Argos’ awakening
Toronto touching down in Ottawa is great for CFL
In most leagues, the art of the rebuild must follow a meticulously constructed plan that requires patience and commitment from all concerned, from the owner right down to the lowest rungs of the food chain.
Sometimes it works. More often it doesn’t. But any deviation from the plan, any shortcuts, will be punished swiftly and severely because, above all, the plan must be served.
If you doubt this, we have these words for you: the Cleveland fricking Browns.
But the CFL, as you must know, isn’t most leagues. The beauty — and maybe the curse — of the Canadian game is a transformation can take place inside of weeks, not years and the plan can be drawn up in pencil on a cocktail napkin.
This season, for example, the Toronto Argos hired head coach Marc Trestman and GM Jim Popp at the end of February, conveniently missing most of free agency and setting the Boatmen back at least three months behind the league’s other teams.
It also showed early on. On June 30, in their second game of the season, the Argos were throttled 28-15 by the B.C. Lions before a crowd — if that’s the right term — of 11,219 at BMO Field. As late as Sept. 4, they were 4-7, in worse shape than Keith Richards and seemingly capable of that most impossible of tasks: missing the playoffs in the Eastern Conference.
And, now, here they are in today’s Grey Cup game. Again, in most other leagues, this would qualify as a Cinderella story of the highest order, the kind of rags-to-riches story that resonates with even the most casual fan. In the CFL, no biggie, it happens.
There’s just one thing. This time it’s happened in Toronto. And that is a bid deal.
The Argos appearance in the Dominion final marks a great moment for Popp, for Trestman, for Ricky Ray and for James Wilder. But, mostly, it represents something notable for a league that has hoped, prayed, this decaying franchise would show signs of life.
The CFL, to be sure, can survive without a healthy franchise in Toronto. We know this because, for most of the last 40 years, it’s survived without a healthy franchise in Toronto.
But the league has never known is what a successful operation in Toronto would mean — the riches it would uncover in its biggest market, the doors it would open — because it’s never known from year to year what the Argos would deliver.
True, there have been isolated spikes in the team’s fortunes over the decades but, as quickly as things would improve, they’d come crashing back to Earth with Bruce McNall or Sherwood Schwartz or David Cynamon at the controls.
I mean, two years ago the Argos played their home games in four different cities. So what makes anyone think it will last this time, that they will finally get things right?
It’s a fair point, but the key players in the Argos’ renaissance do inspire confidence. The ownership with Larry Tanenbaum and Bell is rock-solid. The track record of Popp and Trestman speaks for itself. In one short season they’ve built a championship team. Ray, the 38-year-old quarterback, is the glue but Wilder, the first-year running back, has emerged as the CFL’s best player since being installed as the feature back over the final third of their season.
In those six games, Wilder averaged more than 100 yards rushing and over 70 receiving yards. In their season finale against the Lions, he accounted for 227 yards from the line of scrimmage, including 136 rushing yards in a 40-13 Argos’ romp at B.C. Place Stadium.
Hard to believe it was the same team the Lions beat so handily at the end of June.
Trestman, as it happens, coached Wilder’s father, James Sr., in Tampa back in the late ’80s and that’s just one of the ready-made stories they’re telling about the Argos these days.
There’s the resurrection of the 38-year-old Ray, who’s added a fitting coda to his Hall of Fame career.
“I know this,” Trestman said during Grey Cup week. “When I go to work I can’t wait to get there because I get to work with Ricky Ray everyday. Everybody who works in the building knows we have hope because we have Ricky Ray.”
There’s the response to Trestman, the 61-year-old career coach who was fired as the Chicago Bears’ head coach in 2014, then as the Baltimore Ravens’ offensive coordinator 22 months later.
“It’s the way he taught us how to love,” said linebacker Terrance Plummer said when asked about his coach this week. “He taught us not to hate the other team or worry about them. He’s taught us to love one another.”
There’s also the emergence of Wilder as the league’s most exciting player.
“He has top-end speed where he can outrun everybody,” Ray said of the 25-year-old Floridian. “(But it’s) the way he punishes players, too. It’s impressive to have that combination. You’re usually either physical or you’re a fast guy. He kind of has it all. I haven’t been around a guy that has that combination.”
But the larger point is they’re telling stories about the Argos now in Toronto and it’s not like this team has to capture the imagination of the entire city.
They just need a sliver of this giant market to sustain themselves, just need enough people to care to make a difference.
They got that this year. That can change in the CFL, but at least it’s a start.