Messam had to learn how to fit in
Running back got serious about being a pro with the Stampeders
CALGARY — The issue with Jerome Messam was never talent, because everyone from Wally Buono to Jim Popp could see Messam was blessed with supernatural gifts.
But he was also blessed with a talent for self-destruction, which casts some light on why he played for six different organizations in five years. This year, in Calgary, the light finally went on for the 31-year-old Brampton product, and he put together the kind of year the CFL has been waiting for since he broke in with the B.C. Lions in 2010.
But the journey to get to this place has been hard on everyone, most notably Messam.
“It’s just maturity, it’s being a professional on and off the field,” he said on Saturday as the Stamps went through their final preparations in advance of Sunday’s West Division final against the Lions.
Which sounds simple enough, but doesn’t really tell the whole story.
As the feature back in Dave Dickenson’s offence, the 6-foot-3, 250-pound Mack truck led the CFL in rushing with 1,198 yards this season, caught 54 passes for another 485 yards and should be the runaway winner for the league’s Outstanding Canadian.
With the retirement of Jon Cornish, he also filled a huge hole in the Stamps’ lineup, and Dickenson, the first year head coach, says Messam might be more versatile than Cornish.
Dickinson had also heard all the stories about Messam, stories that started in his second training camp with the Lions in 2011, but decided to form his own opinion about the running back.
“I’m not going to judge someone based on somebody else,” Dickenson said. “It’s going to be, do you have that drive, that respect? Are you willing to be unselfish? And he’s done all that.” But it’s taken a while. The first sign of trouble occurred with the Lions in 2011 when, owing to a training camp indiscretion, some of the team’s veterans advised Buono that Messam was a problem. He was promptly traded to Edmonton, where he was named Most Outstanding Canadian that year before the Eskimos traded him to Montreal after a failed NFL tryout.
The Als released him just before the 2014 season. He landed in Saskatchewan, who traded him to Calgary last year.
Somewhere in there, Messam finally got the message that he had to change or he’d be out of the game.
“It wasn’t because of his performance,” Lions defensive back Ryan Phillips said of the circumstances around Messam’s trade from the Lions.
“It was other things, but he’s grown as a professional. I think he takes his career a little more seriously now.”