MODDEJONGE
Eskimos quarterback not bothered by former Redblacks teammate’s criticism
Eskimos’ Harris turned mind games into magic against Ottawa
Last week’s Trevor Harris saga came to a conclusion with a 16-12 win by his Edmonton Eskimos over the Ottawa Redblacks on Friday.
The main character in the tale was none other than the Eskimos quarterback himself.
The plot: An attempted assassination of Harris’s very character by former teammate Antoine Pruneau, the Redblacks safety who publicly called into question Harris’s leadership abilities and effectiveness as a teammate.
The setting: Two locker-rooms that share more than a little familiarity with one another, since the Eskimos had seven starters in the game who were former Redblacks, and a total of 13 on the roster.
The climactic ending saw an ultra-focused Harris complete a season-high 82.5 per cent of his passes for 327 yards against his former team on the way to Edmonton’s 437 yards of net offence, despite the low score.
After the game, however, Harris had nothing to say about any fuel that might have been added to the fire.
“With their safety?” Harris said. “No comment, really.”
But as usual, it turns out there is more to the story than was offered in the initial report, which traced the formation of the plot all the way back to the off-season, with a verbal agreement that had been in place for Harris to return to Ottawa in 2019.
And Pruneau’s comments raised the stakes in Friday’s game, taking what had been a mutual separation — presumably over contract figures — and making it personal.
“It doesn’t make (Harris) a bad person, but I didn’t like the fact sometimes he was pointing fingers at other guys,” Pruneau had told Postmedia’s Tim Baines. “Sometimes, it’s tough to expose yourself to critics. I’ve always been my toughest judge, so I expect teammates to be the same way — look at yourself first. If you have something to say, keep it down low.”
It was scathing stuff from a respected six-year veteran of the Redblacks locker-room, who played with Harris all three of the quarterback’s years there.
And Harris was no more talkative the day before the game, either, only saying the comments came as very surprising.
“I think he handled it by his play,” Eskimos head coach Jason Maas said Monday, as practices commenced ahead of a Week 10 meeting with the Toronto Argonauts on the road Friday (5:30 p.m., TSN, 630 CHED).
“I thought he played a very solid football game. Any time you can play turnover free, complete 83 per cent of your passes on 40 attempts, I don’t care what game or where you play, if you’re doing that, you’re getting good protection, you’re not getting sacked. And that’s the O-line doing their job, the running backs doing their job, but that’s also the quarterback making good decisions and throwing the ball where it needs to be thrown.
“So however it affected him, it obviously affected him in a positive way because I thought he had a tremendous game, played the way it needed to be played against that defence.”
One source stated after the game that Pruneau “didn’t mean it, he was just trying to get in Trevor’s head,” while another indicated the origin of the criticism came from much higher up the Redblacks food chain, serving as a distraction as general manager Marcel Desjardins “was trying to cover his ass,” after having lost a trio of top-end offensive veterans to the Eskimos in off-season free agency — a group that not only included Harris, but star receiver Greg Ellingson and left tackle Sirvincent Rogers as well.
So, from that point of view, the narrative on Harris last week had as much to do with playing mind games as anything.
“Whatever you want to call it, you’ve got to be mentally tough to deal with it, particularly when it’s your first time really having to deal with it,” Maas said. “This is the first time Trevor has moved on from an organization and had to face them like this, with the circumstances what they were.
“So it’s always good to experience it, but I think Trevor did a tremendous job dealing with it and moving on.”
As for Pruneau’s comments smudging any of the finish on Edmonton’s shiny new franchise quarterback, Maas said Harris has come exactly as advertised and the Eskimos have no such concerns.
“I just know this about Trevor: Since we’ve had him, he’s been nothing but great in everything he’s done for us,” said Maas, who helped the Redblacks to a Grey Cup appearance as their offensive co-ordinator in 2015, before Harris arrived in Ottawa the following season. “He’s a great leader. Since he walked in the door, he’s held everyone accountable in our building.
“He works about as hard as anybody I’ve been around. He prepares, non-stop, so he’s bearing the fruits of that preparation and it’s awesome to see a guy like him move on to a third team and have the success he’s having as a leader, and also just as a player.”
So however it affected him, it obviously affected him in a positive way because I thought he had a tremendous game.