QB BURRIS DESERVING OF BANNER SEASON
Smilin’ Hank is the best ambassador in the Canadian Football League
The 2015 version of Henry Burris is the CFL’s most outstanding, and most upstanding, player.
If you want an interview, simply approach him. He will cordially carry the conversation.
If accountability is required, he will be the first person to step up.
If he is approached for an autograph, he will not only provide a signature, but also a handshake and a lasting memory.
The Canadian Football League does not have a finer ambassador, or a better player, than the Ottawa Redblacks quarterback.
And all the accolades he is receiving — some of the plaudits being rather belated — are welldeserved.
Forget about the “Good Hank/ Bad Hank” nonsense. Disregard all the detractors, who are hopelessly and myopically dismissive of Smilin’ Hank’s Hall of Fame worthy credentials.
Burris was ticketed for enshrinement long before the magical season that he is currently enjoying. Yet, his perceived deficiencies were often highlighted while his many attributes were downplayed, if not completely ignored.
It was said that he couldn’t win the big one — even though he was the victorious quarterback in the 2008 Grey Cup game, while representing the Calgary Stampeders. He was also named the most valuable player of that game.
He was derided for throwing interceptions, even though they are far outnumbered by touchdown passes (361, compared to 218 picks, over a CFL career that dates back to 1997).
He has changed places despite making meaningful contributions at every stop.
The Stampeders’ brass determined in 2011 that Burris, then 36, was expendable, even though he had been named the league’s most outstanding player one year earlier.
Having been supplanted by Drew Tate as the Stampeders’ starter, Burris was traded to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, for whom he threw a career-high 43 touchdown passes in 2012.
The following season, Burris quarterbacked Hamilton to a Grey Cup berth — outplaying Teflon coated Toronto Argonauts pivot Ricky Ray in the East Division final. But instead of re-signing Burris, who was poised to test free agency, the Tiger-Cats added Ray’s former understudy, Zach Collaros.
So Burris was off to Ottawa, where he became the cornerstone of a first-year Redblacks team in 2014.
The Redblacks predictably struggled last season, and some of the blame was heaped upon Burris, even though he was burdened with a paddle-handed receiving corps.
The critics were apoplectic on one sunny September day, when this scribbler had the temerity to suggest that the Saskatchewan Roughriders should inquire about Burris’s availability following a season-ending injury to franchise quarterback Darian Durant.
The reaction was volcanic.
“Old Man Burris. Have you not watched him play this year? NOT an option! Don’t even go there!” “Have you been drinking?” “No way, no how, no Burris.” “I believe you are delusional if you think Burris is the answer.”
“Never seen you more wrong … You are badly under-rating (then-Roughriders quarterback Tino) Sunseri. The final big joke is Burris. (Tiger-Cats head coach Kent) Austin knew he was washed up last year and this year he is absolutely toast.”
Burris could have saved the Riders’ bacon in 2014. Brendan Taman, the Green and White’s general manager of the day, contacted Redblacks counterpart Marcel Desjardins and presented him with two trade options, only to be rebuffed.
Desjardins made it clear Burris was a key component of the Redblacks’ plans. There was some raising of eyebrows — considering an expansion team is seldom built around one of the league’s oldest players — but Desjardins’ wisdom has been underlined by the remarkable results in 2015.
During the regular season, the 40-year-old Burris threw for a league-high 5,703 yards while boasting a career-best completion percentage (70.9). He threw twice as many touchdown passes (26) as interceptions (13) and guided the upstarts from Ottawa to first place in the East Division.
Last week, Burris was named the East’s most outstanding player, and even his opponent in the league-wide balloting — Calgary pivot Bo Levi Mitchell — concedes that the Ottawa quarterback will assuredly win the league’s most prestigious individual award when it is presented Thursday.
Henry Burris, he of the omnipresent smile, should rightfully enjoy the last laugh.