Johany Jutras/CFL.ca
Sunday’s Eastern Final between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Toronto Argonauts had many storylines to sink your teeth into.
From coach swaps to all-star one-on-one battles and beyond, no singular theme was more intriguing than the battle between quarterbacks Kevin Glenn and Ricky Ray.
Comparing quarterbacks is one of the most illogical things we do in sports since they never actually affect each other’s outcome, but if there were ever a time to draw a line between two passers this game was it.
Both Ray and Glenn have endured and succeeded in longer than normal careers and both had the opportunity on Sunday to alter the story that will be told about them decades from now.
Glenn did for the worse.
Ray did for the better.
On the same field that Glenn was pulled in Week 16 midway through the second quarter for backup Brandon Bridge, the same sequence repeated. This time, Riders head coach Chris Jones’ fuse was a few minutes shorter with Glenn being pulled – the first time – with 10 minutes left in the first half. Glenn threw an interception returned for a score to Terrance Plummer and two more interceptions before the first half was over while being pulled and reinserted twice as Bridge struggled to find a rhythm as well.
Once the turnover-filled first half dust settled, Jones decided Bridge was his man to — little success through the third quarter, which saw three two-and-outs for a Riders offence which appeared to be peaking just seven short days ago in Ottawa.
Bridge would go on to throw the first playoff touchdown by a Canadian quarterback in the CFL since Russ Jackson in the 1969 Grey Cup while getting help from a relentlessly athletic defence and an opportunistic special teams unit which added a return touchdown to take the lead with just minutes to go.
The lead would not last.
Ricky Ray does not face the same career legacy question his opponent Glenn does annually, but that doesn’t make Ray’s chance to alter the conversation surrounding his name any less important.
The three-time Grey Cup Champion last led the Argonauts to the CFL’s mountain top in 2012. Since then, the Argos have experienced more valleys than peaks, and Ray has suffered injury after injury, rendering him less effective than his healthy self or completely unavailable for much of the last three years.
When Marc Trestman and Jim Popp were announced as head coach and general manager of the Argos in the off-season, they had few facts to offer about their team but made one declarative statement:
“Ricky Ray is our starting quarterback,” Trestman said staring directly into the largest camera in the room in a way that confirmed he wasn’t messing around about the decision.
After Ray led an eight play, 68-yard drive inside the final three minutes of the Eastern Final to retake a lead the Argos would not relinquish, Trestman again stepped to a microphone to describe the quarterback who he says has been essential to any and all success the Argos have experienced in 2017.
“To win big games in this league you have to have a quarterback playing at a high level, and we’ve certainly had that in Ricky. We had it in Montreal when I was there and we’ve gotten it here. It’s essential.”
In attaching themselves to Ray at all costs this year, Popp and Trestman were able to eliminate any uncertainty in the most important position on the field and create an environment where everyone understands the pecking order of importance.
In turn, that allowed Ray to flourish with new toys Armanti Edwards and S.J. Green, and it all came to a climax Sunday night with the sun setting over an Argo blue- and Rider green-clad BMO Field.
With each completion on that final drive, Ricky Ray inched closer to cementing his legacy as one of the greatest to ever do it at the quarterback position in Canada.
Asked after the game where that game-winning drive ranked for Ray in his personal pantheon of clutch late-game antics, Ray peeled back the curtain for once in admitting, “right now it feels pretty high up there.”
For Argos fans, it’s sure to become a lasting memory. A moment in time when they saw Ricky Ray work the magic that continues to make him legendary. A tale which can only grow greater with a Grey Cup Championship to punctuate the story next Sunday.
