for a controversial story about Messam going full-on scorched-earth about his former team, you have come to the wrong place,
“I feel like maybe the organization felt like we had gotten to the (Grey Cup) game two years in a row with the guys we had and we didn’t finish,” Messam said Thursday during CFL Week in Winnipeg. “Maybe things needed to be changed up. I don’t blame anybody. I’m not surprised, it’s a business and I’m just happy to still have a place to do what I love.”
The decision to let Messam explore free agency wasn’t an easy one for the Stamps. Not only was it a nice luxury for the team’s ratio to have a Canadian starting at running back, Messam also finished with the third-most rushing yards in the CFL last season and the second-most rushing touchdowns.
He was a big part of the Stamps’ success on offence for the past couple seasons, but will turn 33 before the start of the 2018 season. It’s unclear how big a factor his age played in the Stampeders’ decision, but Messam did point out that this off-season was tough on guys in the team’s locker-room who were older than 30 years old.
Not only did Rob Cote and Dan Federkeil retire, the Stamps also dealt away Charleston Hughes and they cut Marquay McDaniel in the week before free agency opened.
“Those days leading up to free agency and the day of, it was tough,” Messam acknowledged. “It was a lot of mixed emotions, a lot of surprise.
“Charleston Hughes is the career sack leader for the Stampeders, so no one saw that coming. Marquay has done nothing but come to work every day with his lunch pail and get the job done, so he was still playing at a high level.”
Messam, though, seems to be at peace with the way things worked out. Both he and Hughes landed in Regina and will be wearing green next season, and that pretty much guarantees some spice.
The CFL schedule happens to pit the Roughriders against the Stampeders three times in the regular season and once in the pre-season, and Messam smiled when he acknowledged that he probably was going to be doing a lot more interviews about his former teammates before the season was done.
“You guys are going to have so many stories leading up to those games,” Messam said. “I don’t know if (Stamps president/GM John Hufnagel) expected Hughes to land in Saskatchewan the way he did. It’s funny how things went. (Offensive lineman) Derek Dennis is back in Calgary, and (pass rusher) Charleston in Saskatchewan. It’s going to be fun.”
Considering that Messam won the CFL rushing title in 2016 and the Stamps won the West Division finals in both of the last two years, his time in Calgary is something he’s going to look back on fondly.
The one thing he didn’t accomplish with the Stamps, though, was winning a Grey Cup. He was part of teams that were upset in the CFL’s championship game in each of the last two years, and he admitted he’d been getting an earful from players from around the league since he touched down in Winnipeg for CFL Week.
“Everybody razzes me on it, and if I didn’t have such a great sense of humour, I think I’d take it worse than I do,” Messam said, laughing. “It is what it is. It just didn’t go our way those times. It’s funny, guys know how the game should go. They make jokes, but (Toronto Argonauts receiver S.J. Green) knows he got lucky.”