Burris goes from Bears' to Lions' den
Three-time Grey Cup-winning QB joins B.C. coaching staff after Chicago stint
Football has taken Henry Burris around the world, from the Berlin Thunder to the Chicago Bears, to three Grey Cups in Calgary and Ottawa.
Now his globe-trotting journey has brought the former Canadian Football League quarterback to B.C., where he'll join the Lions organization for the first time — Burris also played for CFL teams in Saskatchewan and Hamilton — as an offensive consultant, coach and mentor to a young quarterbacking corps.
“For me, it boils down to a quote that I've always made sure I live by: `If you continue to follow your passion, your destination will appear,'” Burris said Tuesday. “And my thing is, my passion has always been working with quarterbacks. This game has done so much for me, it's all about giving back. It was an opportunity that I just couldn't pass up. And I got all this wealth of knowledge and I've got to hand it to somebody, because I'm getting old and I need to share all the things that I learned with somebody.”
Burris, 46, spent the past two years working with the National Football League's Chicago Bears, first as a Bill Walsh diversity coaching fellowship intern, then being hired full time as the team's offensive quality control coach, his duties revolving mostly around working with the tight ends and offensive line position groups.
The Bears cleaned house after a 6-11 season, firing head coach Matt Nagy and general manager Ryan Pace, and Burris was swept up in the purge. But Lions head coach Rick Campbell, the then-Ottawa Redblacks bench boss under whom Burris won a Grey Cup in 2016, was quick to call, and Burris — No. 3 all time in the CFL passing ranks — was quick to answer.
“We've always had a great friendship. Whenever the phone rings and his name is on the (call display) ... I always make sure I answered. When he had this opportunity in line for me, I couldn't hesitate,” said Burris, who eschewed offers from other CFL and NFL teams. “As a coach on the field, you want to continue to pick their brain and learn as much as you possibly can from a guy like him. I want to be in his shoes one day. I do want to be a head coach. The best way to learn is learn from the greats. And Rick Campbell is one of those in my book.”
Burris will fly out from Chicago at the end of the month for a few weeks, but one of the quirks of the hire is that it's technically a parttime position. He'll join the team for training camp and on a few other occasions, but the rest of the time he'll be a virtual visitor, telecommuting from the Windy City.
That flexibility was one reason Burris was all-in on the B.C. offer, as it gave his family — wife Nicole and teenage sons Armand and Barron — some stability, after they had moved to Chicago to join him just last year.
“Throughout their entire life, dad's been on the gridiron playing football, getting knocked around, getting cheered on or getting booed,” Burris said. “It's all about them. Now we have to centre our choices at this point around their careers, around their future.
“And it's a city that both my wife and I've always loved and to see the way our kids have embraced this, and really taken this new chapter of our lives on together. There's no way we can take them away from this.”
Burris has a few other young men to mentor now, as well.
Nathan Rourke, Michael O'Connor, Isaac Harker and Kevin Thomson are the quarterbacks currently on the Lions' roster, and Burris already has notes on all of them.
He has his ideas of how he can help them best, but he also wants to hear what the quarterbacks — Rourke is 23, the rest 26 — have to say about themselves.
“I don't know if you can tell by now, but I'm a quarterback geek,” Burris said, laughing during Tuesday's media zoom.
“If I see good quarterbacking, I love to pay extra attention to it. And I've taken notes of all these guys as far as the strengths and the weaknesses that we need to work on to help enhance their abilities,” he said.
“Each and every one of these guys has a world of talent. ... I'm going to sit down and have those man-to-man talks with them. ... Find out how much they know and try to help introduce them to some of the secrets that made my job (as a quarterback) much more efficient and much, much easier to go out and do on a day-to-day basis.”