Ticats put their faith in Masoli to lead them to Grey Cup
Jeremiah Masoli’s first CFL playoff action was not the smoothest of debuts. He was the fourth-string quarterback for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 2015 and had only dressed in six of their games, playing just in garbage time in the final week.
But a combination of injuries and ineffective play among the other three guys meant that then-coach Kent Austin put the team in the hands of Masoli for an East semifinal against the Toronto Argonauts.
Masoli came out and played very much like a guy who had spent most of the season on the practice roster. He completed one pass in the first quarter and just five in the first half, for a total of 26 yards. It seems a lot like throwing a kid in a pool to find out if he could swim. Austin benched him at halftime, brought him back after a series and then, improbably, Masoli ended up leading Hamilton to victory that week. He could swim.
Over the two seasons since, the 27-year-old from San Francisco has spent a lot of time trying to prove that he was more than just an option when other quarterbacks faltered. The starting job went back to Zach Collaros in 2016 and he still had it at the beginning of last season. Even after June Jones arrived last year, took over at head coach and named Masoli the new starter, and despite a spectacular second half for the quarterback last year, his hold on the team’s reins was loose. Jones went out and brought Johnny Manziel to the CFL while saying he could be the greatest player in league history. Jones certainly didn’t clear the way for Manziel to be the starter in training camp, but it was widely assumed that he had not recruited the former Heisman Trophy winner to wear a ball cap backwards on the sideline.
And then Hamilton traded Manziel to Montreal in the summer and that was that. Masoli was the starter, full stop. He remained that all season, leading the East with more than 5,000 passing yards and 28 touchdowns.
And so now, for his latest crack at playoff football in Canada, Masoli is just a bit more comfortable.
“Like night and day,” he says of the difference between preparing to be the starter this week and being the emergency one three years ago. “I still had to prove to my teammates that I could do it in a game. They knew I was hard working off the field, on the field, but as far as, when the lights come on, I was kind of unproven,” Masoli says. “Now the time is for us to take over. Obviously, I’ve got a lot of experience under my belt this year.”
The fact that Masoli is the guy that Jones elected to stick with at quarterback is one of the unexpected subplots of the CFL season. That Jones, a football lifer with big-name NCAA and NFL head coaching experience on his resume, would go out and get a former NFL talent was not all that surprising. That he would soon trade him was. And whether that move was more of a compliment to what he had with Masoli or an indictment of what he wasn’t getting from the infamously problematic Manziel, the end result was a season in which Masoli displayed the arm strength and mobility that are essential to CFL success. He was named an East all-star on Wednesday and is a decent bet to be the East’s nominee for the league’s Most Outstanding Player award.
As much as it has been a fight to get to that point for him, Masoli said all the usual things about crediting his teammates for his success this year. He’s locked in on the B.C. Lions — Hamilton’s opponent on Sunday — and he’s taking it one game at a time, that kind of thing. “We gotta be physical, we gotta take it to them, we gotta match their intensity and we gotta execute and play clean,” Masoli said.
Masoli is also the quarterback of an 8-10 team, though, one that has lost three straight coming into the playoffs and hasn’t looked the same since wideout Brandon Banks was lost to injury last month. But given that the last two Grey Cup champs were nine-loss teams from Ottawa and Toronto, it’s not crazy to imagine the Tiger-Cats going on a run, especially if Masoli, who is fighting a balky knee, gets hot.
“I’ve thought about it,” said Jones on Wednesday of the recent history of middling East teams that end up hosting a large trophy after the final game of the season. “Our goal was to just get here with a home playoff game first, and then get to the Grey Cup,” Jones said. (He also said they were hoping for two home dates, which was a reminder he hasn’t been in Canada all that long. The only way you have two home playoff games in the CFL is if one of them is the Grey Cup.) Anyway, onto the playoffs: “That’s all I’m thinking about and that’s all the kids are thinking about. I don’t think that 10-loss thing comes into it. If you win in November, you win it all.”
He’s got that part right.