Never too early to think about QB succession

It was a decade that started with Hall of Fame shoo-in Ricky Ray and ended with a record-setting playoff performance by Trevor Harris.

Oh, and there was also a guy named Mike Reilly somewhere in between, who also captured the Edmonton Football Team's last Grey Cup while leading the Canadian Football League in passing for three consecutive seasons.

Harris was well on his way to continuing the trend of Edmonton quarterbacks leading the league in passing yards in the 2019 season, too. He finished in second place, 275 yards behind the Saskatchewan Roughriders' Cody Fajardo, despite missing five games due to an injury to his throwing hand.

But in that five-game stretch, Edmonton fans had a flashback to a more tumultuous time at the QB position over the past 10 years.

With Ray traded to the Toronto Argonauts ahead of the 2012 season in a move Edmonton sports fans only despise less than the 1988 sale of Wayne Gretzky to the Los Angeles Kings, the ensuing vacuum in the pocket didn't end up getting filled by the forgettable Steven Jyles, an overthe-hill Kerry Joseph or a young Matt Nichols, who hadn't thrown a pass in a regular-season game prior to that 2012 season.

And while Logan Kilgore deserves a pat on the back for all of his blood, sweat and tears — not to mention an unsightly gash in his tongue — as Edmonton limped into a 2019 playoff position in Harris' absence, it didn't exactly turn all eyes to the future.

Kilgore, if you recall, had already begun his post-playing career. With no takers for a roster spot in 2018, Kilgore became quarterbacks coach with a Bakersfield Renegades program he began his college path playing with in 2009.

So, just what is the succession plan in Edmonton for Harris, whose youthful appearance and unapologetic boyish charm belie the fact he will have turned 35 by the time training camp is scheduled to kick off in the spring?

Of course, no one at Commonwealth Stadium is reaching for the panic button just yet. Harris is in his prime of both his playing career and his life, having been given the opportunity to spend all of 2020's cancellation with his wife and two young children back home in Ohio.

And when it's all said and done, he will no doubt go down as one of the most accurate passers ever to play on a professional gridiron, with a completion percentage of 70.61 that is the highest of any CFL quarterback who has ever taken 1,000 snaps.

And while he's constantly looking for new ways to better himself, both mentally and physically, eventually, the torch has to be handed off.

And if a club is able to groom an “air” apparent in-house instead of having to go out and buy one, all the better.