Collaros back with Argos after trade with Riders
Argonauts quarterback McLeod BethelThompson didn’t mince words when asked what Toronto’s 0-6 start to the season has been like.
“It’s horrible. Losing is horrible. It’s been very tough,” he said Wednesday morning.
Thirty minutes later, Argonauts general manager Jim Popp did something about the team’s six-game losing skid, getting QB Zach Collaros from the Saskatchewan Roughriders for a fourth-round draft pick.
The trade returns the 30-year-old Collaros to the team he started his Canadian Football League career with seven years ago, when he backed up Ricky Ray as the Argos went on to win the 2012 Grey Cup.
“It’s a player that’s very familiar with this organization. He’s obviously a vet that has won,” said Popp. “One thing is that I always want is to have players that want to be on a team. I know he enjoyed his time here before, and he’s expressed it in different ways in the past that he’d love to come back.”
Collaros has been out of action since a controversial hit in Week 1 of the season. He was placed on the six-game injured list on June 17 after taking a hit from Hamilton’s Simoni Lawrence on the third offensive play of a 23-17 loss to the host TigerCats on June 13. The play earned Lawrence a two-game suspension, a ban that was later upheld by an arbitrator after an appeal.
Popp wasn’t sure when Collaros would officially be cleared to play. BethelThompson will start on Thursday night as Toronto hosts the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (5-1-0) and then the Argonauts have a bye week, giving Collaros more time to recover and get familiar with his new playbook.
“It’ll be a process,” said Popp. “He’s still got to get out and start practising. He hasn’t practised at all since he was injured. He’s still on an injured list. He’ll slowly make his way in to practice, learning our system.
“How many weeks away is he from playing? Don’t have 100 per cent knowledge of that until we get him here. It’s going to be a day-to-day process. We’ll find out.”
When asked about Collaros’s health, Roughriders GM Jeremy O’Day said that to the best of his knowledge he doesn’t have any more symptoms of a concussion and that he’s passed his baseline test.
“We were at the point where he was getting close, but he was still in the sixgame (injured list),” O’Day told reporters in Regina. “Our first, initial response to his injury was, ‘Let’s worry about his health and get him back.’ Zach was very adamant that he wanted to continue playing days after, weeks after and even now he wants to continue playing.”
O’Day said the Argos first contacted him about Collaros about a week ago.
Collaros adds experience to an Argo quarterback corps that consists of BethelThompson, Michael O’Connor, Dakota Prukop and the injured James Franklin. Ray, who Collaros backed up in 2012 and 2013, retired before this season after a serious neck injury.