ALL-TIME ARGO FLUTIE CAN’T FORGET TORONTO
Despite only playing two of 21 pro seasons in the city, the former CFL great remembers the club fondly
Doug Flutie had bigger numbers in Calgary, where he passed for 20,551 yards and 140 touchdowns in four seasons with the Stampeders.
And he had a bigger stage during his second stint in the NFL, where the quarterback controversy involving him and Rob Johnson became national sports news in the United States.
But the retired football star says he never had more fun as a pro than he did in Toronto, where he won Grey Cups in each of his two seasons leading the Argonauts offence. Along the way Flutie set single-season franchise records in completions, yards and touchdowns, and teamed with players like Mike (Pinball) Clemons to win 30 of 36 regular-season games.
Argo home games averaged 18,226 fans in 1997, Flutie’s final season with the club.
The club has averaged 12,401 at home games so far this season, but Flutie’s presence and discounted tickets might boost those numbers.
Either way, Flutie’s warm feelings for Toronto haven’t faded.
“Some of my fondest memories playing football are from that Toronto team,” the 54-year-old Flutie said on a conference call Wednesday. “The Toronto guys seemed to have more fun.”
Flutie arrived in Toronto in 1996 for the final phase of an eight-year CFL career that saw him pass for 41,355 yards and 270 touchdowns.
In addition to the Grey Cup, Flutie won the CFL’s most outstanding player award in each of his two Argo seasons, and says he returned to the National Football League a more confident and capable quarterback.
As a part-time starter with the New England Patriots in 1988, Flutie completed 51.4 per cent of his passes, totalling 1,150 yards in the most productive season of his first stint in the NFL.
A decade later he passed for 2,711 yards and 20 touchdowns with Buffalo in his NFL return. And in 2001 he passed for 3,464 yards, the best total of his NFL career, while cutting his interception rate to 2.9 per cent.
Flutie traces his improvement to his years in the CFL, where instead of giving him orders, coaches urged him to take charge and play creatively.
“It was night and day. It was like my college days in the two-minute offence,” Flutie says of the change to the CFL’s wide-open style of play. “If I got to the line of scrimmage and didn’t like what I saw, I’d call something else.”
The strategy clearly worked. Flutie ranks ninth all-time in CFL passing yards, even though he played only eight seasons here. His 306.3 passing yards per game remain a CFL record, and his stat line prompts a natural curiosity about what he would have achieved if he had spent more of his 21-year pro football career in Canada. But Flutie says he wouldn’t have been satisfied unless he tested himself in the NFL again.
“We might have been able to put a string (of Grey Cup wins) together. The problem is, you never know,” he said.
“At that point in my career I needed to answer a couple more questions about playing in the NFL.”
“Some of my fondest memories playing football are from that Toronto team . . . The Toronto guys seemed to have more fun.” DOUG FLUTIE