KLINE SEIZING THE MOMENT
QB hopes to work way up depth chart
If you didn’t know the backstory, you’d figure you’d just been introduced to the biggest hot dog in the 70-year history of the Edmonton Eskimos.
It was well into the third quarter of the pre-season game against the Saskatchewan Roughriders Sunday when Jason Maas sent Zach Kline, No. 4 on the depth chart, in at quarterback.
A competition to see who will win the right to carry a clipboard behind CFL Most Outstanding Player Mike Reilly and borderline future Hall of Fame backup Kevin Glenn is not particularly compelling stuff. And the guy listed No. 3 on the depth chart, Danny O’Brien, had just bombed big time, completing two of seven passes and throwing an interception.
Kline came in and moved the offence down into the red zone, then threw a 25-yard pass to rookie receiver Harry McMaster on the one-yard-line. He then scored a touchdown on a quarterback sneak.
All of a sudden, Kline started flying around the field like a balloon with the air escaping, like a butterfly on drugs or the McMahon Stadium rabbit on Labour Day.
Kline was all over the place as he ran his ragged route, arms flapping, fists pumping, legs jumping and dancing back to the bench where he ripped his helmet off and revealed the greatest grin you ever saw from anybody who ever ran for a gain of one yard in a pre-season game.
Reilly was asked, on a scale of 10, to rank Kline’s celebration.
“It was a minus-10,” he said. “We had a little talk about that. It won’t happen again. I love the excitement. I don’t like the dance.”
Kline was allowed the one, however.
When he was in high school in California, Kline was ranked the No. 2 pro style quarterback in the nation. He had stacks of letters from colleges wanting him to be their quarterback. He envisioned being a big time, big school, starting quarterback. Instead he ended up bouncing from college to college trying to become a starting quarterback slotted behind others who became top draft choices.
He started at University of California, switched to Butte College, then to Indiana State, then back to California, then finally, Fresno State. He wore No. 8, No. 3, No. 5, No. 17 and No. 10 as coach after coach decided to go with somebody else.
It wasn’t until the last two games in his senior season at Fresno State that he finally started. When he ran on the field as the starter, he was bawling.
What you watched Sunday was Kline seizing a moment. He didn’t win the third-string job then and there. But he put himself in position to do it.
“Being out there was a moment. Being out there playing football beats anything else. I want to stay out there as long as I can and have
Being out there was a moment. Being out there playing football beats anything else.
a long career,” he said.
Kline knows who he is here. “I’m somewhat of a project,” he said. “I’m being groomed. I’m not a finished project at all. But I’m on the right path.”
Last year he found himself on the CFL tryout circuit, paying $200 a stop in insurance money to attend a tryout camp with hopes of getting invited to a mini-camp and then to a training camp.
“I wasn’t on anyone’s negotiation list or anything. I tried out for every team in the CFL except Montreal. It ended up being about $1,500 at the end of the tryout circuit. The Eskimos tryout camp was the last one I was at,” he said. “All I needed was a foot in the door. I was really, really lucky, to get a shot, but I knew if I could get the shot that one day I would be a starter in this league. That’s my goal. I’m learning from Mike Reilly and that’s pretty unreal because you learn by watching. I still have an incredible amount to learn — an incredible amount.”
If you thought Ricky Ray was a good story in 2002 when he came to camp after driving a Frito-Lay potato chip truck in Sacramento and won the thirdstring job behind Jason Maas and ended up starting the Grey Cup game in Edmonton, imagine how the Zach Kline story would read.
“You see it all the time. A player gets recruited and then caught up in regime changes as coaches get fired,” said Eskimos GM Brock Sunderland. “In one place he got caught behind the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft. But credit to him. He loves football and you have to be resilient to go through what he went through and to keep at it. It speaks to his character.”
Kline won an invitation to mini-camp last year and spent the season on the practice roster.
Sunday he earned himself a large percentage of playing time in Friday’s pre-season game in Winnipeg.
It was suggested to Kline that he’d be a pretty good story if he pulled this off.
“I will pull it off,” he said.