Age is just a number!
Experience helps Argos earn a trip to the Grey Cup
The look on Andrew Harris’ face in the early season said more than words could ever express.
He was standing on the Argo sidelines, staring down a teammate or two, full of disgust, witness to teammates fighting in-game, looking around in shock while yelling at one player, then yelling at another. Then stomping away.
This wasn’t what Harris came to Toronto to repair. That Argo team was undisciplined, unruly, so full of energy and turmoil and onfield mistakes.
“This was a very immature team early on,” the veteran Harris said.
That was an Argos team going nowhere in a hurry.
But this is an Argo team now going to the Grey Cup.
When they lost the Eastern Final a year ago at home, basically defeating themselves in the process, Pinball Clemons, the unlikely GM, had a plan. He knew he had some talent. What he didn’t have was a team that understood anything about winning, that understood the intricacies of football, that more than anything had any idea how to manage a game when it mattered.
So Clemons went out and brought in an unlikely trio.
In came Harris from the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, a 35-year-old running back in a sport where 35-year-old running backs are almost nowhere to be found.
He brought in Brandon Banks from the Hamilton Tiger-cats, a receiver turning 35 before this year ends.
He brought in Ja’gared Davis, a 32-year-old defensive lineman who had played five years in the Canadian Football League and had gone to the Grey Cup in all five seasons.
And now the Argos and Davis and Speedy Banks and Harris are heading to the Grey Cup along with a head coach whose middle name is doubt and a quarterback who “nobody in the league wanted,” coach Ryan Dinwiddie said after Toronto beat Montreal 34-27 on Sunday.
This is three Grey Cup appearances in three seasons for Harris, who scored his only touchdown of the season in Sunday’s Eastern Final. He returned after three months out of the Toronto lineup.
This is six for six for Davis. This is five Grey Cup trips for Speedy B.
And this is a team that had to learn to be special from those who had already been there.
“I’m elated,” said Clemons, hugging everyone around him.
A year ago, the Argos were a mess on the field, a mess off the field, with executives fighting with fans, with quarterbacks skipping out of post-game questioning, with fingers pointed in so many directions.
Pinball is elated because no Argo ever cares more about this football team and this city than he does. But he’s elated also because his team is going to the Grey Cup and the idea of bringing in old-timers to play a young man’s game was a little off the map — but then Pinball had never coached according to manuals and he doesn’t operate that way as a GM either.
Even while missing so much of the season, Harris became one of the Argos most important players and people.
“This is how you win championships,” said Harris, who has two Grey Cup rings from the past two seasons. “You have to buy into one another, you have to believe in one another, you have to trust one another. That’s the biggest difference in this team.”
And Harris’ job here — after going down with a torn pectoral muscle in August — was to outwork everyone on the road back and to set a standard of what championship players and teams do.
“My job was to do whatever I could to help this team get the ring on their fingers.”
They are going to Regina now to play for each other and play for the ring.
The Argos have won 12 games, lost seven. It hasn’t always looked good. It hasn’t always looked right. But when it mattered on Sunday, against the scrappy Alouettes, it was difference-making.
The Argos controlled the ball and the clock and just about everything else along the way. They didn’t turn the ball over. They had only 20 yards in penalties. They only punted twice. Four different players scored touchdowns. Two different quarterbacks threw touchdown passes. Two field goals were made, none were missed.
It’s never perfect for any team at any time in football: But for the previously scrapping Argos, this was about as good as it will ever get.