Tiger-Cats trade Evans to the Lions for draft pick
Hamilton gets fourth-round choice for the starting quarterback
This will have a certain sense of déjà vu for Dane Evans.
He’ll have to beat out Vernon Adams Jr. again.
On Thursday, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats traded the quarterback who put them into the 2019 and 2021 Grey Cup games to the BC Lions for a fourth-round “conditional escalator” draft choice. A conditional escalator often means a draft choice can be a higher one if the traded player meets certain performance thresholds.
In January, the Ticats signed pending free agent Bo Levi Mitchell to be their No. 1 quarterback, then re-signed Matt Shiltz as a backup, leaving no roster space and, more importantly, no money for Evans. But his Hamilton days were effectively over in November when they Ticats traded for the exclusive rights to negotiate with Mitchell for the three months before free agency. They were not going to let Mitchell get away.
The Lions have lost their starting quarterback, Oakville’s Nathan Rourke, to the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars, and had Vernon Adams Jr. pencilled in as starter with Dominique Davis as the backup.
In 2018, Evans beat Adams out for the No. 3 spot in Hamilton behind Jeremiah Masoli and Johnny Manziel, and Adams briefly shifted to wide receiver before being cut and landing in Montreal, where he eventually started.
“Vernon was my first roommate in Hamilton for mini-camp,” Evans said Thursday from his Tulsa, Okla., home. “I’m excited to work with him again. This happened so fast I haven’t talked to Vernon yet, but I’m just about to. He reached out earlier to me, not about coming to B.C., but about my situation and it was very nice of him to make that effort.”
When it became obvious in January that he wouldn’t be back with the Ticats, Evans gave his agents a list of teams he’d prefer to be traded to, and he says the Lions were at the very top.
That was before the Toronto Argonauts recently lost McLeod Bethel-Thompson to the USFL. But it’s unlikely the Ticats would have sent Evans to Toronto — the archrivals they always play three or four times a year — if they could get some value for him elsewhere. The draft choice from B.C. helps make up for draft choices they sent to Calgary for the right to negotiate with Mitchell.
Evans spent four seasons in Hamilton, and last off-season the Ticats chose to sign him rather than longtime quarterback Masoli, whom he’d replaced after injury in 2019. He also replaced Masoli halfway through the stirring 2021 East final in Toronto and led a comeback win that put the Ticats into a hometown Grey Cup.
But the 2022 season never got fully on track, as the Ticats stumbled badly out of the gate, and Evans struggled with disastrous fumbles and interceptions. He also had a couple of performance-affecting injuries and, although he had a few superb games particularly in the final third, he was replaced by Shiltz in the East semifinal loss to Montreal.
Last year, Evans, 29, completed 305 of 457 pass attempts for 3,883 yards with 16 touchdowns and 16 interceptions. In his four Hamilton seasons, he dressed for 63 games, totalling 8,807 passing yards for 45 touchdowns with 34 interceptions.
The personable — and earnest — Evans told The Spectator that he’s working on a social media message to the fans and Ticats organization thanking them for his years here.
“We lived there, had our daughter there, and I’ll miss the city and definitely will miss the guys I shared a locker room with,” he said.
“It definitely didn’t end the way I thought it would. When I signed my contract last year my only request was that I’m the guy that raises the Grey Cup for that city. I definitely didn’t see the weird year last year coming.
“The Ticats did what they had to do and I’m doing what I have to do, no hard feelings. I feel very fortunate to go to the BC organization. Excited to go to another team, another city and prove I can still play. I know my best days are still ahead of me.”
Orlondo Steinauer, Ticats head coach and president of football operations, was assistant head coach to June Jones when Evans made the team in 2018 and worked with him running the scout (opposition-mimicking) offences in 2018.
“The tangible things were easy to notice, he had the great arm and was fitting the ball in small windows,” Steinauer said. “The poise he had and the seriousness he took running the scout team stuck with me. The other thing that stuck was how great a teammate he was.
“Without Dane, we don’t get to two Grey Cups. I’ll always have great memories of Dane and who he is as a person. This past season was difficult. I wish Dane the very best … except when he’s playing against us.”
That will be Aug. 26 in Vancouver and Oct. 13 at Tim Hortons Field.