Harris injury alters East race
It was a half-century ago, when football really mattered in this town. Almost as much as anything.
The Toronto Argonauts had lost the 1971 Grey Cup game to Calgary, and as the ’72 season dawned, with Team Canada getting ready to play what would become a historic hockey series against the Soviet Union, the Argos took dead aim at winning a CFL championship.
They had two quarterbacks, Joe Theismann and Greg Barton, and it wasn’t until 10 minutes before the season opener against Montreal that head coach Leo Cahill designated Theismann, the 22-year-old Notre Dame grad, as the starter. All the key players were back from the previous year, and Cahill had also recruited running back Eric (The Flea) Allen and offensive guard Noah Jackson. They were considered by most to be the CFL’s best team.
Until, that is, the second quarter of that opening game. As 33,135 fans watched at a packed CNE Stadium, Theismann ran wide with the football, was gang tackled on the brand new “Tartan Turf” and broke his ankle. Without him, the Argos lost nine of their first 10 games. Even the return of a hobbled Theismann and a trade for veteran signal caller Wally Gabler couldn’t stop the bleeding. Toronto finished 3-11, and Cahill was fired.
To compare Theismann’s broken bone — he would suffer a more gruesome leg injury much later in his career — with the season-ending injury to this year’s star offseason acquisition, running back Andrew Harris, would be a stretch. It’s a hard thing to explain to folks who can’t imagine the city without the Blue Jays or who believe big time sports arrived with the Raptors in 1995, but there was a time when an injury to a star Argo generated big headlines and all kinds of public conversation.
The news, first announced by TSN, that Harris will miss the rest of this season after undergoing surgery on a torn pectoral muscle didn’t do any of that and, well, it’s not Harris’s fault. The 35-year-old Canadian has enjoyed a spectacular career that will land him in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame one day and, even on a 2022 Argonauts team that wasn’t exactly committed to the run game, he was still third in CFL rushing when he went down early last week against Hamilton.
Argos fans barely got to know him. He had played only eight games, and at his age and with an injury of this severity, his career will now be called into question. But Harris, the highest-paid running back in the CFL, represented an effort by Argos management to at least try to bring in some recognizable names to augment a relatively anonymous team.
While the additions of Harris, Brandon Banks and Ja’Gared Davis might not rival speculation over Kevin Durant possibly coming to Toronto, they were certainly names committed CFL watchers understood as marquee attractions.
“Respectfully, the best running back in the Canadian Football League,” Argos GM Michael Clemons said in a statement released by the club following the signing of Harris last February. “Homegrown through junior football, he is not defined by his birth certificate but refined by our Canadian game. His will to win is only paralleled by his love of the game.”
The Winnipeg-born Harris had accomplished a rare feat in the 2019 Grey Cup, winning both top Canadian and MVP honours. A big, punishing back, he became a featured part of back-to-back Winnipeg championship teams before the Bombers decided it was time to move on last winter to a new set of running backs in Johnny Augustine and Brady Oliveira, who might not find themselves on the injured list as often.
Now Harris is gone for the season. Perhaps this will make him even hungrier to come back next season, although he doesn’t have a contract at this point. For now, the Argos have to find a new weapon, particularly with Hamilton and Montreal seemingly starting to find their feet in the East Division after terrible starts. It will put more pressure on the arm of McLeod Bethel-Thompson, a distant third in league passing yardage and touchdown passes behind B.C.’s brilliant Canadian passer, Nathan Rourke.
Only 2-7 Edmonton and 1-7 Ottawa have scored fewer points this year than the Argos, who don’t have a pass catcher in the top10 of receiving yards this season and also lost promising wideout Cam Phillips in the last Hamilton game. Heading toward a home game this weekend against Calgary and then back-toback contests against the TigerCats, head coach Ryan Dinwiddie is going to have to find some new wrinkles if his team is going to hold on to first place in the division.
Only 11,623 fans showed up for Toronto’s last home game, not good news in light of pre-season comments from team chairman Larry Tanenbaum questioning the future of the league and his team. Was Harris selling tickets? It would be difficult to provide evidence to back up such a claim. But he was giving the team veteran experience and a personality for $165,000 per season. With Harris having the second most carries in the league, the Argos were definitely trying to get their money’s worth.
In a perfect world, more of the city would care about losing a player like Harris, but that’s just not the way it is anymore for the CFL in Toronto. The best the team can do now is not repeat what happened in 1972 after Theismann went down and the Argos let the season slide. Keeping the thin slice of attention the team does generate depends on winning games.
Injuries are part of football, to be sure. But Theismann, at least, had his whole career ahead of him. We can only hope Harris hasn’t taken his last hand-off.