Redblacks line coach Chiu prefers sidelines to Lions
When you consider the impressive arc of his playing career – seven-time CFL all-star, two-time Grey Cup champion and one most outstanding lineman award – it’s no surprise that Bryan Chiu, at the tender age of 42, had his name come up when Ottawa Redblacks head coach Rick Campbell was considering an emergency backup for his battered O-line.
“I think Bryan Chiu,” Campbell said this week, seemingly in jest, when asked if he had a fill-in in mind for tonight’s game at B.C. Place Stadium against the Lions.
Five years ago, the Lions coaxed one of their staff – Kelly Bates, now the head coach at Simon Fraser University – from the sidelines, for a brief time, to provide depth as a seventh lineman when the team ran into injury problems.
Bates, however, wasn’t far removed from his playing days.
Chiu, a centre whose butt was facing legendary Montreal Alouettes quarterback Anthony Calvillo for more than a decade, retired in 2010, just before what would have been his 14th CFL training camp.
“No way,” said Chiu on Thursday, before the Redblacks boarded a flight to Vancouver to play against Chiu’s hometown Lions. “I was not the biggest guy when I played, and the defensive linemen today are even bigger and stronger. I wore one jersey (Alouettes) my whole career and I’m going to stick by that. I’m retired. We have more than capable guys who can do a better job out there than I could do at 42.”
Assuming the Redblacks can muster enough survivors to get through the next few weeks, they may well find themselves as the East Division representative in the Grey Cup for the second straight year. At 6-5-1, they remain in first place in the scrambly East, entering Week 15, despite injuries to quarterbacks Trevor Harris and Henry Burris and a less than stellar 2-3-1 home record.
Last year, in only their second year of existence, the Redblacks had a magical ride to the championship game after a 12-6 regular season, rebounding from 2-16 the previous year, behind the quarterbacking of Burris, the league’s most outstanding player.
Chiu, in his first year as Ottawa’s offensive line coach, found himself with a virtual turn-key operation in 2015. From June, until the playoffs in November, the same group of bodyguards lined up in front of Burris like clockwork.
This year, only centre Jon Gott has been a regular fixture on Ottawa’s O-line to the 12-game mark.
Of the misfortune that has visited the Redblacks this season, the most devastating injury of all came last Saturday, when star left tackle SirVincent Rogers went down in the second quarter of a 29-12 win over the Toronto Argonauts.
The league’s most outstanding lineman last season, and a CFL allstar, Rogers came with Chiu to Ottawa after the latter’s one and only season as the Argos offensive line coach, in 2014. Rogers underwent knee surgery earlier this week and is possibly through for the season. It’s hard to replace a man who can crush you, with arms too thick for regular shirt sleeves, and whose play and personality inspired his teammates.
“All the way to the Grey Cup, we didn’t need to rotate guys last year,” Chiu says. “It was the same group every week. It was unheard of. Gott is the one only who’s played in all the games for me this year. It’s a challenge, and we’ll figure it out. But losing SirVincent… it’s going to be strange without him. We’ve been together (as coach and player) for every season I’ve been coaching in the CFL. The guys lean on him as their leader.”
Rookie Jason Lauzon-Seguin, a first-round pick from Laval, has the unenviable job of replacing the brawniest man in the operation, who was coming off his best season, the best any lineman in the CFL had last year.
“Jason’s a very versatile player, always poised, and he can play everywhere,” Chiu says. “This is just another chance to add to his resume.”
Asked to replace a teammate as beloved as a Byword Market beavertail is a tall order for a rookie, especially one who was introduced to football only for the first time in junior college and had limited starting experience at Laval.
But Chiu, one of the rare individuals of Asian heritage involved in football, knows something about unlikely stories.
Growing up in blended family of nine kids, after his mother remarried following her first husband’s death in a stabbing incident , the “black sheep” of the family broke a cultural stereotype by playing football at Vancouver College. Graduating in 1992, Chiu moved on to Pacific and Washington State, where he picked up two degrees and polished his resume to play at the professional level.
“Most of my siblings have gone on to become professionals (doctors, dentists, lawyers),” Chiu says. “To be honest, I had to beg to play the game. Football became my passion.”
He’ll use every ounce of it tonight, steering a starting rookie left tackle away from possible stage fright.