TORONTO — Trevor Harris didn’t throw for three touchdowns like he had in each of the previous three weeks. In fact, he didn’t even throw one. Yet the Ottawa Redblacks quarterback proved again Wednesday why he’s currently the class of the CFL when it comes to his position.
On an unbearably muggy night in front of a sparse crowd of 12,373 at BMO Field, Harris led his team to a 30-20 victory over the Toronto Argonauts and in doing so had to have evoked a sense of regret among Argos fans that the organization might have made a mistake letting him go.
Calm and calculated. Methodical and precise. Harris was brilliant as he completed 28 passes on 31 attempts for 392 yards in his first game against his former team.
That type of performance shouldn’t have come as a surprise to an Argos fan base that watched Harris throw for 4,354 yards and a league-leading 33 touchdowns while wearing the double blue last year as Ricky Ray spent the majority of 2015 recovering from off-season shoulder surgery.
Harris was in the Most Outstanding Player discussion all season too, however when the team decided to start a finally-healthy Ray over Harris in the East semifinal it was a telling sign. When a 36-year-old Ray inked a new contract with Toronto in December, the writing was on the wall for the younger quarterback who tested the open market and ended up with the Redblacks.
The Argos chose Ray over Harris and that’s why so much attention was put on the QB matchup heading into Wednesday’s game.
Harris, 30, downplayed his return to Toronto prior to the contest, insisting it was “just another game.” You know, that old chestnut. Athlete cliches are great, aren’t they?
“They’re happy the way they went. I’m happy the way I went,” Harris said after the win. “I’m very grateful for my years in Toronto and all the things I’ve learned…I’d be lying to you if I said [this game felt different]. I’m part of the Ottawa Redblacks and I’m just one cog in the engine.
“At the end of the day when you watch the film it’s silent and you see 12 people versus 12 people. It doesn’t matter who you play against, if it’s an old team, new team.”
While there was no emotion attached to the Xs and Os of it all, Harris did eventually crack a smile and admit it was great seeing some of his former teammates, including Ray, because “you develop such a great relationship with them, they’re almost like family.”
The only emotion we saw from Harris during the game occurred when he completed a 77-yard strike to Greg Ellingson in the opening minute of the second half then followed it up with a one-yard rushing touchdown on the next play. After Harris snuck into the end zone behind a throng of linemen, he walked back to the 32-yard line for the convert — he’s also in charge of holding the ball during place kicks — and aggressively threw his arms up in the air, thumping his chest as if to say “let’s go!” to his teammates and any Redblacks fans watching. Besides those two seconds of visible elation, Harris was poised as all get-out.
“I think he did a good job handling the emotional part of coming back here,” Redblacks offensive coordinator Jaime Elizondo, who was the Argos’ receivers coach last season, told Sportsnet. “He was pretty levelheaded but it’s always hard to come back to your home.
“He did a great job preparing like he does every week and I’m really proud of him. He’s very, very even-keeled and at that position I think you have to be. He doesn’t get phased. He doesn’t get rattled. That’s a reflection of being prepared and moving forward.”
One of the only things holding Harris back from an even more impressive stat line was the undisciplined play of his teammates. The 3-0-1 Redblacks were penalized an absurd 19 times costing them 149 yards.
“That was tough because penalties can be back-breaking,” Harris said. “We had some second-down conversions get called back. A lot of times we put ourselves in bad field position with special teams penalties.”
Still, he maintained composure and marshalled his team to another win.
Harris also proved he doesn’t need to lean heavily on dynamic receiver Chris Williams every week. Williams entered Wednesday’s contest with 493 receiving yards — a CFL record through the first three games of a season — but the Argos held the speedster to just 63 yards. Instead, Harris turned to Ellingson who finished with a whopping 218 yards receiving.
“It’s one of those deals where we’ve got so many weapons somebody’s going to eat every night. It’s just a matter of who,” Harris added bluntly.
The Waldo, Ohio native is now averaging 368.75 passing yards per game, a remarkable 82.5 completion percentage and a 9-to-1 touchdown-to-interception ratio.
This isn’t to say the Argos’ quarterback situation is some type of desolate wasteland in comparison. Ray is a future Hall of Famer still playing excellent football. He’s currently second only to Harris in both yards and touchdowns and with a short completion in the first quarter leapfrogged Danny McManus to move into fourth place on the CFL’s all-time passing yards list. Ray certainly wasn’t the reason the Argos lost the game. He was outplayed by his counterpart, though, and that’s what stings if you’re an Argos supporter who wanted to see the team keep Harris.
The Redblacks held their expansion draft in December 2013. The team’s top QB selected was veteran Kevin Glenn and less than two months later they signed Henry Burris. There was no way anybody could’ve foreseen that within 2 1/2 years Harris, an unproven and barely used backup with the Argos at the time, would be the powerhouse for Ottawa he is today.
Harris wasn’t even supposed to be the Redblacks starter in 2016.
Burris, the reigning MOP, injured the pinky finger on his throwing hand midway through the season opener which led to Harris seeing action. Harris connected with Williams on a 71-yard touchdown pass on his very first regular season play in an Ottawa uniform. He hasn’t looked back since.
It’s unknown exactly when Burris will be fit to play again, but things will get interesting whenever he is cleared because there’s no better pivot in the CFL right now than harris and no way to justify putting him back on the bench if he continues to play this well.
“It’s still Henry’s team and we’ll cross that hurdle when we get there but it’s Henry’s team and Trevor knows that,” Elizondo explained.
We’ll see.
