CATCHING FIRE
B.C. Lions receiver Bryan Burnham has made circus catches his trademark. It’s fitting, since he’s had to jump through hoops his entire career
REGINA — Geroy Simon, who could write a doctoral thesis on the subject, says the story is similar for just about every receiver who comes to the CFL.
In high school, they were the best player on their team. In college, they were stars. The next logical step was the NFL and the millions it promised, but they soon discovered there were a dozen guys on each team with similar credentials and a similar belief in their abilities.
They get cut by one team. They get picked up by another team and they’re cut again. Simon went through this process on eight different occasions before he landed in Canada where he saw the same guys he’d seen in the NFL, though now more contrite; now not as sure of themselves.
Simon, the CFL’s all-time leading receiver, now works in the Lions’ front office. He’s asked why some of those players disappear and others are able to create a second act in Canada.
“The team has to figure them out, but, more importantly, they have to figure out where they fit in the team,” Simon says. “It’s a different game up here and it usually takes a couple of years, but they have to reinvent themselves.”
Simon is asked if that’s what has happened to Bryan Burnham. “Absolutely,” he says. There are more than a few parallels to the career arcs of Simon and Burnham, the Lions’ breakout star at receiver. To be sure they are different players and different men, but in terms of their journey, in terms of their dogged pursuit of greatness and uncompromising work ethic, they share so much.
Burnham, as it happens, is nursing a minor foot injury sustained in practice this week which makes him a game-time decision for Sunday evening’s encounter with the Roughriders at Mosaic Stadium. But he’s still on pace for an 82-catch, 1,400-yard campaign after last year’s 79-catch, 1,392-yard season and that puts him in the conversation of the CFL’s best receivers, a conversation with which Simon is also familiar.
“Sometimes the player has greatness in him, but it’s never been developed or exposed,” says Lions coach Wally Buono, who’s had a few Hall of Famers in his CFL career.
“It’s a fine thing, but when you get your opportunity, you have to make the most of it and that’s what Bryan has done.”
Even if he took some time getting there.
When he first arrived in Vancouver, the 27-year-old Burnham didn’t quite have Simon’s history with the NFL, but like Simon, he was painfully aware he was running out of options. After a big junior year at Tulsa, the New Jersey native missed virtually all his senior year with a torn ACL, which didn’t exactly enhance his draft status. Instead, he signed with the Lions and spent most of 2014 on the practice roster before he played one game, then managed to lacerate his spleen.
Here are his stats from his rookie year: Two games, six catches, 113 yards.
“That whole process humbles you,” Burnham says of those early trials.
“Some people can’t handle that. They fold up. To me, it was a motivation. It made me want to be great in this league.”
Which is an excellent sound bite, but the following year wasn’t going much better for Burnham when injuries forced one-and-done head coach Jeff Tedford to insert Jonathon Jennings as the starting quarterback late in the season. Jennings and Burnham found chemistry almost immediately, but the larger story with the receiver concerned his growth through his relentless attention to detail.
“Your athleticism is only going to take you so far,” says Lions receivers coach Marcel Bellefeuille, now in his second year with Burnham.
“Now he’s focused on the finer details of alignments, splits, how to run certain routes, how to gain position and use his eyes on the tough catches. Being a better student has taken him to the next level.”
Those tough catches have also become Burnham’s calling card, his “different skill,” as Bellefeuille puts it.
“It’s something I absolutely work at,” Burnham says. “I don’t want to sound cocky, but we don’t see those as 50-50 balls. When the DB has his back to the ball, that’s an 80-20 ball. That’s my ball.”
Burnham allows that, like most young receivers, he wasn’t particularly diligent about studying the game in his early years. But, as with Simon, he looked around and quickly determined there were a lot of great athletes in the pros. He’d have to look elsewhere to find his edge.
“It was watching film, doing the work after practice, working on the details,” Burnham says. “That’s when I started to separate myself from the pack.
“At this point, you’re only getting older and you’re not going to get more athletic. That leaves those other areas and that’s where you have to improve.”
He also comes by that sensibility honestly. Burnham’s father Lem played three seasons as a defensive end with the Philadelphia Eagles in the ’70s, but made a larger impact on the game in retirement. A military man, Lem earned a PhD in psychology at Temple University and became the team psychologist for the Eagles, 76ers and Baltimore Orioles. He then worked for the NFL for a decade and helped write the league’s first rookie symposium.
Dude’s also written a couple of books. Apparently he didn’t encourage indolence in his son.
“A lot of (his work ethic) comes from my dad,” says Burnham. “He instilled that in me at a young age — you have to work for everything, nothing is given to you. At the time, I hated it, but looking back, it’s made me who I am.”
And what he will continue to be.