SO MANY GUYS, SO MANY STORIES
The Argonauts are the right team at the right time for many of its stars
Who are these Argos?
And how is it they are playing for the Grey Cup this Sunday, this soon?
Armanti Edwards laughs when asked those questions. Behind almost every nameless, faceless Argo player is a fascinating football story. Edwards was big news long before he was traded to Toronto in late May in a deal that almost no one paid attention to.
“In North Carolina, he’s famous the way Michael Jordan is famous,” Argos GM Jim Popp said.
Popp should know. He’s from North Carolina.
Edwards played quarterback at Appalachian State, a small school in Boone, a small Carolina town. As a Mountaineer, he authored one of the single greatest upsets in college football history.
Appalachian 34, Michigan 32: Edwards threw for three touchdown passes and ran for another on that September day in 2007 and will be remembered forever for the impossible win. He was also honoured with the Walter Payton Award, which goes to the top offensive player in Division I-AA football, in both 2008 and 2009.
Before he won twice, a guy named Dave Dickenson won that same award (in 1995). And after he won, a guy named Bo Levi Mitchell won (in 2011). Dickenson is coaching the Calgary Stampeders. Mitchell is playing quarterback.
“Pretty amazing how all this has worked out,” said Edwards, who had to learn to play receiver and run back kicks after playing nothing but quarterback in college. His last stop in the NFL was in Chicago. He was cut in 2014.
The coach who cut him: Argos head coach Marc Trestman, now his biggest fan.
“We all want to grow up and be like Armanti Edwards,” Trestman said. “That’s all I can really say about him. Selfless, emotionally intelligent and highly competitive. Smartest guy in the room and you can’t get a word out of him. Everybody should have a chance to coach a man like Armanti Edwards.”
* * *
The story says DeVier Posey got a free tattoo, which, along with other rule-breaking misdemeanours, cost him 10 games of football when he was suspended at Ohio State University.
Posey insists the story is wrong. He never got a tattoo, free or otherwise. He said he sold his Ohio State ring because he needed money and the guy he sold it to happened to own a tattoo parlour.
But he, along with thenquarterback Terrelle Pryor and others paid a heavy price for kids’ mistakes. His suspension was the longest. The bitterness of the circumstance has subsided over time.
“There’s been a broken telephone on this story,” said Posey, who spent four seasons in the NFL before arriving in Toronto. “I’ve been approached about interviews. (ESPN show) Outside The Lines, things like that, have called. I’ve kind of wanted to move past it.”
He played in Houston in the NFL, then with the Jets, then Denver before becoming an Argo this season.
“I really love where Posey is at right now,” Trestman said. “He’s gone through a personal transformation. I think he’s grown up a lot as a person and that’s what I’m proud of him about. His development as a person and as a player has been impressive and a joy to watch.”
* * *
This is how far Jim Popp was willing to go to try to sign James Wilder Jr.
Last season, when he was coaching and managing the Montreal Alouettes, two jobs almost impossible to do in conjunction, the Alouettes had a game in Edmonton. After the game, he flew to Minneapolis and drove to Green Bay to watch a pre-season NFL game, then drove to Chicago to watch another game, then flew to Toronto and drove to Buffalo, just because he needed to check out Wilder’s play in a pre-season game for the Buffalo Bills.
“It seems like I’ve been trying to convince James to come to Canada for a long time,” Popp said. “He didn’t seem very interested at times. I don’t think he knew very much about the Canadian Football League.”
James Wilder Sr. played his last NFL season in 1990. Years after becoming the all-time leading rusher in Tampa Bay Buccaneers history, and two years after he retired, James Wilder Jr. was born.
Born to play football, it seemed. Running back or linebacker. In high school, it didn’t seem to matter. He was so great at both positions that almost as many colleges recruited him out of high school to play running back as they did to play linebacker.
“That’s the thing,” Popp said. “If an NFL team would have run James on special teams, I don’t think he’d ever have been available to a CFL team. He’s that great special-teams player.”
Instead, he signed with the Argos in March, after Montreal dropped him for its negotiation list. And in fairness, the Argos didn’t even know what they had at the time. Wilder Jr. spent almost two-thirds of the season playing behind starting running back Brandon Whitaker.
Then Wilder Jr. got a start. And he hasn’t slowed down since. He averaged 190 yards of running and catching the ball over the final six regular-season games — impossible numbers, really — was nominated for rookie of the year, made the huge third-and-5 catch in the Eastern Final and has all but promised two touchdowns on Sunday, with his dad flying in for the game, the first time he’ll see him play a CFL game live.
* * *
The winning touchdown in the Eastern Final was scored by Argos backup quarterback Cody Fajardo. He doesn’t get on the field often, only to make a yard or two on a QB sneak play, and only when necessary.
The difficulty of the play, in Fajardo’s words, is that they don’t practise it. They can’t practise it live.
“It’s too dangerous,” he said. “You don’t want to get somebody hurt doing it. So you just have to be ready when they call your name. The beauty of running that play is, I have to keep my head in the game all the time. I never know when I’m going in.”
Fajardo knows what it’s like to be on the sidelines, watching. He was recruited to play quarterback at the University of Nevada, behind something of a legend already at Nevada. He redshirted his freshman year and became friends with the starter, a quarterback by the name of Colin Kaepernick.
“We were real close,” Fajardo said. “My first year was his senior season. I leaned on him for so much. Over the years, he got me through a lot of situations.”
Then Kaepernick became famous for something other than throwing touchdown passes.
“He changed his cell number almost every month,” Fajardo said. “All of a sudden, I couldn’t get hold of him anymore. I guess I didn’t make the cut.”
He still thinks the world of Kaepernick.
“I respect him for a guy who has stuck by his word and his principles and they were more important to him than football was.”
Football has a way through its personal geography of bringing unusual circumstances together. The last NFL team Fajardo tried out for was the Cincinnati Bengals. One of the receivers he was throwing to at Bengals camp was DeVier Posey.
“He got cut and I got cut,” Fajardo said. “And then we both end up here, playing for a Grey Cup. You know something, I love this team. This team is so close. So many guys, so many stories. I’ve never been on a team this close.
“I think everything here is happening for a reason.”