Johany Jutras/Argonauts.ca
Ricky Ray has never won the MOP. That sentence/fact just seems weird. Through 15 seasons, 224 games and over 60,000 passing yards, Ray has never captured the ultimate CFL individual award. His 0-14 MOP record is about as strange as the fact that Ray once rushed for 135 yards and one touchdown on 12 carries during his Edmonton days in a 31-28 OT win over the BC Lions.
**Self-indulgent tangent warning!** Please take the time and watch some of the highlights of that game. Go to the :20 mark when Ray had his career long rush of 46 yards. This play was so unexpected that not only was the entire Lions defence fooled on his run fake but the TSN cameras couldn’t find Ray until four seconds into his gallop, where he was already almost 30 yards downfield.
Poor Ricky Ray, even back in 2010 we were already making fun of his lack of athleticism as Rod Black made the comment that he is “not known to be a track star.” All right, I’m done.
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Ray capped off the regular season with one of his best games of 2017 in BC (Johany Jutras/Argonauts.ca)
Now, I’m not saying that in any of the previous years he was robbed — just take a look back at the annual winners and they are all deserving over Ray (Damn, Casey Printers’ 2004 season is crazy when you compare it to everything else he did in the league!!). But I do believe that 2017 represents the best chance for Ray to win it. If the award was for the most “valuable” player then Ray wins it going away. He means more to his team than any other player in the league.
Mike Reilly had a better statistical season but Edmonton would survive with James Franklin at the helm; the same can’t be said in Toronto, where the drop-off between Ray and Cody Fajardo is about the same as my sense of style compared to Milt Stegall’s. Simply, put Toronto is not built to win without Ray. Yes, the running game is far better now with James Wilder Jr. as the feature back, but as a team, the Argonauts were third-last in rushing yards and dead-last in rushing touchdowns. Last season Toronto finished the year last in the East with a record of 5-13 scoring just 383 points. This year the Argonauts won the East and scored nearly a 100 more points. Ricky Ray started 17 games this year compared to nine in 2016; it is not a coincidence that Ray’s health is directly linked with the health of the Argonauts.
You can make the case that Reilly has been the better quarterback or that Andrew Harris is more deserving for his record season, but no one has had a more remarkable year than Ray. Be honest, at the end of last season did you think that Ray, at the age of 38, would start the most games since 2014, would throw the ball more times than in any other year since 2005, would set a career single-season high for completions while finishing second in passing yards with 5,546 yards, a mark that he only surpassed one other time in his entire career? That is an impressive run on sentence for a quarterback who, at one point, looked like his career was over. Remember, in the two previous years, Ray had started just a dozen games as the team traded a first round pick and prized defensive back T.J. Heath for Drew Willy. Willy started four games late in 2016 and it looked like he was going to be the team’s starter going forward.
In his 15th season, Ricky Ray led the CFL with 668 passing attempts (Johany Jutras/Argonauts.ca)
All of that changed with the arrival of Jim Popp and Marc Trestman, whose first significant act was to name Ray the day one starter. So to summarize, Ray went from looking like he was becoming expendable to being the primary reason Toronto will be hosting the Eastern Final. That’s a hell of a role reversal.
I think we’re all a bit shocked that Ray has managed to stay upright through 668 pass attempts. In Week 1 he threw for 506 yards against Hamilton but got beat up in the process by the Tiger-Cats defence. There were so many times in 2017 when Ray got hit and you just froze watching him withering on the ground wondering if he would get up. The offensive line finished sixth in both sacks and pressures allowed so Ray did not exactly enjoy the cleanest of pockets, and yes, I understand that’s not all on the offensive line as Ray is so slow, it isn’t accurate to say he has “lost a step” as he never had that step in the first place.
Sitting here, it is hard not to think that Ray’s chances of winning are a long shot. Mike Reilly put up better numbers in a harder division and his team won three more games. On the other side, no team needed a single player quite like the Argonauts needed Ray, and he delivered with his best season in 12 years after being on the brink of football oblivion.
It will be a close race and even if Ray’s MOP record falls to 0-15, this guy won the 2017 season.
