Adam Gagnon/CFL.ca
Canadian football can be strange.
I played it for 10 years and watched the CFL with a close eye from a strangely young age. I’ve spent countless hours either in a film room educating myself on the game or sitting in front of a television hearing Chris Cuthbert and Glen Suitor explain the rules and their implications.
Yet still, once or twice a season, we are served a reminder just how unique our game is.
It’s easy to forget all the intricacies of Canadian football which separate it from or American counter parts. Yes the field is bigger. Yes the field goal posts are at the front of the end zone, but it’s far more than that.
My most recent reminder of how strange and beautiful the Canadian game can be came in Week 17 in Toronto on the last play of the first half.
Argos quarterback Drew Willy caught my eye at first for evading about six different Saskatchewan Roughriders in the pocket. This could have been a headline on its own as Willy has struggled to feel pressure and manoeuvre the pocket since donning double blue, but what followed next was a slice of Canadianity as thick as grandma’s family famous apple pie.
It doesn’t matter what your citizenship says; if you break the line of scrimmage and try to throw the football you will not be successful. Instead of throwing, Willy, realizing all his receivers had run vertically, kicked the ball.
For anyone new to the Canadian game: you didn’t read that wrong. He punted the ball — a quarterback, after escaping the pocket.
Of course, before laying laces to pigskin, Willy did the sensible thing… look around quickly to:
A. Make sure he was not about to get his clock and all relevant time related trackers cleaned.
B. See if anyone was onside.
Sadly, the quality of this play’s end did not come anywhere close to matching the spectacular plot twists and climax of the start and middle.
Receiver Kenny Shaw picked up the ball in a rather confused and seemingly uneducated manner, which of course resulted in a touchdown signal revoked by a ‘no yards’ call since Shaw was forty yards ahead of Willy when he punted the ball away.
Again, for those of you new to the room, any player behind the ‘kicking player’ — be it quarterback, punter or receiver — is eligible to recover the kick and be awarded at the spot of the recovery. Those ahead of the kick are ‘off-side’ and do not have the ability to recover said kick.
A lot of people find explaining these situations and nuances annoying and even embarrassing sometimes. A regular play in the Canadian Football League can at times look like the zaniest thing you ever saw from your favourite 1980’s football follies VHS and that can push people away, but I love it.
It’s who we are. It’s what makes us different. If you’re looking to watch fair catches without exciting returns, there are plenty of places to search that out. If you enjoy seeing teams have no option but to attempt a 65-yard field goal when tied at the end of a game instead of attempting to crush a punt out the back of the end zone for a single point and subsequent victory, you can find that wherever you want.
Drew Willy reminded me that weekend just how random and sporadic our unique plays can look to the uneducated, which reminds me of my only CFL special teams meeting experience.
I was a part of the CIS-CFL quarterback internship program while playing at McMaster University. I travelled to Calgary and sat in on a little bit of every meeting to get a feel for the game and its inner workings.
In the second team meeting, special teams coordinator Mark Kilam got up introduced himself and told the rookies to strap in for five minutes. He proceeded to use game footage as visual evidence of Canadian football’s possibilities.
The Montreal-Toronto kick-out scenario from a couple years ago; no yards; returning missed field goals — it was all put on the table for this new group of CFL blood.
They weren’t sure whether to laugh or cry. I actually had one rookie tap me on the shoulder as the resident maple leaf flag waver and ask me, “is this a joke” in order to validate what he was seeing, to which I calmly responded, “nope, I actually won my grade 12 city high school championship game with that single point on a punt thing.”
No, it’s not a joke. It’s Canadian football and when players laugh and ignore the importance of those meetings, we end up laughing at them for not knowing our rules such as Kenny Shaw on Saturday.
Games can be won or lost based on these crazy situations and coaches would do well to refresh their teams on the rules ahead of the playoffs. Heaven forbid we should have a solid player such as Kenny Shaw make a mistake which decides a team’s season.
I would hate for everyone in Canada to be screaming at their televisions as a player failed to understand our unique rules. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t hate it, because it would remind us all just how different our game can be, and that’s a good thing.
