Argos’ Ray glad to be back after pondering retirement
Grey Cup victory whets 38-year-old’s appetite for more
The storybook exit was there for Ricky Ray if he wanted it.
At 38, he had hoisted another Grey Cup and posted spectacular numbers all season (5,546 passing yards, the second-best mark of his career and 28 touchdowns, tied for second) that would have been the envy of quarterbacks 10 years his junior.
And, for once, he thought about hanging up his cleats after putting himself through the football grind professionally since 2001.
“It was tough in a sense, it took me a little bit longer to ... I think it was the first year that I really kind of had thoughts of maybe being done,” Ray told Postmedia after his Toronto Argonauts went through their first walk-through of the 2018 campaign.
“It just took me a little bit longer to kind of just come off the Grey Cup high and how the season finished,” Ray said, adding that he had gone into 2017 wondering if perhaps that would be his last year in the league. After all, he had been coming off of a pair of injury-riddled campaigns and it wasn’t clear if he could still hold up.
But Ray excelled, and his team did the same.
“It was such an enjoyable year last year and I had so much fun playing with these guys and for coach (Marc) Trestman, I wanted to have a chance to come back and be a part of the team again.”
On Day 1, Ray’s body was feeling good. The only thing rounding into form was his voice, since he hadn’t been yelling out plays and formations for a while.
He will do what it takes to perform.
“I think throughout my career I’ve tried tons of different things, just little things here and there. Nothing too drastic, you’re still throwing and lifting weights and running, doing all that sort of stuff in the off-season,” Ray said. “You might just kind of do things a little bit differently.
“Definitely as I’ve got older it takes a little bit longer to recover. When you’re young, it seems like (the body) recovers a little bit quicker. Just finding ways, whether it’s foam-rolling or stretching a little bit more, maybe taking it easy on a day in the off-season — just really kind of listening to your body and giving it a chance to recover.”
The Argos originally acquired Ray from Edmonton and went to the Eskimos again to find his potential successor. The offseason trade for talented backup James Franklin has been seen both as insurance, given Ray’s age, and as a hedge to the future, since 2018 could be Ray’s swan song. Ray said he has got to know Franklin over the last month. They roomed together at minicamp in Florida, and, “he seems like a really good guy, a really good fit into our quarterback room.”